“Every single day we wake up in the city of Chicago, some child, some young adult, some African-American male has been murdered,” state Rep. Monique Davis said Thursday. “This is not acceptable.
“I’m hearing from mothers that they are afraid to go outside,” she said. “Hospitals are overburdened with 70 gunshot wounds in one day. Ambulances are so busy people are driving victims in their own cars.”Davis held a press conference this week to ask Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to call in National Guard “to protect our children so they can go to the park and swim and play and have a childhood.” She said the governor has not responded.

That quote is from state Rep. Monique Davis, from an article on USnews.

I remember the conspiracy of the government occupying the hood. I used to hear it when I was in college. It was almost as popular as the rumor that Snapple was designed to sterilize Blacks. 

It went something like this. Crime escalates. They call in the National Guard. The soldiers never leave.

Judging by that simple formula, we should be days away from the permanent lockdown of Chi-Town.

The thing is, as bad as crime is in Chicago, it really isn’t that bad. 2012 saw 500 murders, including the tragic loss of teen honor student Hadiya Pendleton. Now, one murder is too many, but the media paints a picture of a Chicago where the gutters run red with blood. The truth is, while the city has many challenges with its youth which it must come to terms with, the rate of violent crime is overstated. 

There were 970 murders in Chicago in 1970, and 943 murders in 1992. Since 1994 the crime rate has been steadily decreasing. There were 435 murders in Chicago in 2011, the lowest numbers since the 60’s. This isn’t to say that things aren’t out of hand in Chicago. They clearly are. But we need to think twice before we call in the National Guard. All they can do is replace gang wars with militarized, regimented peace. 
This is the same kind of rush to judgement that led to the stop and frisk laws in Philadelphia and New York; replacing one kind of shakedown with another. We can’t keep forfeiting our rights in effort to keep our children in check. The solutions can’t be found in the Governor’s office, waiting for a pen stroke. It’s not that easy.

I’m sure Ms. Davis is a nice woman with good intentions, and I hesitate to be too judgmental, since I am in Atlanta, hundreds of mile away from her reality. It’s just that the National Guard are a nuclear option. She shouldn’t be so quick to push that button.