Crime Wave 2

'I was gonna leave it alone after putting up the 1976 crime stats in We're havin' a crime wave.
 But a couple of barflies got into it on Milwaukee Avenue and one of 'em got stuck. Now everyone is moaning about how Wicker Park used to be a safe neighborhood and upticks in crime.

Wicker Park was never a safe neighborhood. No neighborhood in the city is.    (except perhaps Edison Park)
Wicker Park is the safest it's been in over 40 years.

Here are the index crime stats for the 14th district.

I feel sorry for cops at Caps meetings. They sit there while people rant and rave, but I know that the only thought going through he cops heads is,

"Jeez, white people's problems"

That's not to say everything is rosy. We do have a crime wave of sorts.
30% of all our index crime consists of someone getting shit stolen out of their car.

Wanna take a bite out of crime? Never leave anything more valuable than an empty cheeseburger wrapper in your car.


Paul K. Dickman

We're havin' a crime wave

Back in the late 70s, some sociologists at Northwestern got a Dept of Justice grant for something called the "Reactions to crime project". They went to urban neighborhoods and interviewed the locals about local crime and compared this information to the actual local crime statistics. One of the Chicago neighborhoods was Wicker Park (along with Lincoln Park, Woodlawn and Back of the Yards.)

Today I want to highlight this:

This is the annual crime count for 1976 crimes in Wicker Park. (Augusta to Armitage, Western to Ashland)

Look at those counts. They were 6-10 times higher than they are currently. They're higher than the entirety of West Town. In fact I would put them up against any similar sized area in the roughest parts of Englewood or Austin and make those neighborhoods look like Mayberry.

In any event the original studies can be found here:
http://skogan.org/files/Lewis_and_Maxfield.Fear_in_the_Neighborhoods_An_Investigation_of_the_Impact_of_Crime.1980.pdf
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/85917.pdf
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/85506.pdf
They're required reading for any student of Wicker Park history.Particularly the second "The methodological overview" it contains some great contemporary accounts of what the neighborhood was like when it started to gentrify.

Paul K. Dickman

Men Are Like Streetcars

You've all heard the old saw,
Men are like streetcars, another one will be along any minute.
I never gave it much thought until I ran across this while researching urban renewal efforts in the Wicker Park area. It's a report of transit service from 1951's "A plan to guide redevelopment in the northwest central area of Chicago" by the Plan Commission and is courtesy of the Hathi Trust digital library.

Take a look at the Milwaukee Streetcar. In each direction it ran, on average. every 2 1/2 minutes and every 58 seconds during rush hours.

Imagine the convenience of stepping out on the street and having transit show up in the time it takes you to get the change out of your pocket.
Imagine a transfer. How much time do you add to your schedule when ever you have to change buses?

When the CTA took over the transit system, they ushered in an era of efficiency. Don't get me wrong, at the time it was what saved mass transportation in Chicago. But the philosophy of maximizing each bus load a the expense of customer convenience is still in effect to this day.

If you want more people to chose transit over their own auto, you have to make it so convenient that driving is a waste of time.

It doesn't do much good to shave 8 minutes off a 16 mile bus ride if I have to waste half an hour waiting for a bus.

Paul K. Dickman