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