One Night in 006

Must be sweeps week:

• We've been to Baghdad and Bosnia, in hurricanes and earthquakes, at riots and at Ground Zero. But how the I-Team could safely report on one night in Chicago prompted just as serious discussions in our newsroom. And with good reason. Just as we were arriving in the Gresham police district, 10 miles due south of Chicago's Loop, before we even reached for the cameras, five shots were fired across the street from us and where detectives were making a drug arrest.

Detectives making drug arrests? Whoa.

• One hundred and twenty four people have been killed so far in 2010 - one per day - nearly the number of Americans killed during the same period in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. So this one night in Chicago, in the small swath of urbanity where almost all the victims have died, we stayed to find out what it's like on the firing line and when the gun smoke clears; for an elderly man limping down the street at midnight; the neighbor on the phone at 2 a.m.; the people in the laundromat at all hours.

Are we misunderstanding this? Most homicides are occurring in 006? Or most of the people shot in 006 die?

Goudie points out something we've been saying for a few years now:

• The police data reveals one statistic has changed. In 1991, Chicago police solved 67 percent of all murder cases, most with an arrest and prosecution. That clearance rate has plummeted. In 2008, the last year sampled, only one of every three murders in the city was solved.

And Chuck throws a bone to the police:

• At the Laundromat, Laura who declined to give her last name, told me she would like to see Illinois National Guard soldiers on the streets of her community. She said Mayor Daley should set aside pride and politics and remind gangs who actually owns the streets. She stopped short of suggesting that the mayor himself spend one night in her neighborhood. But if Mr. Daley did, he would see that police seem to be doing all they can with what they have.

And what we have isn't much.

Chuck ought to spend a night following the police around from call to call to call in addition to the "shots fired" jobs that seem to be the focus of his piece. If he did, he might see why Shortshanks and J-Fled have killed proactive policing in a matter of two years and endangered the lives of tens of thousands.