BLOODSHED ON THE HOME FRONT

As of Friday, the number of U.S. military fighters killed or missing in the
war with Iraq stood at 133.

As of Friday, the number of people murdered in Chicago this year stood at
164. Unlike some of those killed overseas, not one victim on the home front
was slain by friendly fire.

Even before the start of this year's prime killing season--a function of
warm weather and many more confrontations in the languid night air--the
bloodshed on Chicago's streets again is catalyzing anger and outrage. As is
often the case, that's happening for the wrong reason: the fact that 11
people were murdered here on what for many Chicagoans was an Easter or
Passover weekend of great holiness and redemption.

Not that each of those 11 lost lives isn't by itself a good reason for
outrage. But the sheer volume of one weekend's homicides is the wrong
excuse to get exercised because it focuses attention on the wrong number:
11. If you're looking for a reason to get exercised, the more offensive
number is 164 homicides--and counting--for 2003. It is the steady, quiet
cadence of the slaughter, and not the occasional noisy drumrolls of death,
that should rouse this city from its torpor.

There is special fury here, too, over the injuries suffered by a 7-year-old
girl, struck by a stray bullet from a dispute over a gold neck chain as she
played on her front porch on Easter Sunday. The shooting of a 7-year-old
breaks a city's heart. But we have momentarily mourned the shootings of
hundreds of Chicago children over the years without demanding any real halt
to these travesties. If one shooting gets our attention, what of the 3,926
intentional but non-fatal Chicago shootings that wounded people last year?

Here's another number to get exercised about: 600. For each of the past 35
years, Chicago has suffered at least that many murders. No city can match
that embarrassment. In Chicago, toe tags by the hundreds have become as
predictable, as reliable, as the changing of the seasons.

Here is an even greater humiliation drawn from all those numbers:

Chicago's murder rate--that's the most important of all homicide
statistics, the number of murders per 100,000 residents--has, for eight of
the last nine years, led those of all U.S. cities with populations of more
than 1 million. With killings in 2003 running slightly ahead of last year's
pace, this city is on a path to exceed last year's total of 646
homicides--and to claim that big-city murder rate title for a shameful
ninth time in 10 years.

As the Tribune argued in "The Chicago crime," a series of editorials that
appeared in November and December, homicide here isn't one pathology, but a
constellation of pathologies--from domestic violence to gangbanging to
tavern brawls--that often leave corpses. The way to bring down the homicide
toll is to target individual strategies at each pathology. Short of
long-range cures for the social conditions--lousy educations, lack of job
skills--that drive young people into dangerous lifestyles, the immediate
goal should be to disrupt those pathologies.

That's especially true of the many murders here that emerge from the lethal
nexus of gangs, guns and drugs. In essence these are industrial deaths,
homicides provoked by illicit trade in narcotics and firearms on a massive
scale in many of this city's most hapless and helpless neighborhoods.
Nobody knows the exact percentage, but in recent years these killings have
accounted for more than half--and possible well more than half--of this
city's homicide toll. They are the primary reason why Chicago's murder rate
eclipses those of America's other metropolises.

As Chicago mulls how to reduce all types of homicides, three tactics could
most rapidly disrupt the killings rooted in gangs, guns and drugs:

- - The Chicago Police Department should redeploy its officers as swiftly as
possible, preferably before another killing season passes. This has long
been a priority of Police Supt. Terry Hillard, who will retire in August.
In January, the politically controversial move was endorsed by Mayor
Richard Daley.

One way to redeploy Chicago's 13,500 sworn officers is to redraw the city's
25 police districts and 279 beats. Another, possibly simpler and faster
method is to leave the district and beat structure largely intact while
relocating officers from low-crime districts to the most violence-prone
neighborhoods.

Some aldermen--particularly in white-majority wards where street violence
isn't the norm--will squawk that redeployment is unfair to their
constituents. They claim that diluting the police presence in their wards
penalizes residents for living in safer neighborhoods.

That is an understandable reaction. But what's truly unjust is letting
violence rule so many Chicago neighborhoods policed by overwhelmed,
lower-seniority and thus less-experienced officers. The ultimate goal is a
safer Chicago for everyone--not just for those who can afford to live in
certain neighborhoods. The quicker police are able to slash the homicide
toll, the better off all Chicagoans will be.

Redeployment of Chicago's police force is a change Daley, having just been
re-elected with 79 percent of the vote, can make happen no matter how
loudly some aldermen squeal.

- - That said, redeployment isn't enough. In 1998, several top Chicago police
officials traveled to New York to explore that city's precipitous drop in
homicides (from 2,245 in 1990 to 584 last year). One strategy that
impressed the Chicago cops was New York's rapid deployment of resources to
hot spots identified by the mapping of recent violence. In effect, New York
supervisors could identify a neighborhood that experienced several
shootings on a Friday night and, by Saturday, flood the area with squads of
officers at their disposal for just that purpose.

That approach was never fully instituted here. But its rationale is
excellent for two reasons: It allows a police force to ramp up enforcement
without robbing officers from their regular duties. And it discourages gang
retaliations for shootings--a prime reason why one killing often is
followed by several more.

Chicago police often move extra officers to troubled areas. And, typically
twice a month, the department implements Operation Clean Slate, in which
officers from other districts overload a troubled area for intense
enforcement against even the smallest infractions. Clean Slate takes
lawbreakers off the streets, often to the great gratitude of residents in
crime-ridden neighborhoods. But after the officers depart, enforcement
drops back to routine levels.

Redeploying the entire department would, of course, allow commanders to
beef up that routine enforcement in the toughest districts. But creating a
discretionary force large enough to make a difference in high-crime
neighborhoods could have a tremendous additional effect.

That may mean looking for ways to increase the size of Chicago's police
force. At the very least, it means reassessing whether some office jobs now
held by sworn officers can be performed by civilians. As Daley mulls the
choice of a new superintendent, he should ask each candidate for fresh
notions on how to put more officers on the blocks where they're most needed.

Behind the scenes, law enforcement officials at the city, county and
federal levels are discussing a new approach for targeting their limited
resources against the most vicious of Chicago's gangs. The idea is to
better coordinate the current pattern of fragmented, parallel investigative
attacks on the gangs by creating gang strategy teams in the city's
bloodiest police districts. Each team would include police officials,
federal and county prosecutors and agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration and the alphabet soup of other federal agencies that pursue
gang criminals.

Two powerful precedents could keep this from becoming yet another
well-intentioned placebo that has no real effect. In the mid-1990s, a
similar law enforcement alliance set aside the usual turf battles to take
down the notorious Larry Hoover and dozens of other leaders of the
murderous Gangster Disciples. And a current initiative called Project Safe
Neighborhoods, or PSN, also binds city, county, state and federal
authorities in a young but increasingly successful effort to send West Side
gun felons to far-off federal penitentiaries.

Chicago's predicament is critical. But it is not without hope. Community
groups and anti-violence initiatives such as CeaseFire are working hard to
reduce gang combat. And while they aren't yet household names, many of the
officials trying to quash the violence--Matthew Crowl, Daley's homicide
czar; David Hoffman and Diane Saltoun, federal prosecutors who direct PSN;
Michael Smith of the Cook County state's attorney's office; Larry Ford of
the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, among others--appear
obsessively committed to working together to lower the homicide toll.
Daley's choice to be the new police superintendent needs to be a strong
addition to that team.

Their challenge now is converting good intentions into measurable outcomes.
Specifically, fewer toe tags.

That point got drilled home earlier this month in a meeting at Chicago
police headquarters to discuss killings in The Zone, an especially deadly
patch of the city's West Side. Dozens of police officers, public officials,
social service providers and prospective employers have been meeting for
almost a year to devise ways of lessening the bloodshed.

The discussion turned to anti-violence strategies that would be in place by
the ad hoc group's next meeting. With that the impatient moderator, Chuck
Wexler of the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum, tossed this
verbal grenade: "Fine, but how many people have been killed in The Zone
since our last meeting?"

Chicago can drive down its flagrant homicide numbers. But not without that
kind of impatience. Too often this city wrings it hands--and loses
interest. As the body count for 2003 rises, Chicago cannot slip back into
nonchalance.