A Chicago neighborhood battles endless flow of illegal guns

Ke'Shon Newman's daily routine is guided by guns — the hundreds of illegal pistols, revolvers and other firearms that torment his South Side neighborhood.

He walks on brightly lit streets, the ones lined with Jamaican jerk and seafood joints, minimarkets, the White Castle, a Shell gas station. If shooting erupts, he wants witnesses — and, if necessary, help. He listens to music with one earbud, to hear approaching footsteps, and avoids clothing with hoods that might block his peripheral vision.

These are the rituals of a street-smart 16-year-old who knows the cruel meaning of wrong place, wrong time. His stepbrother, Randall Young, then 16, was killed in crossfire two years ago while walking his girlfriend to a bus stop. "Nine shots," Newman says, words that need no embroidery. "I'm making sure my mom doesn't have to lose another child."

Lamar Johnson stands for a portrait at St. Sabina Church in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. Johnson, 28, is a counselor for B.R.A.V.E. Youth Leaders. a church program that guides young people on how to speak out against gun violence and become social activists. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

The Auburn Gresham neighborhood is flooded with illegal guns: .40-caliber pistols, .380 semi-automatics, .38-caliber revolvers. Police recover as many as they can, searching apartments, stopping cars, cornering people on the street. A buy-back in June brought in hundreds of firearms. And in September, the mayor and other dignitaries gathered to mark a milestone: Police in the 6th District had recovered their 1,000th gun this year.

It was a triumphant moment, but it also offered a glimpse into the overwhelming task faced by law enforcement — and the wounds inflicted on just one Chicago community — when guns are readily available and violence so common that, one study found, an estimated 1 in 2 young men had at some time carried firearms, almost always illegally. Most did so to stay safe.

"I tell people all the time we don't have post-traumatic stress. We have PRESENT-traumatic stress," says the Rev. Michael Pfleger, the activist priest at St. Sabina Church who was the inspiration for a character in Spike Lee's "Chi-Raq." ''We're still in the war. We're not coming home from it. We live it."

Lamar Johnson stands for a portrait at St. Sabina Church in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. Johnson, 28, is a counselor for the church program, B.R.A.V.E. Youth Leaders. He teaches kids as young as 6 how to speak out against gun violence and be social justice activists. The church also offers rewards for community members who provide tips that help police solve murders. The window shows a poster seeking help in finding the gunman who fatally shot a 21-year-old woman in the community in July. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

Chicago's gun violence has captured the national spotlight in recent years and President Donald Trump has, at various times, blamed the Democratic leadership, threatened to send in federal troops and breezily called the problem "very easily fixable."

Those who battle this daily in the 6th District see it much differently. Guns not only shatter families, they determine what time people leave their houses, the streets and stores they avoid, whether a church should have a metal detector, even whether a Ferris wheel operator feels it's safe enough to install a ride for a festival.

Residents in the community often know who's behind shootings — there've been nearly 600 since 2016 — but the threat of gang retaliation has created an almost impenetrable code of silence. Many of the guns police seize belong to repeat offenders, who may be back on the street in days.

In this June 2, 2018 photo provided by the Chicago Police Department, a forensic firearms examiner inspects a weapon turned in during a gun buy-back program in the 6th Police District on the South Side. Officers in the district have recovered more than 1,200 firearms this year. (CPD via AP)

St. Sabina has tried to break through, handing out $5,000 rewards 28 times in the last decade or so to help solve murders. The church is offering another to help find the killer of 21-year-old Oceanea Jones, who was with her boyfriend in July when they were chased by a group of men. She was shot in the back; he suffered minor injuries. "SPEAK UP FOR ME!" beseeches a poster on a church window featuring Jones' hopeful smile.

For Pfleger, solving murders like this and seizing guns don't address the real problem.

"Until we deal with easy access, they can pick up another 1,000 and another 1,000," says the priest, who decades ago lost his foster son in gang crossfire. "It's like water pouring on the floor and you keep mopping it up, but nobody's shut off the faucet."

In this June 2, 2018, photo provided by the Chicago Police Department, forensic firearms examiners inspect weapons turned in by residents in a gun buy-back program co-sponsored with the New Life Covenant Church Southeast in the 6th Police District. More than 400 guns and rifles were handed over in exchange for $100 gift cards. (CPD via AP)

Chicago police regularly recover more illegal firearms than officials in larger New York and Los Angeles. Last year, the citywide haul was 7,932 firearms. The 2018 tally exceeds 8,300, and police say it could surpass 10,000 by year's end.

Police seize an illegal weapon about once every hour, most connected to gangs on the South and West sides. Authorities cite two reasons for the heavy gun traffic: Penalties for carrying these firearms aren't considered a deterrent and, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, suspects tell officers they "would rather be caught by police with a gun ... than caught by a rival gang without one."

The department's 6th District, one of 22 in all, leads the city in guns recovered, accounting for almost 15 percent so far in 2018. District Commander William Bradley sees progress in those numbers, measuring success in the smallest increments.

In this June 2, 2018, photo provided by the Chicago Police Department, forensic firearms examiners inspect weapons turned in by residents in a gun buy-back program co-sponsored with the New Life Covenant Church Southeast in the 6th Police District. More than 400 guns and rifles were handed over in exchange for $100 gift cards. (CPD via AP)

"Every gun that (officers) get, I get excited about that because that's a gun that can't be used against them or a law-abiding citizen," he says. "I don't look at it as a grain of salt or a drop in the bucket."

The 6th District is an 8-square-mile stretch of overwhelmingly black working-class neighborhoods. A densely populated area, it's thick with apartment buildings and brick bungalows, neat lawns, a busy bus route, a business strip with mom-and-pa stores and the prestigious all-boys Leo Catholic High. Every school graduate in the last eight years has been accepted to college.

The community also bears visible signs of despair: weed-filled lots, boarded-up houses, wary fast-food workers and clerks hunkered down behind protective partitions in storefronts with thick metal security gates. Gang rivalries are fierce. On the district's eastern edge, members of an organization called Cure Violence prowl the streets as "interrupters" to keep the peace, even if it's something as simple as arranging safe passage for someone to go to a store in another gang's territory.

Demeatreas Whatley stands for a portrait on a street on the South Side of Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. Whatley is a supervisor for Cure Violence, a group that works to stem gang violence. He works on the eastern edge of the 6th Police District, where police announced this fall that they had recovered their 1,000th gun this year. By December, the tally had topped 1,200. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

"These guys are living in their own little world of survival," says Demeatreas Whatley, a Cure Violence supervisor. "Their enemies are not even two blocks away."

The 6th District polices 30 different gang factions, each with anywhere from 20 to 100 members, that account for 75 percent of the area's gun violence. The gang presence is so ordinary, the turf so defined, that everyone from pastors to grade-schoolers can tell you, for instance, which streets are controlled by the Killer Ward faction and which are run by the G-Ville faction of the Gangster Disciples.

Tracking gang guns is especially difficult because they move from one faction to another, and when police finally seize them, they're rarely in the hands of the purchaser. "Gangs use guns like timeshares," says Andrew Papachristos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University. "They stay in circulation."

A pedestrian walks past an abandoned lot on a street on the South Side of Chicago that is part of the 6th Police District. Officers there marked a milestone this fall when they recovered their 1,000th gun for the year. The community has neat bungalows and apartment buildings, mom-and-pop stores as well as signs of despair, including weed-filled lots and shuttered houses. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

Once guns move from the legal to the illegal market, they can bounce around the city with no rhyme or reason, says Celinez Nunez, special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She says one gun now being investigated has been used in more than 30 crimes, including homicides and assaults.

Last year, the ATF formed the Chicago Crime Gun Strike Force, a multiagency unit to combat gun crimes, and added 20 agents. The U.S. attorney's office also has put more prosecutors on gun cases.

But the gun problem isn't limited to gangs. A recent Urban Institute survey of young people in four neighborhoods with high levels of violence, including Auburn Gresham, found half the young men had carried a gun, though for most it wasn't routine. Protection was the overwhelming reason.

Shammrie Brown stands for a portrait in front of the New Life Covenant Church Southeast in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. Working with the Chicago police, he helped organize a gun buy-back program last summer that brought in more than 400 firearms. But that hasn't completely eased the fears of some congregation members. "There's a constant crisis state of mind," he says. "Elders who are supposed to have some level of peace are traumatized to the point where they're rushing to get home before it's night. ... They want surveillance for every move that they make." (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

Tommie Bosley knows that may sound strange. He runs Strong Futures, a jobs-mentoring program at St. Sabina for young adults, many with criminal pasts. His 18-year-old son, Terrell, was fatally shot in 2006 while unloading musical instruments in a church parking lot. Bosley appreciates how all-consuming fear is for law-abiding people.

"A lot of these guys are carrying weapons because they're scared," he says. "They feel that they cannot leave their house, go to work, whatever, unless they have a gun. They feel that at any time someone can be shooting at them and the gun — it makes them feel like they have a chance, which in my world is, 'Are you kidding me?' But that is the reality."

The community has rallied to rid itself of guns. Members of New Life Covenant Church Southeast held a buy-back in coordination with police, who gave $100 gift cards to anyone who turned in a firearm. It took four hours to gather the weapons as the line snaked around the block.

Shammrie Brown stands for a portrait next to a security gate at the New Life Covenant Church Southeast in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. He coordinated with the Chicago police to organize a gun buy-back program last summer that brought in hundreds of handguns and rifles. But some members of the congregation are still fearful. "Elders who are supposed to have some level of peace are traumatized to the point where they're rushing to get home before it's night," he says. "They want surveillance for every move that they make." (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

At day's end, 292 handguns and 132 rifles were out of circulation, but the event didn't soothe the frayed nerves of some congregation members.

"There's a constant crisis state of mind," says Shammrie Brown, the church's community relations manager. "Elders who are supposed to have some level of peace are traumatized to the point where they're rushing to get home before it's night. ... There's anxiety about going to the grocer, anxiety to go inside the church. ... They want security at the park. ... They want surveillance for every move that they make."

As the church prepares to move into a new building, one looming question is whether to include a permanent metal detector.

Veronica Parker holds a photo of her son, Korey B. Parker, Sr., 27, at her workplace in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. He was fatally shot around the corner from her house on July 4, 2012. The killing remains unsolved. Parker is a member of Purpose Over Pain, a support group for parents who've lost children to gun violence. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

Three miles west at St. Sabina Church, from a basement room one floor below a mural of a black Jesus beckoning with outstretched hands, Lamar Johnson is trying to shepherd the next generation of his community to speak out against gun violence.

Johnson, 28, is a counselor for B.R.A.V.E. Youth Leaders, training kids as young as 6 on how to be social justice activists. At one recent gathering of 10- to 12-year-olds, he listened as the children talked about hearing gunshots while walking to school or having to hit the ground to avoid an errant bullet while shopping with their parents.

"They talked about it as if it were an everyday thing, which it is," Johnson says. "It makes them numb, but if something happens to you over and over, eventually you adjust."

Veronica Parker holds a photo of her son, Korey B. Parker, Sr., 27, at her workplace in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. He was fatally shot around the corner from her house on July 4, 2012. The killing remains unsolved. Parker is a member of Purpose Over Pain, a support group for parents who've lost children to gun violence but, she says, "there’s a void in my life that will never be filled." (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

Johnson warns that seizing guns alone won't transform a community long victimized by segregation and neglect.

"If you're taking guns off the street, what are you putting in those communities for those young people who use guns? What resources are you adding? We need everything. Businesses. Jobs. Schools. This isn't something that just started in 2018. It's happened over decades."

Carlos Nelson, director of the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation, is just as frustrated at the dearth of so much that would improve the community. He ticks off some of the businesses and services in the area: Currency exchanges. Quick loan shops. Dialysis and methadone clinics.

Tommie Bosley stands for a portrait in front of a display of gun violence victims on the lawn of St. Sabina Church in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. Bosley heads Strong Futures, a jobs-mentoring program at the church for young adults, many with criminal pasts, who are looking to get a new start on life. Among the photos in the glass-enclosed case is one of Bosley's 18-year-old son, Terrell, who was killed in 2006 while unloading musical instruments in a church parking lot. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

"The businesses that you would find in an area with a good quality of life, you would be hard-pressed to find them here," he says. "The investment has not been made in our community to build the economic base. ... It is being made to police the community and to deal with issues like taking the guns off the street."

That singular focus has repercussions.

In September, Nelson was planning the 79th Street Renaissance Festival — a peaceful event for 13 years — when a Ferris wheel operator returned the group's check, citing the violence. Though Nelson calls that "ridiculous," he knows gun statistics that sound "like the Wild West" have taken their toll.

Tommie Bosley stands for a portrait in his office in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. Bosley, a former banker, heads Strong Futures, a jobs-mentoring program at St. Sabina for young adults, many with criminal pasts, who are now looking to get a new start on life. His 18-year-old son, Terrell, a gospel talent, was fatally shot in 2006 while unloading musical instruments in a church parking lot. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

The community, in which 60 percent of residents are homeowners, has shrunk from about 60,000 to about 47,000 over the last 15 or so years.

"We don't want this violence," Nelson says. "We have a choice. The choice for many is to move out."

Veronica Parker has remained, even though her 27-year-old son, Korey, was fatally shot around the corner from her house on July 4, 2012. She believes he was selling marijuana and might have been targeted in a turf battle.

A pedestrian walks past a "DEMAND JUSTICE" sign on a boarded-up storefront on the South Side of Chicago, part of the 6th Police District where officers marked a milestone this fall: They recovered their 1,000th firearm this year. The community is home to neat bungalows, apartment buildings and a modest business strip as well as weed-filled lots, abandoned buildings and other signs of despair. Illegal guns are a major problem in the area; by December police had recovered more than 1,200 firearms. (AP PhotoNam Y. Huh)

In September, police tape cordoned off Parker's street as officers investigated another killing. Cornelius Jackson had turned his life around, completing the Strong Futures program after a five-year prison stint for gun possession. He was newly married, working and had moved from his old neighborhood, which he described in a promotional video as a place that resulted in jail or death. On a return visit to Auburn Gresham, a gunman stepped from a car and shot the 29-year-old in the head.

Both shootings remain unsolved, one of the more unsettling realities in places awash in guns. Bradley, who grew up in the area, understands how fear of gangs stifles cooperation. Chicago's murder clearance rate in the last two years was 38 percent.

"If I come forward ... and nothing is done, I put myself and my family at risk," he says. "If these witnesses to crimes don't say anything, we can't do anything. I don't have a real solution."

Parker is a member of Purpose Over Pain, a support group for parents who've lost children to guns. They're determined to find ways to curb the violence but, she concedes, "there's a void in my life that will never be filled."

Parker last spoke with the detective investigating her son's case three years ago. "It's like they just forgot him," she says. When she's out in the community these days, she's dismayed by what she sometimes hears.

"Young guys (are) saying they've made it to age 30 without getting shot or killed, and they think they've accomplished something. It's heartbreaking."

Parker applauds police for going after guns but harbors no illusions.

"If they get 100 or 1,000, others are still out there. As soon as the police pick up the guns, they'll just go and get them somewhere else."

By December, the 6th District had recovered more than 1,200 guns.

Sharon Cohen, a Chicago-based national writer, can be reached at scohen@ap.org or on Twitter @scohenAP.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A $8 billion defense package approved by the U.S. House of Representatives over the weekend will “strengthen the deterrence against authoritarianism in the West Pacific ally chain,” Taiwan’s President-elect Lai Ching-te said Tuesday, in a reference to key rival China.

The funding will also “help ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and also boost confidence in the region” Lai, currently Taiwan’s vice president, told visiting Michigan Representatives Lisa McClain, a Republican, and Democrat Dan Kildee at a meeting at the Presidential Office Building in the capital Taipei.

In the face of “authoritarian expansionism,” Taiwan is “determined to safeguard democracy and also safeguard our homeland, Lai said.”

Also known as William Lai, U.S.-educated former medical researcher is despised by Beijing for his opposition to political unification with the mainland. In recent elections, the pro-unification Nationalists won a narrow majority in the legislature, but their influence on foreign policy and other national issues remains limited.

The Senate will vote Tuesday on $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The package covers a wide range of parts and services aimed at maintaining and and upgrading Taiwan's military hardware. Separately, Taiwan has signed billions in contracts with the U.S. for latest-generation F-16V fighter jets, M1 Abrams main battle tanks and the HIMARS rocket system, which the U.S. has also supplied to Ukraine.

Taiwan has also been expanding its own defense industry, building submarines and trainer jets. Next month it plans to commission its third and fourth domestically designed and built stealth corvettes to counter the Chinese navy. as part of a strategy of asymmetrical warfare in which a smaller force counters its larger opponent by using cutting edge or nonconventional tactics and weaponry.

Lai, of the pro-independence ruling Democratic Progressive Party, won the January election handily and takes over next month from President Tsai Ing-wen, whom Beijing has sought to isolate for the past eight years.

China is determined to annex the island, which it considers its own territory, by force if necessary and has been advertising that threat with daily incursions into waters and air space around Taiwan by navy ships and warplanes. It has also sought to pick away Taiwan's few remaining formal diplomatic partners.

While Washington and Taipei have no formal diplomatic ties in deference to Beijing, McClain emphasized the need for the entire world to observe the strength of the relationship.

“Peace is our goal. But to do that, we have to have relationships and we value your relationship. Not only militarily, but economically,” she said.

Kildee said the timing of the visit was especially significant given the recent passage of the funding bill to “provide very important support to insure security in this region.”

"It’s important for the people of Taiwan, it’s important for the people in the United States, it’s important for the entire world,” Kildee said.

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, from left Mark Alford, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, U.S. Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee, Lisa McClain, secretary-general of the Republican Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives meets with Taiwan President-elect and Vice President Lai Ching-te in Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. McClain and Kildee jointly led a cross-party group of lawmakers to visit Taiwan from April 23 to 25 . Members also include Mark Alford, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, Mark Alford, center left, a member of the House Armed Services Committee shakes hands with Taiwan President-elect and Vice President Lai Ching-te in Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Lisa McClain, secretary-general of the Republican Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives and Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee jointly led a cross-party group of lawmakers to visit Taiwan from April 23 to 25 . Members also include Mark Alford, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, U.S. Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee, left, meets with Taiwan President-elect and Vice President Lai Ching-te in Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Kildee and Lisa McClain, secretary-general of the Republican Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives jointly led a cross-party group of lawmakers to visit Taiwan from April 23 to 25 . Members also include Mark Alford, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, Lisa McClain, left, secretary-general of the Republican Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives meets with Taiwan President-elect and Vice President Lai Ching-te in Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. McClain and Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee jointly led a cross-party group of lawmakers to visit Taiwan from April 23 to 25 . Members also include Mark Alford, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, Lisa McClain, left, secretary-general of the Republican Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives meets with Taiwan President-elect and Vice President Lai Ching-te in Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. McClain and Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee jointly led a cross-party group of lawmakers to visit Taiwan from April 23 to 25 . Members also include Mark Alford, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)