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HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, Municipalities throughout Illinois contain
3neighborhoods identified as high-crime areas where law-abiding
4citizens fear for their safety and legitimate businesses
5abandon their endeavors; and
 
6    WHEREAS, State and federal resources must be made available
7to boost local efforts to protect the people of this great
8State; and
 
9    WHEREAS, Gang violence, random shootings, and blatant
10criminal activity have harmed neighborhoods and scarred
11families by death, permanent injury, and intimidation; and
 
12    WHEREAS, Nationwide attention focused on a high-crime area
13in Illinois when videos taken outside Chicago's Fenger High
14School in 2009 captured the tragic beating death of Derrion
15Albert, an innocent victim of gang violence; and
 
16    WHEREAS, The pockets of deadly crime are often concentrated
17as illustrated by a Chicago Police Department analysis that
18found that in 2009 all shootings and homicides took place in
19areas of the City which, when taken together, constitute only
208.5% of the geographic area of Chicago; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, In 2010, even though the overall number of
2homicides in Chicago was at a 45-year low, nearly 700 children
3were shot, an average of almost 2 a day, and 66 of those young
4people died; the majority of those deaths was gang-related; and
 
5    WHEREAS, Criminal gang activity is not confined to only one
6city or only to urban areas as amply illustrated by news
7reports within the last year from many locales around Illinois;
8and
 
9    WHEREAS, According to the latest intelligence from a top
10federal law enforcement agency in Chicago, there are at least
11100,000 gang members distributed among 75 to 100 street gangs
12in Chicago and the suburbs; unfortunately, this means that this
13street gang membership is at least twice as big as Chicago and
14suburban police departments combined; and
 
15    WHEREAS, If the Chicago Police Department had the benefit
16of additional law enforcement personnel at its disposal through
17a coordinated effort with the Illinois State Police and the
18Cook County Sheriff's Office, the Department could effectively
19enforce the applicable curfew and obtain immediate and
20long-term results in high-crime areas; similarly,
21State-county-municipal cooperation in other cities could help
22transform high-crime neighborhoods; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, While we realize that the federal budget problems
2may diminish the federal resources available to help defray the
3cost of intensive law enforcement efforts, including the
4technology necessary for the prevention and solution of murders
5and other violent crimes, we nonetheless urge Congress to
6appropriate funds for grants for this purpose; we also urge the
7Department of Homeland Security and other key federal agencies
8to channel or repurpose existing federal resources to help
9Illinois undertake this joint effort to attack high-crime
10areas; certainly, effective use of law enforcement funds in the
11present may allow savings in the judicial and correctional
12systems in the future; and
 
13    WHEREAS, State agencies, such as the Department of Commerce
14and Economic Opportunity, should recognize the role which the
15agencies could play to combat some of the underlying causes of
16unemployment and crime and should foster helpful programs that
17would encourage small business job creation and local job
18training activities; therefore, be it
 
19    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
20NINETY-SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
21we urge the Governor, each mayor of a municipality with a
22high-crime area, and the sheriff of the county in which that
23municipality is located to commit to the coordination of the
24municipal police force, the Department of State Police, and the

 

 

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1sheriff's office to help to bring an end to rampant criminal
2activity in that municipality's high-crime area; and be it
3further
 
4    RESOLVED, That we recommend that the Governor and the
5mayors of municipalities with high-crime areas urge Congress to
6recognize the need for this type of joint effort and to support
7grants for states, such as Illinois, which are struggling with
8large budget deficits and are also facing serious problems in
9high-crime areas; and be it further
 
10    RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this resolution be
11presented to the Governor, each sheriff, and the mayor of each
12municipality with a population of 50,000 or more, and to each
13member of the Illinois congressional delegation.