Chicago Coalition Aims To Cut Homicides By 80 Percent In 10 Years

CHICAGO — A coalition of Chicago business leaders is hoping to cut the number of fatal shootings in half over the next five years and dramatically curb gun violence in the city by taking a “one table” approach to the issue.

The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago recently announced its formation and has dedicated itself to making public safety for all residents its top priority. The group has committed to working with city leaders — including Mayor Brandon Johnson — along with other business leaders to address improving public safety for city residents.

The group has urged stakeholders across government, philanthropy, and other groups to come around “one table” to come up with a collaborative plan to cut down on the number of shootings and homicides over the next decade, the group said.

“The members of the Civic Committee are committed to working with the broader business community to provide millions of dollars to scale promising anti-violence programs, hire thousands of at-risk individuals, and invest in underinvested communities,” Jim Crown, chair of the Civic Committee’s Public Safety Task Force said in a news release. “We are eager to get started.”

The goal said it hopes to bring the number of Chicago homicides under 400 per year over the next five years. That comes after the city recorded 804 homicides in 2021, the group said. By 2033, the coalition hopes to get the number of homicides under 200 while also aiming to limit the number of shootings to under 1,000 per year in the same time frame.

The group said it hopes to have shootings limited to under 2,000 in the next five years after the city reported 3,561 shootings in 2021.

The Civic Committee has pledged to partner with various sectors of the community, many of whom have been working together on the issue of public safety for some time, to find ways in which businesses can contribute to the overall effort to help make Chicago the safest big city in America, the group said in a news release.

“The City of Chicago is at its best tackling critical issues when government, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector work together towards a common goal,” Jennifer Scanlon, chair of the Civic Committee and President and CEO of UL Solutions, said in a news release. “On the issue of public safety, the business community is eager and looks forward to collaborating with others, and to providing support, employment, and investments where they are most needed.”

The goal of the Civic Committee is to make Chicago among the safest big cities in America. Officials admit, however, that curbing both the number of homicides and shootings across Chicago may appear ambitious considering the levels of violence being experienced across the city.

The Civic Committee has broken its strategy into five main pillars, including partnering together to scale community violence intervention, hiring and retaining alumni of those intervention programs, creating police and criminal justice reforms while hiring across more of the city’s underinvested communities, and investing directly in underinvested communities, the group said.

“We are clear-eyed about the challenges, but we also think it’s necessary to have a shared set of ambitious goals when it comes to reducing violence and saving lives,” Crown said.