West Side Activists Want To Meet With McCarthy To Discuss Violence
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Activists in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side have demanded a meeting with Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, to come up with solutions to violent crime in a community that has more murders than any other.
"It's going to be a long, hot summer," said Rev. Ira Acree, as he stood with a group of community activists on the 5800 block of West North Avenue on Wednesday. The street is where 23-year-old Andre Chatman and 28-year-old Carey Hollis were slain in a drive-by shooting in broad daylight this past weekend.
Chatman and Hollis were in a car headed east on North Avenue, when someone in another vehicle sprayed their car with bullets.
"If you can sit here and kill somebody in broad daylight with assault weapons, how are they getting into our communities?" activist Maurice Robinson said. "We hear it on a regular basis; how crime has dropped to all-time lows, but yet in this community, it has risen."
Community activist Tio Hardiman, with the group Violence Interrupters, said answers lie within the black community.
"More than we have a gang problem in the African-American community, we have a self-hatred problem. If we don't address the self-hatred, we're going to continue to shoot and kill one another," he said. "I know that might be kind of deep for some people."
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Chatman's mother, Patricia, read a poem she wrote for her son.
"I didn't think it was right to live your life so reckless. Now I've got to live with this necklace," she said.
The activists said they're not looking forward to a long, hot summer, when shootings and murders typically go up.
