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‘Law and Order’ Should Be More Than a GOP Slogan

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

As they were preparing to go to the airport to visit their new grandchildren, two friends of mine were robbed recently outside their Kenwood co-op building near the University of Chicago.

Suddenly I was alerted once again to the horrors of Chicago’s surging crime rate.

News that the recent crime wave rolling through cities nationwide had penetrated my circle of friends triggered an old emotional trauma from a holdup on a vacation in the 1970s.

No physical injuries, fortunately, but my boiling inner rage over the incident never went away.

A lot of us became complacent during the surprising-but-very-welcome dip in violent crime back in the 1990s. It lasted until about 2014 and, despite some upticks, violent crime remains lower than the early 1990s.

The national rate of 758 incidents per 100,000 in 1991 slid to 398 per 100,000 when the pandemic began in 2020.

 

But those national statistics bring little comfort now to victims of robbery and more violent crimes or to their families and friends.

So, while much of the nation is transfixed by the Jan. 6 committee hearings — except perhaps viewers of Fox News, which has found other things to talk about — the successful recall of San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin has renewed or energized calls in Illinois and other states for legal recall of prosecutors.

Illinois voters approved a recall provision for the state’s constitution in 2010, but only for the governor.

More recently, discontent with crime rates in Chicago has brought similar talk about recalling Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, which is not the sort of thing her party, the Democrats, want to be talking about as the midterms approach.

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(c) 2022 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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