Jan. 31, 2022 News coverage of the death of Melissa Ortega is staying with me.
At 8 years old, she died instantaneously of a gun shot in Little Village over a week ago on a Saturday afternoon at the corner of 26th and Pulaski, just southwest of Douglass Park and about halfway between the two expressways - 90 and 255 - that link Chicago to the western suburbs.
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| Click here to go to family's GoFundMe site |
Uncharacteristically in that Chicago is not known for reliable resolutions of homicides and other violent crimes. Statistics are revealing, though clunky. Chicago police (CPD) which is responsible for arrests turns suspects over to the Cook County State’s Attorney office, which prosecutes.
CPD’s most current annual data (from 2020) indicates that of the 770 homicides that year, the cops cleared 45% of them. That means after investigations, seeking cooperation from community members and witnesses, and hard-knock interrogations that can take months or remain unsolved, CPD hands over not quite half the homicide cases to the State’s Attorney’s office.
This case took only a couple of days, largely due, we are told, to multiple surveillance videos that identified both the getaway car and the suspects, to the lingering presence of the apparent intended target of the shooting who was caught running from the scene, and to a community-based report to ShotSpotter, a non-governmental platform designed to bolster police-community engagement.
The suspects are the driver, a 27-year-old guy, and the shooter, a 16-year-old kid who is characterized by police as a having a history of arrests, including carjackings. The 16-year-old is being charged as an adult with first-degree murder.
Whatever the connection between the target and the shooters, police say gang-related, there was no connection to Melissa or her mom, Araceli Leaños, who was walking hand-in-hand with her down 26th St. to stop at the bank and then treat Melissa to a burger. They’d moved to Chicago from Mexico in August.
The mom has expressed publicly two emotions that sum up the dilemma in our criminal justice systems.
As a shattered, grieving parent, she poured out her heart in an interview in Spanish on Univision: “You took my entire life…You took the most beautiful thing, you took my reason for living…You have taken dreams from a marvelous girl.” In anticipating that the shooter would spend many years in prison, she pleaded for justice and for Melissa’s death to not be in vain.
She also said in a statement read at the news conference announcing the criminal charges, “To the aggressor, I forgive you…You were a victim, too. As a 16-year-old, the community failed you, just like it failed my precious baby.”
What are we to make of her two searing messages? Better put, how do we as a society and as diverse communities, mold her raw emotions into policy imperatives, being mindful of deeply ingrained, visceral and seemingly unyielding stakes. What is this “unity of purpose” our public officials pledge?
Once police apprehended the two suspects, both appeared in court. The State’s Attorney’s office took over and both were denied bond.
The data metrics for the State’s Attorney’s office reveal a different, yet overlapping urban narrative. The office is responsible for the county, which includes the city. For those of us who’ve tended to lose track of the flux in populations, Chicago has about 2.7 million people; Cook County has 5.1 million, meaning there are almost as many people living in the county outside the city as inside the city. For these purposes, it also means that the data on the State’s Attorney’s office’s performance and priorities, not broken down by city and other, are a reasonable ballpark measure of what’s up with the Chicago metro area criminal justice systems.
The annual data for the State’s Attorney’s office is a year more current than that of the police.
In 2021, 27,000 felony cases (including murders but not only murders) were brought to them. Nearly half were convicted. Almost all pleaded guilty. In all, 7,000 were incarcerated. Unclear whether the following suggests a trend but the year before, with more cases on the felony docket, only about 25% were convicted, and only 3,800 were incarcerated. Is that one year difference the intended result of a State’s Attorney’s office trying to avoid the slippery slope toward mass incarceration? If so, is gun violence the one act that is not to be forgiven? Melissa’s mom has me taking her heartfelt invocation seriously.
The dilemma for our criminal justice systems is how to unify the purpose Brown, Lightfoot and Foxx pledged in the name of Melissa Ortega? Their one common purpose reflective of all of our common purpose is to reduce gun violence.
That stipulated, how will the police, the mayor, the State’s Attorney and judges find common ground in reducing gun violence.
A few months ago in the immediate aftermath of a shooting in the 1200 block of North Mason in Austin in which no one was charged though police witnessed the crossfire, the dilemma bubbled up publicly with police, Lightfoot and Foxx pointing fingers at one another.
The friction turned public feud became visible for us to see: Not enough evidence produced by police. A State’s Attorney’s office too lenient even on gun violence. A community unwilling to be involved. A conspiracy of silence by rival gangs. And a mayor poking her nose into the case when she “knows it’s inappropriate to talk about cases publicly.”
Block Club’s coverage of the affair elaborated on the persistent dilemma: “At the heart of the issue is Chicago’s years-long struggles with gun violence. Scholars, violence prevention activists and other experts have long said disinvestment, trauma, systemic racism and other factors fuel violence in the city, and communities and residents need mental health help, support systems and investment to prevent more losses. All hands need to be on deck, a headline from 2020 read.
For the hands of police, mayor, State’s Attorney and judges to clasp to reduce gun violence, it will take a daunting conjunction of police solving far more felonies than they do now, a State’s Attorney’s office that is given the discretion to value the societal harm of excessive incarcerations in prosecuting offenders, a judiciary that is not fearful of allowing people charged with violent crimes to remain in the community prior to trial (particularly now in the buildup to the Pretrial Fairness Act which in Jan. 2023 will make Illinois the first state to abolish cash bail), a mayor that recognizes these often competing interests, and communities that both assist in identifying perpetrators so they don’t fail victims and assist their youth so they don’t become perpetrators at the mercy of gangs.
Formidable, that “unity of purpose.” May the words of Melissa’s mom inspire the formidable. Amen. Insha’allah.
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