In 1929, when rivals killed seven members of Bugs Moran's gang, the world was shocked. Chicago's image as a corrupt, violent city was emblazoned in memory around the world.

More than eight decades later, if you stroll around Europe and tell people you are from Chicago, some still pretend to shoot with a submachine gun. They have never visited the Art Institute or strolled the Magnificent Mile. They don't know the modern, vibrant city or the miles of greensward along the lakefront.

No, when they think of Chicago, they think of Al Capone, organized crime and violence.

Sadly what's old is new again. Today the image of gang shootouts applies with more deadly force than ever. On Independence Day weekend, Chicago street gangsters (and the police fighting them) killed twice as many people as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The Chicago Tribune reported that 82 were shot, 14 of them fatally, during the long July Fourth weekend (the death toll rose to 17 after more shooting victims later died). Most of the victims — and most of the perpetrators — were in their late teens and 20s. Who knows how many innocents were hit by stray bullets or huddled under their beds for protection? How many children think gunfire is a normal background noise?

Although the July Fourth holiday was particularly bloody, what's even more disturbing is how ordinary the killing and maiming has become. In many ways, it was just another summer weekend on the West and South sides. The violence, gangs and guns are as endemic there as are the single parents, bad schools and lack of jobs.

As I think about these troubling issues, three features stand out.

First, we simply don't have enough police to perform the most basic function of any government: to preserve public order and keep people safe. The reason is simple: We're broke. For decades our city's budget has been a giant punch bowl where special interests drink deeply. When the punch was running low, Mayor Richard Daley sold off city assets or floated a bond issue to buy more punch. He distributed large ladles to his friends, who returned the favor by funding his political operations. The parking meter deal was horrendous not only because the city received so little but because the mayor took decades of future parking revenue and spent it in a few years. Future be damned. That's the rum hand dealt to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, public-sector workers and the rest of us.

Second, urban violence and social collapse are highly localized, not citywide. Yes gang fights occasionally spill onto the beaches and flash mobs occasionally attack downtown, but those are the exceptions. The rule is that Chicago and its surrounding suburbs are increasingly divided into rich, safe areas and poor, violent ones. Lincoln Park and Lake Forest are prosperous, secure and socially stable. Englewood, North Lawndale and Harvey are poor, dangerous and socially chaotic. Homes in prosperous areas bristle with electronic protection, doormen stand at building entrances and sometimes private police patrol the streets. More and more, they look like gated communities within the city. If they didn't offer that protection, residents would simply move to places that did, either in the suburbs or safe neighborhoods in low-tax, business-friendly states like Texas or Florida.

Third, we have not ignored the fundamental social problems that lie behind this cycle of violence, poverty and family disintegration. We have tried hard to address them, but we've failed. Over the past 50 years, we have poured trillions of dollars into Great Society programs that experts said would alleviate poverty, strengthen families, build job skills and reduce crime. These costly programs were dreamed up in Washington, passed by well-meaning legislators and administered by increasingly powerful bureaucrats. The programs haven't just failed, they often have made the problems worse. The catastrophic rise of out-of-wedlock births and the collapse of nuclear families have gone hand-in-hand with those "helpful" programs. What the laws, regulations and subsidies did was create dependency, encourage single parenthood and undermine the private institutions that once buttressed communities.

We are now reaping the whirlwind. It's time to begin fundamentally rethinking how we spend money for schools, social services and police. We should begin by scaling back the dead hand of Washington and encouraging more local experimentation. We should stop trying to micromanage the lives of the poor and consider a much simpler solution: direct payments for limited periods to the truly poor, with long-term support only for those who are mentally or physically unable to work. We should continue to confront the school bureaucracies and teachers unions that make it so hard to turn around bad schools and fire bad teachers, while the rich blithely escape to private schools and elite public academies. Our schools should be educational programs for children, not jobs programs for adults.

More Washington programs are not the answer to endless St. Valentine's Day Massacres. We've tried them, and they've failed. The body count should be proof enough.

Charles Lipson is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

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