Rogers Park Resident Calls CAPS "Silly"

"Sarah" lives in Rogers Park, and recently said I was "silly" for my rants about the higher-than-it-should-be crime in that Chicago neighborhood. Read the flyer from CAPS Beat 2431 here (click to enlarge it). What Sarah does not seem to realize is that if I am silly for being concerned about shootings, armed robbery, assaults, and heavy drug trafficking on Morse Avenue and Howard Street, then so are many Rogers Park residents - including the folks who run and participate in all the 24th District CAPS groups. Here's what Sarah wrote on May 23: "i [sic] don't have a dog and have never worried about my safety after dark in rogers [sic] park [sic] and take public transportation everywhere. I have run into you in the park right by my house after dark and you never were walking a dog either and were usually alone. as [sic] in any nieghborhood in any city, you always want to be aware of your surroundings. i [sic] don't know where your neighborhood angst has come from but it is just silly." See, Sarah, here's the deal. The flyer shown here is a typical one for Beat 2431, in which I lived for 10 years. It's typical of the other CAPS groups, too. Every other month, their flyers say something like "Make Morse Safer" or "Help Reduce Crime" or "Tell Us About Trouble Spots." Sarah, if Morse was already safe, it would not need to be made "safer." If there was no crime in the hood, there would be no need to reduce it. If there were no trouble spots, there would be no need to point them out to the police. The police encourage the CAPS meetings, at which crime in Rogers Park is discussed. Now, Sarah, are the police and the CAPS facilitators and the concerned citizens who attend the CAPS meetings all "silly?" Do you wonder where their "neighborhood angst" comes from, Sarah? I'll tell you, Sarah. It comes from an awareness of the shit that's going down around them everyday in Rogers Park and the 49th Ward, with makes up nearly half of the 24th District, which is the only Level Two district in Area Three. In short, Sarah, we who do not have our heads in the sand are the ones who are concerned about crime. Folks who go to work outside of the hood, come back to their newly acquired, now-hard-to-sell condos, then go straight to a swanky nightclub only to stagger back to their newly acquired, now-hard-to-sell condos, can easily miss the shitstorm of criminal activity around them. They can easily miss it - or willfully ignore it because they are afraid to see it. As for walking in the park after dark, Sarah, how often do you do it alone after 1:00 a.m., far away from your recently acquired beachfront condo? RELATED: The Real Straight Dope - Rogers Park More Dangerous Than Admitted Leave a Comment Here... See our cool merchandise... Chicago News Bench RSS Feed Hey! ChiNewsBench is on Twitter