For decades, every Chica­go may­oral elec­tion has fea­tured calls more for hir­ing more cops. Emanuel and Daley of course got in on the act, but the most pop­u­lar non-machine con­tenders are call­ing for the same thing.

If we are going to take down "Mayor 1%," we need opposition candidates worthy of the name. If we're going to put in the shoe leather necessary to offset Rahm's 10-to-1 fundraising advantage, we deserve genuine opposition candidates who reject the tired "hire more cops" claptrap, and instead promote programs that would actually curb violence. You can't do both.

When she was a prospec­tive can­di­date, Karen Lewis repeat­ed the now-famil­iar mantra, as did Bob Fioret­ti, and after vac­il­lat­ing with vague mum­bling about ​“com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing,” so now, too, has Jesús ​“Chuy” Gar­cía.

But does Chica­go have a dearth of cops com­pared to oth­er cities? And more to the point, would more cops do any­thing to stem our civil­ian-on-civil­ian vio­lence rate, let alone address the anger over police vio­lence expressed in the con­tin­u­ing protests over the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Gar­ner, and sev­er­al local victims?

Lis­ten­ing to the can­di­dates, you would think that Chica­go has a dearth of cops com­pared to places like New York, which had 79 few­er mur­ders in 2013 despite hav­ing more than three times our pop­u­la­tion, or Los Ange­les, which had 163 few­er mur­ders despite hav­ing a mil­lion more peo­ple. But in fact, accord­ing to the FBI, Chica­go has the third high­est cop per civil­ian ratio in the coun­try. And when extra­ne­ous fac­tors are fac­tored in, like the pres­ence of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment offi­cers, Chica­go arguably has the high­est num­ber of munic­i­pal cops per civil­ian of any city in the country.

Accord­ing to the F.B.I.‘s 2012 Uni­form Crime Report­ing Pro­gram, which count­ed offi­cer / civil­ian ratios in every munic­i­pal­i­ty of over 50,000 peo­ple, Chica­go ranked #3 in the nation behind only Wash­ing­ton, DC (8th high­est mur­der rate in 2012) and Bal­ti­more (fifth high­est mur­der rate).

The cities of 250,000 or more with the low­est mur­der rates in 2012 also had some of the low­est cop per civil­ian ratios — #1, Plano, Texas (cop per civil­ian ratio, ranked #514 out of a total 697 cities); #2, Lin­coln, Nebras­ka (cop per civil­ian ratio, #522 out of 697); #3 Hen­der­son, Neva­da (#510 out of 697); #4 Mesa, Ari­zona (#292); San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia (#643) and Port­land, Ore­gon (#355).

While Chica­go is hard­ly the ​“mur­der cap­i­tal” of the coun­try, our vio­lence rate does com­pare quite unfa­vor­ably to oth­er large, rel­a­tive­ly pros­per­ous U.S. cities like New York and Los Ange­les, and the U.S. vio­lence rate is right­ly noto­ri­ous com­pared to oth­er devel­oped nations.

So if hir­ing more cops bears lit­tle causal con­nec­tion to, or even cor­re­la­tion with, stop­ping civil­ian-on-civil­ian vio­lence, let alone end­ing police vio­lence, how can we most effec­tive­ly reduce Chicago’s violence?

To fig­ure this out, we need to move beyond the scare head­lines and politi­cians’ bumper stick­er promis­es. We also need to reject some canards com­mon­ly put out by com­mu­ni­ty anti-vio­lence activists.

Besides the ​“hire more cops” solu­tion offered by politi­cians and many com­mu­ni­ty anti-vio­lence activists, the oth­er major pre­scrip­tion for end­ing the vio­lence is gun con­trol. This too has been a fail­ure, and not just because guns can be import­ed across city bound­aries and the courts have tak­en a broad inter­pre­ta­tion of the 2nd Amendment.

Inter­na­tion­al­ly there is very lit­tle cor­re­la­tion between lev­els of gun pos­ses­sion and vio­lence rates. Hon­duras, with by far the high­est mur­der rate in the world—80.6% high­er than the sec­ond place nation — is way down the list in per capi­ta gun own­er­ship at 88th in the world, tied with England/​Wales and Bulgaria.

On the oth­er hand, high gun pos­ses­sion coun­tries can have very low mur­der rates. In Switzer­land, for exam­ple, owing to its 19th Cen­tu­ry for­ma­tion as a nation pro­tect­ed by armed mili­tias, vir­tu­al­ly all men between the ages of 18 and 42 have firearms in their homes. Yet Swiss mur­der rates are extreme­ly low by world stan­dards, sim­i­lar to the quite low rates of oth­er West­ern Euro­pean nations where civil­ians have almost no access to guns.

If Not More Cops & Gun Con­trol, What Does Lim­it Violence?

Regard­less of polic­ing strat­e­gy or num­ber of cops, the fact is that the vio­lent crime rate in most U.S. cities has been declin­ing for sev­er­al years.

This prob­a­bly has more to do with demo­graph­ics than any­thing else — as our over­all pop­u­la­tion ages, younger men are aging out of their more vio­lence-prone years. Some stud­ies also con­vinc­ing­ly point to the dele­te­ri­ous effects of lead poi­son­ing on young adult cog­ni­tion, and its sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion over the past few decades, as a major fac­tor in the dimin­ish­ment of crime.

Then there is the impact of the stun­ning, decades-long law enforce­ment fail­ure to stamp out ille­gal drugs. Ille­gal­i­ty serves to hike prices, and thus prof­it mar­gins, prompt­ing sell­ers to take ever more des­per­ate, ille­gal and vio­lent mea­sures to col­lect those prof­its. Con­verse to this, we now have pre­lim­i­nary data sug­gest­ing low­er vio­lence in Den­ver due to the end of mar­i­jua­na pro­hi­bi­tion, as well as con­vinc­ing his­tor­i­cal data about the dimin­ish­ment of vio­lence caused by the end­ing alco­hol pro­hi­bi­tion dur­ing the Great Depression.

But if these fac­tors con­tribute to a decline in vio­lence, what are the fac­tors that pro­mote it?

It’s Pover­ty & Inequal­i­ty, Stupid

There are two caus­es of human vio­lence that prob­a­bly trump all oth­er fac­tors: pover­ty, and a relat­ed (but not iden­ti­cal) cause, eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty. While even some left-wing writ­ers dis­miss eco­nom­ics as hav­ing any rela­tion to vio­lence, it does­n’t take a rock­et sci­en­tist to see that the five most vio­lent Amer­i­can cities (as mea­sured by mur­der rate) with pop­u­la­tions of at least 250,000 peo­ple — #1, Detroit; #2, New Orleans; #3 St. Louis; #4, Bal­ti­more and #5, Newark are marked by stark impov­er­ish­ment and inequality.

An unbi­ased look over­seas shows a strik­ing cor­re­la­tion between eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty and mur­der rates. While report­ing agen­cies both here and abroad are noto­ri­ous for fudg­ing both pover­ty and crime sta­tis­tics, the so-called ​“Gini Coef­fi­cient,” is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized as the best indi­ca­tor of inequality.

A Unit­ed Nations’ cal­cu­la­tion of the Gini Coef­fi­cient com­pares coun­tries with the largest dif­fer­ence between their wealth­i­est 10% by income to their poor­est 10%. It puts Hon­duras, with the world’s worst mur­der rate since a 2009 U.S.-supported coup, as the sixth worst for inequal­i­ty out of 126 coun­tries list­ed. The World Bank’s list­ing of 156 coun­tries by Gini co-effi­cient puts Hon­duras as eighth worst.

Below is map ren­der­ing of Gini Coef­fi­cients based upon the 2009 CIA Fact­book, and below that is a 2008 map of world mur­der rates.

It’s strik­ing how many coun­tries with poor Gini Coef­fi­cients — Brazil, Guatemala and South Africa for exam­ple — also have some of the worst mur­der rates. It’s also strik­ing how a coun­try that’s cul­tur­al­ly sim­i­lar to the Unit­ed States — Cana­da — scores much bet­ter than the U.S. in both regards. No doubt Gini Coef­fi­cient scores com­par­ing the U.S. as a whole to cities like Detroit or New Orleans, or com­par­ing com­mu­ni­ties like Wil­mette to Chicago’s Engle­wood or K‑Town neigh­bor­hoods, would also go a long way to explain­ing their dif­fer­ent rates of violence.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as the maps below by Daniel Hertz show, Chicago’s may­or Rahm Emmanuel, his pre­de­ces­sor Richard Daley, and their cor­po­rate bud­dies have already done much to send Chica­go in the wrong direction.

Orange areas rep­re­sent cen­sus tracks with the low­est medi­an incomes com­pared with the over­all Chica­go medi­an income. Dark green rep­re­sents the wealth­i­est medi­an incomes, with gray areas being about even with the Chica­go medi­an. Com­par­ing the 1970 map with the 2012 map, we see a huge ero­sion of the gray areas approx­i­mat­ing the medi­an, along with a dra­mat­ic growth of both the poor­est and rich­est sec­tions in the city.

What to Do With This Information

First, throw out the pre­scrip­tions offered by May­or Emanuel and his lead­ing chal­lengers, Jesus ​“Chuy” Gar­cia and Bob Fioretti.

If we are going to take down ​“May­or 1%,” we need oppo­si­tion can­di­dates wor­thy of the name. If we’re going to put in the shoe leather nec­es­sary to off­set Rah­m’s 10-to‑1 fundrais­ing advan­tage, we deserve gen­uine oppo­si­tion can­di­dates who reject the tired ​“hire more cops” clap­trap, and instead pro­mote pro­grams that would actu­al­ly curb vio­lence. You can’t do both.

In a city already swim­ming in red ink, with prospects of even worse to come, wast­ing more mon­ey on an already bloat­ed police force is worse than use­less — it’s rob­bing mon­ey from pro­grams that actu­al­ly work.

We live in a city with record high youth unem­ploy­ment, which in turn feeds pet­ty crime, which in turn feeds the prison-unem­ploy­ment-prison spi­ral down­wards. The lega­cy of the Great Reces­sion and much of what ani­mat­ed the Occu­py Move­ment were that 40- and 30-some­things trad­ed down to jobs nor­mal­ly tak­en by recent col­lege grad­u­ates, and col­lege grad­u­ates took jobs pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en by sec­ondary school grad­u­ates or those still in school. Screwed most by this were black youth, fol­lowed by Lati­no youth — racism which is not only repug­nant in its own right, but which bodes poor­ly for our major­i­ty-minor­i­ty city.

So first on the agen­da to redress our Gini Coefficient/​inequality prob­lem should be mas­sive invest­ment by all lev­els of gov­ern­ment to pro­vide jobs and voca­tion­al train­ing to youth. Ger­many, with one of the low­est vio­lence rates in the world, is renowned for hav­ing world-lead­ing voca­tion­al train­ing pro­grams for youth. In addi­tion, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Crime Lab study pub­lished in the jour­nal Sci­ence showed that par­tic­i­pants in a Chica­go youth sum­mer jobs pro­gram ​“had 43 per­cent few­er vio­lent-crime arrests over 16 months, com­pared to stu­dents in a con­trol group,” report­edWash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Emi­ly Badger.

Sec­ond, fund­ing for in-school and after-school pro­grams and stu­dent-teacher ratios should be on the same scale as those found in Rah­m’s home town of Wil­mette. Such mea­sures would have the added ben­e­fit of increas­ing social­ly-use­ful employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for work­ing class Chicagoans.

Third, the decades-long destruc­tion of pub­lic hous­ing, SROs and oth­er low income hous­ing must be dra­mat­i­cal­ly reversed. While sons and daugh­ters of upper mid­dle class fam­i­lies can get by liv­ing in Mom and Dad’s base­ment, the income crash for work­ing class youth and young adults over the past decade has led to dou­bling up in hous­ing. His­tor­i­cal­ly, immo­bil­i­ty in hous­ing choic­es has led to increas­es in domes­tic vio­lence and oth­er social ills.

Final­ly, TIF funds should either be entire­ly wound up and giv­en to the afore­men­tioned pro­grams, or spent on gen­uine­ly alle­vi­at­ing pover­ty rather than sub­si­diz­ing wealthy may­oral friends. Emanuel’s and Daley’s spend­ing of such ​“pover­ty funds” on such out­ra­geous items as $5.2 mil­lion in tax dol­lars for a hotel for the Pritzk­er fam­i­ly’s Hyatt chain in Hyde Park, $55 mil­lion in tax dol­lars for a DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty bas­ket­ball are­na near McCormick (when the Unit­ed Cen­ter offered its facil­i­ties rent-free), and $15 mil­lion in tax dol­lars for the rehab of the Chica­go Board of Trade build­ing for the dirt-poor Chica­go Mer­can­tile Exchange, are all moves cal­cu­lat­ed to send Chicago’s Gini Inequal­i­ty Coef­fi­cient spin­ning wild­ly in the wrong direction.

Stop­ping Chica­go Police Violence

Lev­els of police vio­lence track close­ly to inequal­i­ty and vio­lence as a whole in a soci­ety. Brazil for exam­ple, with a much worse Gini Coef­fi­cient than the U.S., is infa­mous for its police mow­ing down of youth.

The role of the police in soci­eties is to pre­serve the sta­tus quo. The more unequal the soci­ety, the more pre­car­i­ous the sta­tus quo; the more pre­car­i­ous the sta­tus quo, the more vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion required to main­tain it. Where the Gini Coef­fi­cient is high, police vio­lence typ­i­cal­ly is high. So aside from spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy reforms, such as vig­or­ous crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions of police wrong­do­ing — and not just when protests demand it — the key to curb­ing police vio­lence is build­ing a more equal society.

This fall and ear­ly win­ter has seen a spate of protests against police vio­lence, here in Chica­go and around the nation.

All of Chicago’s front-run­ning may­oral can­di­dates, to their shame, have bare­ly addressed the issue of Chica­go police vio­lence and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. This is a dis­grace in a city with as lurid a his­to­ry of police racism, vio­lence and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct as Chicago’s. It is a prover­bial turn­ing of the backs upon our city’s youth, par­tic­u­lar­ly its black and Lati­no youth.