Applying lessons from war-torn Africa to Chicago
Concentrating on those most likely to kill or be killed may help to bring the murder rate down
“I SEE A van, suspicious as hell. I keep walking. They just pull up, get to shooting. I was just trying to get to my man’s crib, four houses away. My mother say I died. I still got a bullet lodged in my liver right now. That shit was painful; worst feeling ever. I died and they brought me back.”
Damien, a slender man in sports clothes and red running shoes, knows dangers lurk in some neighbourhoods. In the basement of a YMCA on Chicago’s South Side, he tells of being thrown out of home when he was 14. He has since been shot, pistol-whipped and imprisoned. Several friends have been killed, including two in a span of just eight days. “I know it’s time to do something different, I just want to see my daughter grow up”, he says.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Monrovia on Lake Michigan"
United States May 4th 2019
- Foreign policy after Donald Trump
- Remembering Senator Richard Lugar, an old-school Republican
- Donald Trump sues Deutsche Bank and Capital One
- Donald Trump is not the first president to fight subpoenas
- A new breed of prosecutors is tasked with getting people out of jail
- What’s going on at the NRA?
- Applying lessons from war-torn Africa to Chicago
- No sex please, we’re millennials
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