How dangerous is the SouthSide of Chicago?

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Chicago has four neighborhoods listed on the '25 most dangerous' list
Scott Paulson
Chicago Conservative Examiner
May 30, 2013

According to a Yahoo! News article posted on Wednesday, Chicago has the ill-distinction of tying Detroit by having four neighborhoods listed on the list of the “25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods” in the United States. One might call it just another negative, highly-publicized collection of data that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy will likely have to try to diffuse.

NeighborhoodScout, an online real estate facility, has gathered data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation from some-17,000 local law enforcement agencies throughout the nation and has compiled the list of the “25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods.” According to NeighborhoodScout, the figures were used in 20 formulas to arrive at a crime rate – with a reported accuracy rate of about 90 percent. Neighborhoods were defined by census tracts, just as the government defines and labels neighborhoods. The data turns out a measurement of predicting violent crime per every 1,000 residents as well as determining the annual risk of violent crimes which includes rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery, and murder.

The four Chicago neighborhoods listed on the “25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods” in the nation are number 4 on the list, South Halsted Street and West 77th Street in Chicago’s South Side Auburn Gresham neighborhood. In this neighborhood, the data reveals that there is a 1-in-9 chance of being a victim of a violent crime. The violent crime rate is 116.56 for every 1,000 persons.

Number 13 on the list of 25 is South Homan Avenue and West Roosevelt Road in Chicago’s Southwest neighborhood of North Lawndale. In this neighborhood, the data reveals that there is a 1-in-12 chance of being a victim of a violent crime. The violent crime rate is 80.17 for every 1,000 persons.

The third Chicago neighborhood listed on the national list of 25 comes in at number 16. This is South Ashland Avenue and West 76th Street in Chicago’s South Side’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood – the same city neighborhood as Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhood listed at number 4 on the national list. At South Ashland Avenue and West 76th Street, the data reveals that there is a 1-in-14 chance of being a victim of a violent crime. The violent crime rate is 73.05 for every 1,000 persons.

The last neighborhood on the total list, number 25, is around South Indiana Avenue and East 60th Street in the Washington Park neighborhood. The data reveals that there is a 1-in-15 chance of being a victim of a violent crime. The violent crime rate is 65.77 for every 1,000 persons.

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@Miller,

Well the south side of Chicago
Is the baddest part of town
And if you go down there
You better just beware
Of a man name-a Leroy Brown...

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I lived in a beautiful neighborhood on the south side of Chicago and never had a single problem.

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@Miller,

Have you got a link, Miller? Was the complete list of 25 neighborhoods published?

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@Region Philbis,

Damn . . . beat me to it . . .

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The Chicago Conservative Examiner . . . now that's got to be a fair and balanced, unbiased source . . .

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Latest shooting in Chicago:

A mother was out walking her young child in a carriage,and was gunned down, killed in a totally senseless shooting.

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@Lustig Andrei,

No link. But, the Chicago Tribune and NYTimes do an excellent job following crime in Chicago.

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@Miller,

FWIW, here's the most recent Top 25 Most Dangerous Neighbourhoods list from the cited original source, NeighborhoodScout. It's for 2015.

Back when this article was written, Chicago had "the ill-distinction of tying Detroit by having four neighborhoods .. on the list". Now it has just one, and Detroit just two. Instead, Memphis is the city with the most neighbourhoods on the list, three of them.

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@nimh,

This is the only neighbourhood in Chicago that still makes the list. Thought I'd look around with Google Street View.

My first reaction was, damn, but those are some nice-looking houses. This is something that tends to trip us Europeans up, I think. We see these beautiful, old and fairly large (by Euro-standards) houses, and think, "how can this be a bad neighbourhood"? Cause when we think of poor neighbourhoods, we imagine projects-style towerblocks, or run-down tenement buildings. Cause that's what'd be in (Western-)Europe. Plus that's what 'bad' neighbourhoods look like in American movies.

On second sight, though, there's some weird stuff. Like, check out how nice these buildings look from the front, and overlooking the park and everything! This is what they look like from the back. Huh.

The very next spot I dropped the little Google Street View man, there's a situation, with a cop stopping some guy and people coming out to see what's going on.

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Tried Google Street-Viewing another neighbourhood in the list and didn't get very far. There's no Street View in Northview Heights, Pittsburgh. Satellite view shows a pretty isolated area. And Google Street View stops at the entrance and exit points of the neighbourhood. Probably because a couple of them seem to have been blocked off, like this. If that seems a little creepy, the Wikipedia article on the neighbourhood confirms that it kind of is. Damn:

Quote:

In 1990, a woman became lost nearby, drove into the neighborhood by mistake, and was pulled from her car and beaten while onlookers watched and did not intervene.[7] In 1993, firefighters and utility personnel refused to enter the neighborhood without police protection for fear of assault.[8] In 1998, the City of Pittsburgh - over the objections of Northview Heights residents - closed three of the development's five entrances and installed security stations at the remaining two entrances.

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@nimh,

I don't know. I was a white kid with a father with good job but later not, followed by family struggles. I was nine, at the end, approaching 13.

I lived in a suburb. Part of my sense of self is from learning from the Hennessy family, and another family down the street. One, the elder, became a physicist, early for women, one a teacher in Chi public schools, one a mother and editor for Scientific American, one a teacher in New Mexico tribal areas.
The family down the street? 14 kids, house from the parish. Nancy, the oldest also taught native americans, in her case, in Oklahoma (I think).

I loved those people. I was an only child and they were a family unto them selves, so my attachment was not theirs, but I still value them.

I do remember riding the El through the slums. I was ignorant.

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@nimh,

Re the appearances of the building nimh, you can't always go by that. Looking at your "behind the building" picture, I don't see that as being that bad. Just run down and old. Sure there's some trash, but in the form of paper. Could be a lot worse, with a half a dozen or more abandoned cars, torn down fences, graffiti all over, etc. Anyway, that's an allyway, not the street, where they put the trash cans and stuff. There's going to be some litter. I went down the street and around the corner a little, and the streets look fine, the allys as you pass them are fair to middling.

Not making excuses, this might or might not be a bad area just based on how it looks. It's an old area. There's a lot of open land down the street that could be used.

Also, in cities, you can literally cross the street sometimes and go from good to bad.

There's a neighborhood in Austin I have to drive through every couple of weeks at least, to deliver billing. In any given blocks- I pass homes that would go for over a million dollars, a few that need to be torn down (and I'm sure will be when someone buys the lot for $600K) , a really great cafe I go to sometimes with friends, and a highly ranked public school. It's one of the original settled areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Line_Historic_District_(Austin,_Texas)
As the link indicates, it's a real mixed bag of nuts. Started to be built on a couple hundred years ago, and just sort of had a life of it's own. It was during a time when land was all there was all around for the picking.

Just musing here nimh. I'm not disagreeing with you.

Heh, remembering something. Years back my husband and I were driving through Maine, and we knew we were going to go through Bangor, and meant to stop to see Stephen Kings house, since we're his "number one fans" lol, reference to Misery, one of books.

Anyway, obviously nice neighborhood, big old victorian houses. When we got out of the car to take a picture, I looked around and saw 2 women talking outside the house catty corner to where we were. One woman was up on her porch, leaning over the railing, the other standing in the yard looking up and talking to the woman maybe 6 feet above her.

Real friendly scene. However, if you took that exact same scenerio and put it in a different neighborhood, some people would have thought they could be welfare mothers with a houseful of kids all with different fathers.

btw, here's the google map of that address.

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8021702,-68.7845374,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZZ90B6ofGyxL9vGaG7jnCw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

I just checked the image, and the white house that came up was the exact house the women were talking in front of. I remember that like it was yesterday.
Turn to the left (counterclockwise) 2 clicks and you'll see Kings place.

1 Reply

@chai2,

Listening to Chai.

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@nimh,

When you have more than 400 homicides in 4-6 months, you know you're not living in paradise.

A recent article in the NYT discussed a recent Chicago murder. Not...to my surprise the the victim of the homicide was killed in front of my former home on the South Side of Chicago.

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@nimh,

I don't need lists of dangerous parts of Chicago. I grew up on the SouthSide, went to pre-school, grade school high school, undergraduate school (college), graduate school ( College) and finally my first year as a postdoctoral fellow...before I moved from Chicago to Boston for my research career.

I've said this before, at this time, there is positively no safe place on the SouthSide of Chicago. You can look at all the "LISTS" till you drop dead, but if you want to find out about crime in any neighborhood, just walk down any street, ride any bus, or just "hang-out". At any time of the day.

A young mother of 4 was recently gunned down, in Chicago, as she walked her baby in a carriage,to enroll her other kids in a neighborhood school.
This was in the daylight...in the middle of the day. She was not the target.

She was caught in a blaze of gun fight, aimed at some other group of gang members.

She was a cousin to a very famous NBA basketball star ( Dade), whose own mother is Pastor Jolinda Wade ( of Chicago).

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The Black Body Count Rises as Chicago Police Step Back
WSJ, 9/12/16
Heather Mac Donald

Quote:

The ideal solution to Chicago's violence would be for more at-risk boys to be raised by their mother and their father. Until that happens, the only hope for law-abiding residents of Chicago's big-crime areas is that police regain control of the streets

.

Ms Mac Donald is the author of "The War on Cops".

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Trump,but not Mrs. Clinton had the guts to mention the murders and killings that have occurred in Chicago, over the past two years. He mentioned that he owned property in the City and he was concerned about the value and safety of his property .

Mrs Clinton never responded to Trump's views on Chicago. Why would she? She's too afraid of tarnishing her very PC image and in many ways, she's merely the WHITE version of Obama.

Obama acts like he's not part of Chicago and shouldn't be involved in any way with the City's violence, murders, and gangs. Moreover,I have yet to hear Mrs. Obama comment on the present violence in Chicago. Her own mother still lives with the Obama family in DC and as far as I know her old home is still empty.

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Latest little bit from the Financial Times Letters section.

When the white masses leave Chicago Proper ( i.e. the City within the city-limits), and head for the suburbs ( small towns outside Chicago) today, they refer to their new areas as "Chicago-Land" and/or "Metropolitan Chicago" ( not to be confused with the gang-saturated gun shooting areas of the inner City.

A recent writer to The financial Times stated that Metropolitan Chicago consists of 9.1 million residents and that other "Chicago" ( the bad! one) consists of only 2.8 million. Not mentioned of course, was the large number of farms ( plus corn and soybeans) that make up "Metropolitan Chicago....

Moreover, with all the details concerning, Eastside, Westside, Southside, etc, why do you suppose the Financial Times letter writer didn't mention either State Street or Division Street?

1 Reply

@Miller,

The Obamas are in the early stages of buying 3 new homes scattered in various parts of the US. Not one is located in Chicago, or any other part of Illinois.

That's a bit of a surprise, considering the new Obama library is to be built in Chicago and of course, Obama voted as an Illinois resident in the last presidential election.

1 Reply

How dangerous is the SouthSide of Chicago?

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