GANGS, DRUGS BOOST CITY'S MURDER RATE

Chicago Ranks High in Killings Per Capita

CHICAGO - Seventh-grader Rene Guillen was on his way to a candy store with
a group of friends who had just spent the day cleaning up their
neighborhood when he was shot to death on the street.

On April 20, 7-year-old Ashlee Poole was wounded by a stray shot while she
sat on her porch. In the days surrounding that same weekend nearly a dozen
people were killed.

Once again, Chicago is on pace to top the nation's major cities in murders
per capita, and Mayor Richard Daley is demanding change to stop the rising
toll.

The mayor hauled top police officials into City Hall for a late-night
meeting following the April 26 killing of 12-year-old Rene, who was shot in
the middle of the day, apparently mistaken for a gang member.

"It's simply intolerable that children can't sit on their front porch or
clean up their neighborhoods without being in danger by gun violence,"
Daley said before the meeting.

He pressed the police commanders to find new ways to curb the gangs and
drugs that drive violence in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, where most of
the killings have taken place.

A block from the spot where Rene was killed, parents lined up at Hamline
Elementary School on Thursday to further question police and community
leaders, who had called the meeting.

"Today there is a lot of police," a sobbing Maria Ochon said. "In one week
I bet there will not be one cop. It's not fair for us to have to live like
this."

As of Friday, Chicago had counted 179 murders this year, 16 more than the
same time last year.

The city ended 2002 with 646 murders, second to Los Angeles, which had 653.
New York was third with 580. But Chicago's per capita murder rate was the
nation's highest among big cities.

For years, Daley and Police Superintendent Terry Hillard have talked about
rearranging beats to put more officers in the areas with the most crime.
However, aldermen who represent lower-crime areas have resisted any plan
that takes police from their areas.

"It's really a scandal that places like New York City, with 5 million more
people, have fewer homicides," said Madeline Talbott, head organizer for
the community activist group ACORN in Chicago, a city of about 2.9 million.

Police spokesman David Bayless said Chicago has lowered the murder rate
from a decade ago, when yearly death tolls ran to more than 900. But police
alone can't drive out the gangs, drugs and guns that have become entrenched
in some neighborhoods, he said.

"Homicide is not a police problem. It is a community problem," Bayless
said. "Educators, coaches, ministers, business leaders, mothers and
fathers, aunts and uncles - everyone has a stake in this."

The shots that killed Rene, who was not a gang member, were fired in
"retaliation for an alleged theft of a bicycle by a rival gang," said
police Cmdr. James Jackson. Three teenagers were charged with first-degree
murder.

Ashlee was wounded when a group of men opened fire on another man. Four men
have been charged in that shooting.