There are deadly shootings in Chicago – and it’s weighing heavily on residents

Tavares Harrington wears the memory of his 7-year-old niece Heaven Sutton on his sleeve. Her name, tattooed in cursive, represents a dove on his left forearm.

On June 27, 2012, as Heaven was playing outside while her mother sold candy and snow cones in front of their home in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, a 33-year-old man fired at least ten shots. He hit a 19-year-old boy in the ankle. Heaven fled, but a stray bullet hit her in the back and killed her. Eight years later, the shooter was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Every day, Harrington reflects on the life of Heaven and how it was heartbreakingly cut short. She was a charismatic little girl who loved to sing and act. She often carried his small children on her hip, like a big sister.

For Harrington, Heaven’s death was not the first in his family caused by gun violence. His mother, Patricia Banks, was fatally shot in 1994, when he was just 15 years old. Since then, as an outreach supervisor for the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago in Austin, Harrington has noticed a change for the worse: Instead of adults injuring each other, young people are now carrying deadly weapons and shooting more bystanders. “You see children dying now,” he said. “You now see women dying. You now see old people dying.”

While the overall number of people shot in Chicago has begun to decline, shootings have steadily become more deadly over the past thirteen years. As The Trace previously reported, the total number of people who died after being shot grew from 354 in 2010 to 559 in 2023. The odds of dying after being shot rose from nearly 13 percent to 19 percent over the same period. Proportionately fewer Chicagoans are surviving, especially within black and brown communities on the city’s south and west sides.

Each death represents a human life cut short, and like Harrington, the people who loved them must deal with their absence. Many are turning their grief into action by seeking ways to alleviate Chicago’s deadly crisis.

About a dozen residents and violence prevention workers interviewed by The Trace said everyone from the community to government needs to work together to provide more resources to areas affected by gun violence. More money is needed, they said, to give young people the tools to make them less likely to carry a gun. And urgent action must be taken to stem the supply of guns that continue to arrive despite Illinois’ relatively strict laws.

Young people need more opportunities

Violence prevention workers and others who work with youth say that without guidance, people risk becoming a product of their violent environments, where losing someone to gun violence can feel like the norm. These children feel the need for a gun because they see others have firearms, said Aaron White, who coordinates physical activities and teaches children about fitness at Moore Park. “A lot of people can’t get past what they see,” White said. ‘They don’t know that there is still life out there. I didn’t know that.”

When he was 20, White worked as an autopsy technician for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. He saw how violence took the lives of his childhood friends. “It’s hard to see someone you grew up with, played with or went to school with, to see him in that position,” White said.

Sometimes, during conversations in the barbershop, he reflects on those losses with his other lifelong friends. White grew up three blocks away from Harrington in Austin. Two years before Harrington lost his mother, when White was 14, his older brother was shot.

When shots rang out in Galewood Park that day, White thought he heard a toy gun. But when people started running, so did he and his 16-year-old brother. When they got home, he saw that a bullet had hit his brother after piercing his pants. It was life changing. “There were no more Supermans,” he said. “There were no more Spidermans.”

White said he would have benefited from counseling to better cope with that moment. Many children, he added, lack guidance to guide them through events in their communities. Some choose instead to act on their own idea of ​​justice.

In Austin, Harrington said, the makeup of people committing gun violence has changed. The number of gangs in the area went from about nine to about 52 ‘cliques’. These small factions are often named after people who have been shot and killed. Sometimes they act to avenge their deaths. With only 16 outreach workers from Harrington’s organization covering such a large area, it can be difficult to reach so many people seeking revenge.

Violent rap music and video games also influence the way young people view firearms, said Maurice Williams, outreach supervisor for the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago in Austin. “Some of these kids sit around the house playing stuff like that and think real life is like a game,” he said. “The only thing is, you don’t learn that if you die, you’re really dead, and you don’t get a chance to respawn.”

The internet is also full of images of violence. “Everything they do, they put on social media,” said Torrence Price, a Greater Grand Crossing site supervisor for Acclivus, a community health organization focused on violence prevention. While social media helps people like Price intervene in arguments before teens escalate to violence, he believes there should be rules against posting threatening and violent messages online.

Solutions from people on the spot

The people most affected by the lethality crisis are trying to help solve it — and they want officials to examine their perspectives before making decisions that could change their lives. Trevon Bosley, 26, said gun violence is often portrayed as a youth problem, but few officials regularly ask young people for their input. “Often I’m the youngest person in a room who’s a survivor,” said Bosley, an advocate against gun violence.

Violence prevention workers say they need funders, politicians and the public to understand that making cities safer means hiring workers from the communities they serve. “Those who commit the violence will be able to identify with them,” says William Edwards. , a program manager for Acclivus.

These employees often speak from experience. Many outreach workers are incarcerated and trying to help teens and young adults avoid repeating the mistakes that landed them behind bars.

In recent years, community violence intervention groups have received significantly increased funding. There are many new services available today, including outreach, intervention, cognitive behavioral therapy, employment, and trauma training. “What we are building in Chicago is extraordinary,” said Teny Gross, CEO of Nonviolence Chicago. “I’m amazed at the amount of commitment we have now, especially from the private sector.”

This work, he said, takes time to bear fruit – and cannot solve the crisis alone. Other necessary components, Gross said, include police reforms, tightening gun laws across the country and funding alternative programming for youth.

“We always catch the little guys,” Gross said. But he added that law enforcement cannot always trace crime weapons to their suppliers. He also blames gun manufacturers for making and advertising these deadly weapons.

As an economist, Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, looks at the issue in terms of supply and demand.

On the supply side, he said, the government could better regulate high-capacity magazines and switches, devices that can make a semiautomatic weapon fire like a fully automatic weapon. On the demand side, he added, governments and organizations can use tools, such as prosecution, to deter people from using these devices. This month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to create a task force to investigate the threat from emerging weapons technology such as conversion devices and 3D printed weapons.

In addition to preventing further violence, Bosley says, it’s important to ensure that those living in its aftermath have the resources they need to cope. Failure to do so, he added, can sometimes lead people to retaliate, especially if they feel justice has not been done.

Different survivors need different resources. When Harrington’s mother died, basketball kept him busy. Although there were those who wanted to take revenge and avenge the death of his mother, the sport served as an outlet to defuse his anger. Ultimately, the lives taken strengthened his resolve to reduce gun violence. Now he serves as an outreach worker in Austin, the neighborhood where he grew up. He strives to create spaces where young people can resolve their conflicts peacefully and provide resources that deter them from criminal activities.

“People perform better when they know better.”