“I needed this Uber because they shot up my car.”
“My God,” I said to the agitated young man riding in the backseat of my HR-V. “Where?”
“In front of my house. There’s a .45 hole in my fucking door!” We were nearly at our destination, his home in the West Garfield Park neighborhood.
“Was it hit in a drive-by shooting?”
“No, they were shooting at my fucking neighbor! See that street there?” He pointed at the next side street. “Fucking big dope block. Everybody knows it.”
This rider was disillusioned with Chicago: its economy, its cost of living, its police and government, and, above all, its crime.
The next rider also had a Chicago crime story. She “loves” her new place on the rapidly gentrifying border of Ukrainian Village and East Humboldt Park, one of the hottest real estate areas in the country. But, and there’s always a “but”, the first week she and her husband moved in, there was a homicide “a couple of doors down.”
***
Two weeks ago when driving for Lyft, I stopped for a rider in the Austin neighborhood. The Chicago Tribune reported 88 homicides in 2016 in Austin [1]. Only 99,711 people live there [2]. If the neighborhood were a city, it’d have the highest homicide rate in the United States while vying with Caracas for the worst in the world.
The 44-year old woman hobbled to my car on crutches, assisted by her mother. Her foot was in a cast. I got her door. When I dropped her off at her place of employment, I got the door and carried her purse in the front door, which I also held for her. She clearly was in pain as she maneuvered.
Her coworker asked, “What happened?”
“I was shot.” She laughed in irony. “I’m in the Chicago Tribune.” Hence, she can’t yet drive and her need for Uber.
There are many good people in Austin and Garfield Park, many who use Uber and Lyft for work transportation. They face fear and horror each day on these meanest of streets. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. In 2016, there were 786 Chicago homicides and thousands more were shot and injured like my Lyft rider.
***
[1] http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/homicides and http://austintalks.org/2017/01/dozens-of-homicides-recorded-in-austin-in-2016-one-of-the-citys-deadliest/
Milwaukee Avenue 