The Delincuentes

Well, the South side of Chicago
Is the baddest part of town
And if you go down there
You better just beware
Of a man called Leroy Brown!

 

“Bad, bad Leroy Brown” was a notorious South side of Chicago resident in the 1973 song by Jim Croce, and back then the South side of Chicago was a very bad part of town. When I got my driver’s license my father gave me a stern warning to stay off the Dan Ryan expressway that cut across Chicago’s South side. He said, “Do not go onto the Dan Ryan, and if you end up on the Dan Ryan by mistake, do not get off of it for any reason!”

In 2017 the South side of Chicago is still the baddest part of town. However this dubious honor is now being challenged by the West side of Chicago – in and around the area in which I grew up. In fact when I went back to my old neighborhood in 2008, I was afraid to get out of my car, and instead took pictures through my open driver’s side window.

As I am sure most everybody is aware, Chicago is the “murder capital of the US”.

Why is all this mayhem happening on both the South side and the West side of Chicago? The answer lies basically in three words . . . the 3-D words (but you do not need special glasses to see the facts clearly). These 3-D words are “drugs”, “delincuentes” (delinquent gangs), and Democrats.

 

First, the Democrats. Why should they be included in this “why Chicago is the Murder Capitol” list? Why besmirch the Democrats?  Well to start with, Democrats have controlled The Windy City since 1931, when William Thompson, a Republican, finished his third term as mayor. Since that time every mayor has been a Democrat! Presently Rahm  Emanuel, is the Democratic mayor of Chicago and the Democrats control the City Council. Certainly after 85 straight years of control, the Democrats “own” the city and own responsibility for what happens in the city. The City Council and the mayor proclaim Chicago to be “a sanctuary city” and while this sounds good, they certainly should be responsible when things go awry.

Chicago has a multitude of street gangs, but last month the “Two Sixers” made the news. The Two-Sixers started on the near southwest side of Chicago in 1964 as a neighborhood baseball team in and around 26th Street, and hence the name. Early on they were befriended by the Mexican Mafia and over the years its name has morphed into the ‘Gangster Two Six Nation’. It has become national in scope, but is particularly prevalent on Chicago’s South side. It is a very violent Latino street gang that is well known for just shooting its enemies.

Last month federal authorities and Chicago police culminated a 3 year investigation of the Two-Sixers, called “Operation Bunny Trap”, which resulted in the seizures of roughly 118 firearms, including several assault rifles and shotguns, 25 rounds of ammunition, more than 800 grams of cocaine, more than 250 grams of fentanyl, and more than 280 grams of crystal meth. There can be little argument that “drugs” and “delincuentes” are a major part of Chicago’s “murder problem”, and that they go together.

As twenty-seven of those arrested will be arraigned in Cook County Criminal Court and twenty-one will be arraigned in federal court, the answers to two pertinent questions will soon come out:

“Are any of these arrested delincuentes in the country illegally?”

“If so,  have any of these illegal delincuentes been arrested before?”

If the answer to either of these questions is “yes”, then the sanctuary city protagonists have a problem.

But still there is still an additional critical question:

“If any of these “delincuentes” had been arrested before, were they turned over to federal immigration authorities?

If the answer to this question is, “No, they were not turned over to federal immigration authorities when they should have been”, now we have a significant moral problem. Whose responsibility is it that innocent bystanders have been killed as a result of these illegal delincuentes having gotten a “second chance”. I do not really care very much if these delincuentes want to shoot and kill each other, but I do care about the innocents that are killed as a consequence of their drugs and the their weapons. In addition if I was a friend or a family member of an innocent child, an innocent sibling, or an innocent parent that was killed because an illegal delincuente got a “second chance”, I would demand my day in court.”