Four Chicagoans were killed on the Blue Line Monday. Execution style.
Five days have passed, and already the crime is being crowded out by more recent atrocities; another four people — two students, two teachers — gunned down Wednesday at a high school in Georgia. A 14-year-old has been charged.
But I want to think about that first quartet, on the “L” train. Something should be said. Officials certainly didn’t waste time before stepping up and making pronouncements.
“We believe it’s isolated,” said Forest Park Deputy Police Chief Chris Chin — the bodies were discovered at the Forest Park station, where the Blue Line ends after its 26.9-mile journey from O’Hare International Airport. “We believe it’s random.”
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx called the murders “inexplicable.”
I disagree with both Chin and Foxx. I believe the crime is not isolated, random, or inexplicable. Just the opposite. It is part of a widespread, systemic and easily understood pattern.
Forest Park Police Department Deputy Police Chief Christopher Chin speaks to reporters Tuesday at Forest Park Village Hall about the killing of four people on a CTA Blue Line train the day before. Also attending the news conference were Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx (center right) and CTA President Dorval Carter (far right).
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
What is the most common form of political discourse? Identifying groups of people who are different, then conjuring up and exaggerating harms they may commit to justify oppressing them. Because they are unworthy, practically inhuman.
“Our country is being poisoned,” said Donald Trump, a note he has struck many times. Immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation. They are “vermin.” There’s a list. Immigrants. LGBTQ+. And, at the very bottom, unhoused people. An eyesore and a menace.
I don’t want to make the common media mistake of leaping into the head of a murderer. Police have arrested a suspect, who’s been charged with four counts of murder. Maybe they’re mentally ill and thought they were shooting into four bags of laundry. We may never know.
Robert Crimo III has been sitting in a cell for more than two years and his motive for murdering seven neighbors at a parade on a beautiful summer day in Highland Park is just as mysterious now as it was on July 4, 2022.
Motives are hazy. But crimes happen in a clear context. Even if the killer of those four CTA riders thought they were playing a video game, that context is this: The public, rather than being encouraged to sympathize with the struggling, are urged to fear them.
They should be taught the opposite, particularly regarding those on the streets.
“They are people, humans. They are our neighbors,” said Carol J. Sharp, president and CEO of the Night Ministry, which provides outreach and services to those without a permanent place to live. “The public needs to recognize our unhoused neighbors as neighbors. The best we can do is treat them as neighbors.”
I called her because photographer Ashlee Rezin and I went to the Forest Park station in 2021 to watch the Night Ministry tend to the medical needs of the unhoused, offering them food and water and clothing and comfort. The yawning gap in empathy struck me. Some individuals show up regularly to peel off the worn boots and layers of foul socks of those living on the streets and address their ingrown toenails. Others show up and shoot them in their sleep.
Look, I go about the city. I get it. It’s worrisome to notice all the tents springing up in Lincoln Park. It’s awkward to step around the Venezuelan mother with her child, selling candy on every third street corner downtown. On the CTA, the unhoused can be both endangered and a danger.
Sharp said any given night there are 50% more homeless people than shelter beds. I’ve been at a Night Ministry shelter where, at 9 p.m., lots are drawn for the foam mattresses on the floor, and those who draw a short straw are given a CTA card with one ride on it and told to spend the night on the train. Where it was thought they were safe. Obviously, they’re not. We can do better.
“We need more emergency shelter beds,” said Sharp. “There are fewer than 4,000 beds and often shelters are at capacity. More than 6,000 people are experiencing homelessness.”
You don’t shoot people you sympathize with. The Labor Day Blue Line murders are a mirror held up to society. The crimes are a reminder that the contempt we luxuriate in to make ourselves feel better comes with a price — that regularly and very explicably, disturbed individuals will try to crush those whom society calls vermin.
“We try to as much as possible to identify ways to ensure that people are not desensitized to human life, the value of human life,” said Sharp. “We certainly believe that every human life matters. We want to ensure we are creating a space to provide resources, to create a more stable living environment.”