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Logan Square homicides spike

The Chicago neighborhood that has exploded with breweries, art galleries, coffee shops and condos is on track to nearly double its homicides this year.

Despite a dip in overall crime, seven killings were reported in the Logan Square community in the first half of 2015—as many as in Englewood, according to a RedEye analysis of preliminary police data. In all of 2014, just eight killings were reported in the Northwest Side community.

So far this year, Logan Square has seen more homicides than it did in 2010, 2011 and 2012 combined.

The spike comes amid a period of rapid change for the area, which is bordered by the Chicago River on the east, Diversey Avenue on the north, Metra tracks on the west and Bloomingdale Avenue on the south. It has seen some of the most significant gentrification in the city in recent years, experts say.

“We see these signs of gentrification, rising rents and home values, rising incomes, a higher percentage of people working in management more than blue-collar jobs,” said Lauren Nolan, an economic development planner with the Voorhees Center at UIC who studies neighborhood change. “They’re really on their way to look like Wicker Park if these trends continue.”

From 2000 to 2010, median family income in Logan Square jumped from $46,745 to $63,098, according to census data compiled by the Voorhees Center.

But just because the area sees a big demographic change doesn’t mean old conflicts disappear, said Linnea Blomgren, who has lived in Logan Square for decades.

“I don’t see an increase in crime against newcomers to the neighborhood,” said Blomgren, 69, who is active in her neighborhood Chicago Area Policing Strategy program. “It seems like it’s the same as it’s been for years, where it’s one gang disputing territory, and it could be because they feel they’re losing their territory … it’s adding tension to situations that have been in existence for years and years.”

Chicago Police Commander Marc Buslik, whose Shakespeare District includes most of Logan Square, warned against reading too much into the homicide numbers.

“You cannot look at a year or two, or sometimes even three years, to develop any kind of trend,” he said. “Statistically, the numbers are so small that you cannot really say that there’s anything going on.”

Most of this year’s homicides were isolated domestic-related or gang-related incidents, Buslik said. And despite some pockets of gang activity, Logan Square doesn’t see the kind of drug trade or overarching turf wars that some other areas of the city do, he said.

“What we get here are these legacy gang conflicts that occasionally feed personal conflicts. Not that there’s some kind of big gang war or all of a sudden one gang decides they want to take over the territory of another. That’s not what happens,” he said. “What happens is you get a member of one gang who finds himself or herself in another gang’s territory, or somehow disrespects a member of the other gang, and they take to violence to resolve it.”

Despite what people may think, it’s fairly common for crime to increase when a neighborhood begins gentrifying, said Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago.

“We have the expectation that if neighborhoods gentrify, if it’s really true gentrification, that crime would go down, but it doesn’t,” he said.

“Young men who are involved in ongoing violent conflict in the neighborhood might be feeling a little bit of an upheaval and uncertainty about their futures in the neighborhood, which could be increasing tension among them,” Lurigio said. “There’s going to be conflict because the borders of territories that have been historically controlled are changing … [and there is] less likely territory to go around, that’s also going to be a situation that can precipitate ongoing conflicts and make them worse.”

Buslik said that that doesn’t necessarily apply to his district, where gang boundaries have remained more or less stable over the past few years. And overall crime in Buslik’s district is down, he said. From April 2 to July 2 of this year, 44 instances of violent crime were reported; that’s down from 56 instances in the same time period last year, he said. Property crime was down as well, from 235 occurrences to 196.

The most recent Logan Square homicide occurred in late June, when a man was stabbed in the chest during a fight with his neighbor. In May, a 19-year-old was shot dead in a grocery store parking lot during a gang scuffle, authorities said; the month before, a 24-year-old man was killed near what is now the Bloomingdale Trail when someone allegedly got out of a vehicle, shot him and drove off.

The victim in that case was Mikal Johnson, an aspiring semi-pro football player.

“The family is still feeling devastated,” said Johnson’s grandmother, Tauheedah Mustafa. “Everybody misses him. Sometimes some of the children, even the smaller ones, all the way up to me, you’ll see tears coming because they’re thinking about Mikal.”

Johnson wasn’t a “gangbanger,” his grandmother said, but rather a happy, humble and ambitious young man.

“We miss him a lot,” she said. “We’re pleased with him that he went after what he really wanted to do and it was positive before he left here, and I think that’s a blessing.”

The May homicide outside the grocery store happened just half a block from the home Blomgren has owned for 45 years, and it has her worried that local crime is on an upswing—though she noted that Logan Square was significantly more dangerous in the ’80s and ’90s, when shootings on her block happened weekly.

“I’m so tired of seeing kids, young people, killed for nothing. It’s so pointless and it’s been going on here for years … it gets very discouraging because things will get better for a few months and it seems like it picks up again,” Blomgren said. “Somebody actually dying so close was really shocking. It seems like it’s starting over again.”

Homicides and shootings overall are up in Chicago this year compared with 2014; in the first six months of this year, 216 homicides were reported, compared with 189 for the same period last year. The Austin community saw 19 killings from January to June; more than any other community, according to RedEye data.

Douala Mitchell, 18, has lived in Logan Square for three or four years, he said. He likes the area, with its small businesses and relative diversity, but it’s fractured and extremely territorial, he said—and that leads to violence.

“There’s a lot of people who might feel like they own a certain part of the city when they need to realize that they don’t,” he said. And that applies to all kinds of in-groups, not just gangs, he said.

“No one owns anything. It’s a community effort. When I sign a lease for a certain place, that doesn’t mean it’s my block, it’s everyone’s block,” he said. “Everyone has input, not one organization, not one person.”

Mitchell plans to stay in the neighborhood, he said, despite its flaws.

“If you’re scared, stay in the house. I’m definitely staying. This is my way of showing people I can’t scare,” Mitchell said. “Our neighborhood, our houses, our block, our streets, our trees, our grass, this is ours, not one person, not one organization, this is ours and we all need to take effort in it.”

Blomgren recalled a time in the late 1990s when gangs would shoot at each other right outside her front door.

“I perceive this, even though this is a setback, it’s still much better than it used to be,” she said. “I never did feel much sense of fear. You can’t feel that way, otherwise you’d lock yourself in the house and never go out.”

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