THE notion of teen-age gangs evokes memories of the '50s, of leather-jacketed youths sporting zip guns and garrison belts, of the Sharks and the Jets in the urban ballet that was West Side Story. To the residents of Chicago's sprawling black ghetto, however, the images are more immediate and far more menacing.
As of June 24 of this year, there have been 38 gang-related homicides and 316 gang shootings with 398 wounded, most in the city's black South Side. Last Friday, at one violence-ridden project, there were more fatalities—two policemen, walking the streets in...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
