What Will It Take

*Note: This article was written in response to recent crimes against black women on Chicago's South Side. This is part I. More to follow... please read on



I’m waiting for the moment community leaders, elected officials and Chicago Police will announce a series of safety seminars and intensify security measures in an area where the charred remains of two women have been found in as many days. Devastating to say the least, but these heinous crimes undoubtedly leave a community in fear.

The media, to its credit, alerted the public immediately. However, solid details and efforts to reassure a neighborhood are all but stalled. This is totally opposite of the follow-up to three summer-time incidents targeted at women in the North Shore area where over a nine day period, sexual assaults and battery cases, including those in the Lincoln Park and Lakeview neighborhoods, prompted immediate and exact community outreach. Community leaders did not hesitate to organize, exploring options for increased safety.

Still, no such actions for crimes that have left dead bodies burning in a south side neighborhood. The first body found Tuesday at 11:45p.m.in a vacant lot at 61st and Prairie. Another yet to be identified body was found around 2a.m. on Wednesday in a garbage bin behind an elementary school in the 800 block of East 50th Street. Both crimes within walking distance from one another and in high traffic areas frequented by children. This alone is cause for alarm, even for people like me who do not reside in the area but have relatives and errands or whose children attend school nearby.

Certainly those high-priced cameras that promised to reduce crime in such areas will be consulted. And hopefully we will soon hear the identity of these women so we know if they had any common acquaintances or habits. These are the things a community would want to know so they have a reference to how this type of crime makes it so close to their homes.

But, alas what will it take to come to the rescue of the women on the south side of town who must face the possibility of leaving home only to be harmed and left for their child’s schoolmates to find them on their way to school, dead and burned.