Police State U.S.A: Can it be prevented?

Just a few days after displaying a massive police presence to prevent those protesting against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Summit from getting out of hand, the Chicago Police Department appears poised to implement a severe crackdown after an embarrassing failure to maintain law and order among its residents.

Ten people were killed in shootings over the Memorial Day holiday weekend with another 40 people wounded. With those deaths, Chicago’s 2012 homicide number reached 200, representing a nearly 50 percent increase over the same period a year ago.

At a May 29 press conference, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced a new Gang Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS). Supt. McCarthy, who has been at the helm a little over a year, called it a “comprehensive, top to bottom interlinking strategy” implemented within the nation’s second largest police force.

In a report titled “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency,” Dr. Max G. Manwaring, a professor of Military Strategy in the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army War College, drew parallels between “contemporary criminal street gangs” and the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The violent, intimidating, and corrupting activities of illegal internal and trans-national nonstate actors―such as urban gangs―can abridge sovereign state powers and negate national and regional security,” Dr. Manwaring wrote.

Supt. McCarthy said gangs splintering into smaller factions are the primary cause of increased gang conflicts. Chicago now has over 600 gang factions, he said. The new program would involve increased intelligence gathering, updated gang membership audits, monitoring of social media to obtain data regarding violent incidents between gang members that could lead to possible retaliation.

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States ignore minorities in climate-related disaster plans

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According to the report, nearly one in five residents living in the region fall below the federal poverty line, one in five adults describe their health status as fair or poor, and one in 10 people have Limited English Proficiency (LEP).

Minority populations across the South and Southwest are especially vulnerable to climate change, according to a new report put out by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Local and state governments, it also found, are failing to integrate such concerns into their climate disaster plans.

“Only three states (Arizona, Arkansas, New Mexico) have climate change plans,” noted the study’s co-author, Nadia Siddiqui, during a teleconference May 21 discussing the findings. She added researchers found “no evidence of planning for racially and ethnically diverse populations in any state” included in the study.

Ms. Siddiqui is Senior Health Policy Analyst with the Texas Health Institute, which conducted the study.

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