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| Watchful: Mary Williams (left) is a member of the parent patrol. Stephen J. Carrera/Special to The Christian Science Monitor |
To keep kids safe, Chicagoans join the walk to school
A spate of violence engulfing students has galvanized the city.
from the June 3, 2008 edition
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Reporter Amanda Paulson discusses how Chicago is moving to protect school children from a spate of violence against youth.
Part of the issue at Crane is the population of students from multiple neighborhoods and rival gang areas. The day of the shooting, a fight had apparently broken out in the morning at school, and the violence that followed the closing bell may simply have been an escalation of tensions that were simmering all day.
"Something has changed in the way teenagers are resolving conflict," says Monique Bond, a spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department, adding that cities around the country are taking note of the phenomenon. "It used to be fistfights and arguments, but conflict resolution with this generation is completely different."
That attitude, in which an argument over a hat or an insult can quickly escalate to guns and killings, is at the heart of the issue, say some experts, and any solutions need to try to address it.
"If you haven't taken a gun out of somebody's hand, if you don't have a relationship with them, then you can't parachute in to tell them to put that gun down," says Tio Hardiman, the director of mediation services for CeaseFire, a Chicago gang-intervention organization. Mr. Hardiman recently ran a conflict-management session at Crane in which he talked with key students from ABLA and rival neighborhoods. They used role-play and other techniques to get at other ways students can respond to perceived slights and smaller arguments so that, "if someone bumps you, you don't have to respond with escalation," says Hardiman.
He spoke with the students about identifying "thinkers" in each crowd so that, if another incident happens, they can reach out to CeaseFire's staff for help in stopping it before it gets out of hand.
For now, the city and police are taking other steps to try and both prevent youth violence and to be there to respond when it occurs. The city is increasing its summer jobs and recreational and educational programs to serve 280,000 students this summer in an effort to keep them occupied and off the streets. The police department has moved its youth curfew earlier, to 10 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. on weekends, and is stepping up enforcement. Police have targeted some of the most troubled schools and make sure students are present at arrival and dismissal.
At Crane, Ms. Beverly says the escort will continue at least through the end of the school year, even though fears of retaliation for the March shooting have died down.
"You have to always think about everything, you don't know what could happen, in school or outside school," says Daquator Lane, a Crane senior who plans to go to college next year to study criminal justice. "We don't know if we're safe or not, but you just have to keep going to school like normal."
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