CHICAGO — A 15-year-old boy was shot when he refused to join a gang in Rogers Park, Ald. Joe Moore said.
The teen — who was shot Oct. 13 and is recovering — is a refugee who recently arrived in Chicago and was targeted for recruitment to a gang, Moore said. He was shot in his back when he wouldn't join, Moore said.
The same night the boy was shot, teacher Cynthia Trevillion was gunned down in Rogers Park. Trevillion wasn't the intended victim of the shooting, and her slaying shocked the community. But when police tracked down the two men who were the targets of the shooting, the men would not cooperate with investigators, Moore said.
Moore released the updates on the shootings in a Wednesday newsletter to residents.
"These shootings are unsettling, to say the least, especially as we were making great progress over the last year and a half," Moore wrote.
Rogers Park has seen 13 shootings that left four people dead and 16 others wounded so far this year — the fewest amount of shootings and shooting victims in the community area since 2010, according to a DNAinfo analysis.
Despite the overall decrease in shootings in 2017, Moore said Rogers Park has seen an uptick in shootings over the last few months and the increase is "of great concern."
To combat the increase, Moore said he's asked Mayor Rahm Emanuel for "additional police resources for the area," according to the newsletter.
Moore said officials are also using other resources to prevent gun violence. Since there's a gang targeting African refugees, he and the Sullivan High School principal met with community leaders to talk about the gang's strategies and how people can keep new refugees safe.
Moore said he's also trying to identify problem areas with help from residents and working with businesses to install security cameras, among other things.
"Gun violence is a complex, complicated, dirty business with roots in generations of racism and poverty, aided and abetted by gun laws designed to benefit gun manufacturers at the expense of public safety," Moore wrote. "No single 'plan' can fix this, and no combination of strategies will improve things overnight."
