I know there are concerns in the community that it could be a bad summer, but I’m optimistic,” Perry Gunn says.
Englewood will rely mainly on more traditional methods for interrupting violence—youth programs and summer jobs. “If we keep kids engaged, we can have a positive summer,” Gunn says.
The success of the Jackie Robinson West Little League team in 2014 raised interest in baseball in Englewood, Gunn says. (Jackie Robinson West won the Little League World Series that year, but its title was stripped because the team violated residency rules.) The Hamilton Park league launched last year, and on its opening day, a band from the neighborhood played as the kids paraded around the field in their uniforms and parents and guardians cheered from the bleachers. Later that summer, Watson and the coaches took the youngsters to a White Sox game at U.S. Cellular Field. (The Sox provided passes.) “That’s what community policing is all about,” Gunn says.
Striving for a more peaceful summer
Englewood’s Hamilton Park baseball league is a way community groups are working to keep kids in the neighborhood occupied and safe.
“It may sound corny, but I’m expecting great things in Englewood this summer,” Watson adds.
A study of the program’s first summer found significantly fewer arrests for violent crimes among the 700 participants, compared with a control group—not just during the eight-week working period, but for 13 months afterward. The study was published in Science magazine in December 2014.
The police department has used overtime spending to put more officers on the street in previous summers, but superintendent Eddie Johnson has yet to indicate whether it will do so this year. Gunn doesn’t think the key to reducing violence in Englewood is more officers, though. “I think we have enough police,” he says. “It’s about using the resources we have.”
