"People who have lost trust in the police are more prone to settle scores on their own, experts said."

"'The lack of trust, the lack of confidence in police and the lack of willingness to use police, I think is going to have a broader effect,' said [said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and one author of the nationwide homicide study by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy focused on criminal justice].... [Chicago’s new police superintendent, David O. Brown] called the open air drug markets on street corners 'the precursors' to much of the violence.... Asked about how they are addressing the gun violence, he said that the police are confiscating guns — 4,629 so far this year, over 10,000 last year. He repeatedly appealed to the public for help, saying that residents knew something about the perpetrators in most cases. A low rate in solving murders — it hovers around 20 percent — and the lack of protection for witnesses both play into the continued high murder rate, said criminologists. Murderers don’t expect to get caught and witnesses feel intimidated, they said.... The city needs to do more to protect witnesses, said Rev. Ira Acree of the Greater St. John Bible Church. 'People want to tell, but they are afraid,' Rev. Acree told a community meeting that he organized to discuss the shootings, adding that people approach him repeatedly about doing the right thing. They tell him, he said, 'I want to go to heaven, but I do not want to go this week.'... Chicago’s toll has mounted steadily since Memorial Day weekend.... Some experts attribute the high numbers of children being killed to collateral damage from gunmen leaving their fingers on the triggers of automatic weapons that they have never been trained to shoot...."

From "Chicago Gun Violence Spikes and Increasingly Finds the Youngest Victims/Nine children under the age of 18 have been shot dead in Chicago since June 20" (NYT).