CHICAGO — Over one recent weekend in Chicago, two children under the age of 10 became victims of the city's rampant gun violence.
Mateo Zastro, 3, was shot and killed while in the car with his mother and siblings in an apparent road rage incident on Sept. 30. Then 7-year-old Legend Barr was shot and wounded as his family arrived at church on Oct. 2.
While shootings like those that killed Zastro and wounded Barr continue, the violence does seem to be ebbing: An ABC News/Gun Violence Archives analysis of the nation's 50 largest cities shows homicides are down nearly 5% from last year after two years of pandemic-era increases. According to Brown, police have also been taking an average of 12,000 guns off Chicago's streets every year -- including"ghost guns," which are unregistered firearms that can be assembled from at-home kits.
"It's like the intelligence network for how we respond to crime, how we solve crime," Brown said."I think more importantly, this is one of our major linchpins for how we prevent crime." "You look at Harlem in New York today versus Harlem in New York 30 years ago, where you see actually some gentrification, but you see, really, a commitment to economic development. And you see Harlem much safer than it was 30 years ago," Brown said.
"Instead of it being an attraction to hand-to-hand drug transactions, it's an attraction to community engagement with each other and with police," Brown said.
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