Bryan W. Alaspa 1Chicago does crime
June 19th 2009 13:19
There is one thing that most people associate, around the world, with the city of Chicago. It is the one thing that the mayor and those on the Olympic Committee wish would go away and no one would talk about. At the same time, I know most Chicagoans take a certain kind of pride in it for some reason. That is the fact that Chicago, and the surrounding areas, do crime better than most people in other parts of the world.
Oh sure, you are probably more likely to get mugged in a place like New York. Heck, I have only heard gunfire and a car bomb and was nearly mugged while living in St. Louis. Never once have I had anything like that happen in Chicago.
But Chicago really does crime better. If you look across the history of this country the city of Chicago has had some of the worst and most notorious criminals in history. Heck, we had one of the first serial killers here when a guy named Holmes built an entire building for the sole purpose of killing women and selling their bones. That’s a very determined and industrious man right there.
Most parts of the world know Chicago as the place where Al Capone lived. You go to other parts of the world and people hear you are from Chicago and they smile and the pantomime shooting a Tommy Gun. The only times when that changes is when one of the sports teams are popular. For a while if you went to other parts of the world people would ask if you knew Michael Jordan. There was a time, in 1986, when my family went to Hawaii and everyone wanted to know if I knew William “The Refrigerator” Perry or Walter Payton.
Yes, Al was one of the better gangsters. For me Valentines Day will always be best represented by that massacre. It was seven men lined up in front of a wall and shot in the back. That seems to sum up that stupid holiday perfectly.
We have had serial killers and we have had spree killers. Richard Speck was a scumbag who killed a bunch of nurses. Then he went to prison and, somewhere along the line, started taking hormones that made him grow breasts. That doesn’t exactly represent Chicago but it does show you that our criminals are at least more colorful than in other cities.
John Dillinger liked to come to Chicago. He died here. He went to the Biograph Theater and saw a Clark Gable movie and was gunned down by the Feds in front of the place afterward. If I had to be gunned down, I would prefer it after I got to enjoy a movie first. I would hope it was a good one.
Personally, I like the reputation Chicago has for crime. It makes us seem tougher. Very few real Chicagoans are actually criminals. Even fewer have actually had crimes committed against them. Still, so many people seem to imagine that we wear Kevlar vests and have to dodge gunfire on a daily basis just to get to work in the morning you would think we lived in Beruit during the tough times there.
It isn’t that bad. Really. Still, when we do crime, we go all out. That’s the Chicago way. You don’t do things half-assed unless you work for the city or are a politician here. Oh yeah, and we do political crime better than other places too, but that’s a subject for another time.
Oh sure, you are probably more likely to get mugged in a place like New York. Heck, I have only heard gunfire and a car bomb and was nearly mugged while living in St. Louis. Never once have I had anything like that happen in Chicago.
But Chicago really does crime better. If you look across the history of this country the city of Chicago has had some of the worst and most notorious criminals in history. Heck, we had one of the first serial killers here when a guy named Holmes built an entire building for the sole purpose of killing women and selling their bones. That’s a very determined and industrious man right there.
Most parts of the world know Chicago as the place where Al Capone lived. You go to other parts of the world and people hear you are from Chicago and they smile and the pantomime shooting a Tommy Gun. The only times when that changes is when one of the sports teams are popular. For a while if you went to other parts of the world people would ask if you knew Michael Jordan. There was a time, in 1986, when my family went to Hawaii and everyone wanted to know if I knew William “The Refrigerator” Perry or Walter Payton.
Yes, Al was one of the better gangsters. For me Valentines Day will always be best represented by that massacre. It was seven men lined up in front of a wall and shot in the back. That seems to sum up that stupid holiday perfectly.
We have had serial killers and we have had spree killers. Richard Speck was a scumbag who killed a bunch of nurses. Then he went to prison and, somewhere along the line, started taking hormones that made him grow breasts. That doesn’t exactly represent Chicago but it does show you that our criminals are at least more colorful than in other cities.
John Dillinger liked to come to Chicago. He died here. He went to the Biograph Theater and saw a Clark Gable movie and was gunned down by the Feds in front of the place afterward. If I had to be gunned down, I would prefer it after I got to enjoy a movie first. I would hope it was a good one.
Personally, I like the reputation Chicago has for crime. It makes us seem tougher. Very few real Chicagoans are actually criminals. Even fewer have actually had crimes committed against them. Still, so many people seem to imagine that we wear Kevlar vests and have to dodge gunfire on a daily basis just to get to work in the morning you would think we lived in Beruit during the tough times there.
It isn’t that bad. Really. Still, when we do crime, we go all out. That’s the Chicago way. You don’t do things half-assed unless you work for the city or are a politician here. Oh yeah, and we do political crime better than other places too, but that’s a subject for another time.
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