According to acclaimed author Alex Kotlowitz, an unlikely tool – public health – can be used to help combat violence in Chicago’s impoverished neighborhoods.
Kotlowitz, a journalist and Northwestern professor, presented his hypothesis in the keynote address “Chicago Stories: Violence and the Ethics of Urban Health Care,” at a conference on bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine on Friday.
He is neither a doctor, nor does he have any experience in the health care profession, but Kotlowitz said he thinks medicine could be the cure for endemic violence.
The intersection of public health and inner city violence – domestic, gang and otherwise – was the topic of Kotlowitz’s keynote. About 250 health care professionals, Feinberg students and professors attended the conference, said Program Committee member Bryan Morrison.
Kotlowitz, who has authored several books on how race and poverty affect children’s experiences growing up in American inner cities, weaved in anecdotes from his own work. He has distilled the crux of inner-city violence to a “simple question”: “Explain how and why minor quarrels so quickly escalate into shootings.”
The prevalence of homicide and other violent crime in Chicago cannot be hyperbolized, Kotlowtiz said, echoing Program Committee Chairwoman Kathryn Montgomery’s sentiments in her opening remarks.
The summer of 2009 was “the most terrible summer in memory,” Montgomery said, adding that Chicago’s crime rate has reached a tipping point that may cost the city its Olympic bid.
Over the last 20 years, Kotlowitz said, about 15,000 people have been murdered in Chicago. This is almost three times the number of U.S. soldiers killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the warfare analogy does not reflect the post-traumatic stress experienced by people who witness urban violence, Kotlowitz said.
“There is nothing ‘post’ about this trauma,” he said.
He recalled receiving a phone call a few years ago from a young man who lived on Chicago’s West Side, and for whom Kotlowitz became a mentor after interviewing him for a book.
The young man had been shot at while driving his car. Much to his dismay – but not surprise – Kotlowitz was the young man’s first call since he did not want to involve the police.
This reluctance to call upon law enforcement runs deep within Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods, Kotlowitz said. The fear of retribution keeps many silent and out of police stations where, Kotlowitz recognized, help is not always available. Crime is too prolific for police to follow up on each incident fueled by “drug turf, a girl, a craps game or a misconstrued glance,” he said.
When Kotlowitz did finally convince the young man to file a police report, both journalist and subject were met with indifference.
“This is Chicago,” Kotlowitz said, “or at least the parts where trust has evaporated because of the absolute, unmitigated destructive power of violence.”
But rather than blame this self-perpetuating cycle on a jaded criminal justice system, Kotlowitz said he began to think of a different vehicle for combating such endemic violence. He settled on public health.
“The health care community has an essential role here,” Kotlowitz said. “When people are shot, they go to the hospital. And we need to talk about how this may be the moment to intervene in people’s lives.”
Kotlowitz cited a young man he met in a local rehabilitation facility who was paralyzed from the neck down from a gunshot wound he sustained trying to break up a dispute in his neighborhood. This 15-year-old had finally found security and community, but in a sense, it was too late, Kotlowitz said.
“What does that say about our city?” he asked.
Dr. Anne Devoud, a psychologist who attended with two of her colleagues, Rita Smith and Katie Migala – all from the Cook County Juvenile Court Clinic – said Kotlowitz spoke well to the dissolution of communities caused by violence. The women said that the start of the new school year has brought an increase in the number of violent cases they have seen in their clinic.
Michael Swane, an attendee who works as a community partner’s trainer for CeaseFire, a Chicago organization for violence awareness, said he agreed with the need for a public health philosophy to end the “violence epidemic” in Chicago.
“Sometimes we don’t live in the community where violence is occurring,” Swane said. “But public health and community institutions and everybody needs to realize that violence affects the entire city, not just the neighborhoods in which it occurs.”
