{"id":264696,"date":"2023-02-06T08:34:13","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T08:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264696"},"modified":"2023-02-07T08:04:44","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T08:04:44","slug":"violence-in-some-chicago-neighborhoods-puts-young-men-at-greater-risk-than-u-s-troops-faced-in-iraq-afghanistan-war-zones-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264696","title":{"rendered":"Violence in some Chicago neighborhoods puts young men at greater risk than U.S. troops faced in Iraq, Afghanistan war zones, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Frank Main \u2013 Chicago Sun Times Feb 3, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Chicago.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-131458\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Chicago.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"336\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Chicago.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Chicago-300x158.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more than a decade, some people have used the term \u201cChiraq\u201d \u2014\u00a0a mashup of Chicago and Iraq \u2014\u00a0to describe a city whose violence makes some neighborhoods feel like battle zones.<\/p>\n<p>Now, researchers say they\u2019ve found that some parts of Chicago are even deadlier for military-aged young men than what U.S. soldiers faced in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>The risk of a man 18 to 29 years old dying in a shooting in the most violent ZIP code in Chicago \u2014\u00a060624, a swath of the West Side that includes Garfield Park \u2014\u00a0was higher than the death rate for U.S. soldiers in the Afghanistan war or for soldiers in an Army combat brigade that fought in Iraq, according to a study published in the medical journal <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamanetworkopen\/fullarticle\/2799859#:~:text=Findings%20This%20cross%2Dsectional%20study,than%20US%20military%20personnel%20who\">JAMA Network Open.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou fight in an Army combat brigade, you come back and say, \u2018My God, I was in the thick of it for a year, and look at the risks I faced,\u2019 \u201d says Brandon del Pozo, a Brown University researcher and former New York City cop who worked with three other scholars to examine violence in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles. \u201cIn Garfield Park, these young men face those risks every single year. And the risks accumulate.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Chicago&#39;s firearm violence led residents to call it &quot;Chiraq.&quot; But do the risks of gun violence in US cities really compare to the risks of war? In a new <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JAMANetworkOpen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@JAMANetworkOpen<\/a> study, our team did the math. The answer: In some US cities, the risks are much worse.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iXm6YyeSXL\">https:\/\/t.co\/iXm6YyeSXL<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Brandon del Pozo, PhD, MPA, MA (@BrandondelPozo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrandondelPozo\/status\/1605956895650430976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>ZIP code 60624 is bordered by Cicero Avenue on the west, Chicago Avenue on the north, Homan Avenue on the east and Roosevelt Road on the south. Garfield Park is in the middle.<\/p>\n<p>Among men ages 18 to 29, the annual rate of firearm homicides in that ZIP code was 1,277 per 100,000 people in 2021 and 2022, the study found, compared with an annual death rate for U.S. troops in a heavily engaged combat brigade in Iraq of 675 per 100,000.<\/p>\n<p>Even when the researchers expanded their sample to include Chicago ZIP codes ranked in the top 10% of violence, young men still faced a greater risk of dying than soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, the study found<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The study also looked at Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles. The most violent ZIP codes in Philadelphia surpassed the risk of combat death by military service members, too, but the death rate there was lower than in Chicago, the study found. New York and Los Angeles didn\u2019t have any areas that were so deadly.<\/p>\n<p>And, del Pozo says, \u201cAcross all the cities we studied, we found young Black and Hispanic men overwhelmingly bore these warlike risks of firearm death and injury. They were 96% of the victims.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPhiladelphia and Chicago suffer from two things: more concentrated segregation and more concentrated violence,\u201d del Pozo says.<\/p>\n<p>Violent crime is the biggest issue in this month\u2019s mayoral election. Annual murder numbers were near all-time highs in 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Some candidates are running on tough-on-crime campaigns. Businessman Willie Wilson, whose son was killed, controversially says cops should chase down criminals like \u201crabbits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Lori-Lightfoot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-237726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Lori-Lightfoot.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"380\" height=\"214\" \/><\/a>Mayor Lori Lightfoot (right) says the city is making progress on reducing crime, with investments in the city\u2019s most dangerous neighborhoods contributing to last year\u2019s 14% decrease in fatal shootings.<\/p>\n<p>Still, del Pozo says, \u201cIf you are talking about the historical predicament of young men in Garfield Park, it has never been worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He notes that in some Chicago areas \u2014\u00a0such as ZIP code 60624 \u2014\u00a0per capita gun violence rates remain higher than during some of the city\u2019s most dangerous periods in the early 1970s and early 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c \u2018Chiraq\u2019 is a cultural trope,\u201d del Pozo says. \u201cWe wanted to see if there was any empirical basis to the trope \u2014 and unfortunately there is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The findings of the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, \u201csuggest that urban health strategies should prioritize violence reduction and take a trauma-informed approach,\u201d the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe fully expect veterans returning from a year at war to suffer from PTSD and to be more vulnerable to alcoholism, divorce, substance use, homelessness, mental illness,\u201d del Pozo says. \u201cIf that\u2019s the case, I can only imagine what it says about young men who experienced even greater levels of risk of violent death year after year after year in Chicago. That is a health crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Across all the cities we studied, we found young Black and Hispanic men overwhelmingly bore these warlike risks of firearm death and injury. They were 96% of the victims. In the worst area of Chicago, they faced an annual shooting risk of nearly 6%. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/esMtenVCSW\">https:\/\/t.co\/esMtenVCSW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Brandon del Pozo, PhD, MPA, MA (@BrandondelPozo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrandondelPozo\/status\/1605956907025305600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/chicago.suntimes.com\/2023\/2\/3\/23583842\/violence-garfield-park-chicago-neighborhoods-iraq-afghanistan-wars-60624-west-side\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skyrocketing homicide rates have given rise to the term \u201cChiraq\u201d \u2014 a mashup of Chicago and Iraq \u2014 to describe a city whose violence makes some neighborhoods feel like battle zones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264696"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264724,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264696\/revisions\/264724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}