HOW chicago keeps itself violent...
violence reduction is
not a strategy. it's a metric.
treaTED as a strategy, it does three
things to KEEP CHICAGO VIOLENT
Its misuse as a public safety strategy keeps Chicago from ever developing a genuine public safety STRATEGY. Properly used, violence reduction (or increase) is an essential metric used by law enforcement to measure the increase or decrease of various categories of crime from one year to the next. Misused as a strategy, this metric has created a Violence Reduction mindset focused only on marginal increases or decreases in violence in a city that is otherwise drenched in violence. ​ In this climate, no city planner even thinks of giving serious thought to how Chicago can make itself safe. Chicago's Violence Reduction ensures that SAFETY is forever off the table. In sum, Violence Reduction puts the metric cart before the strategy horse. Violence Reduction keeps Chicago in a state of confusion about the future of public safety in Chicago. ​
It keeps the public an a state of apathy. Over time, it numbs Chicagoans into ACCEPTING VIOLENCE - wartime levels of it - as unalterable, permanent facts of city life, like brutal Chicago winders. In this climate, No real effort can be made to tap into the energies, intelligence and yearning of the people of Chicago for safety. Chica- goans yearn for safety: for a city where you can go anywhere without fearing for your life. Violence Reduction nullifies this yearning. it numbs the minds of Chicagoans, prevents them from ever considering the goal of Citywide Safety. In this climate, no constructive, safety-focused uses of the media that comprise Chicago's digital-age public communications system can ever be made.
​Using its digital-age public communication system to make itself SAFE. It's the digital age. The commercial media that set the tone for Chicago's digital-age public communication system should be using their resources to empower Chicagoans and City Hall to make Chicago SAFE. But nothing like this is happening. Instead, the industrial-age mindset the informs Violence Reduction thinking overlooks the enormously constructive public safety roles that Chicago's digital-age public communication system can play in our media-driven city. This system has ample power to inform, inspire and motivate all Chicagoans to make Chicago SAFE. It can do so in ongoing, trustworthy public forums that bring out the BEST in Chicagoans and their leaders, not the WORST, as sensationalized, crime-story violence coverage has done for decades. (That said, crime-story coverage is a vital component of a digital-age public safety strategy whose crime-story coverage of violence of Chicago's drive to make itself safe
Deploying the People of Chicago as its primary digital-age public safety resource. Chicago's primary industrial-age public safety resource was its police. The city's primary digital age public safety resource is all Chicagoans. That's because the ubiquity of digital-age PC's and cell phones distributes citywide the power to make Chicago either safe or violent. The digital age is an Age of Citizenship. It makes all Chicagoans - City Hall, police, public health professionals and the people of Chicago - responsible for the city's safety.