Along the lines of Project Longevity, a violence-prevention initiative that launched in New Haven in the past year, Chicago is trying something different to identify trouble and maybe even get out in front of it. That and more in today's Wheelhouse Digest, including Colin McEnroe's tribute to the late, much-beloved, "titanic figure" Irving Kravsow.
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CHICAGO'S SOCIAL NETWORK INITIATIVE
The plan uses new methods to rank the likelihood of killing or being killed.
Chicago's homicide rate spiked last year in part because of a feud in one of the city's largest gangs. Policing the "hot spot" area more is part of the city's response, but it's also trying to identify likely perpetrators and victims by examining social networks, or "hot people." The police are mapping relationships among 14,000 of the city's most active gang members. Between 50 to 80 percent of Chicago's violent crime is reportedly gang-related.
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MCENROE'S IRVING TRIBUTE
Colin describes the days of Kravsow in The Hartford Courant newsroom.
"He was sharp but amusingly unhip," Colin McEnroe wrote in his farewell to former Courant managing editor (and later, columnist) Irving Kravsow, who passed away last Friday night at 87. "Irving was probably the biggest thing in Connecticut journalism," McEnroe wrote. "The Courant was by far the biggest newspaper and Irving was its embodiment."
Read more at Colin's blog To Wit at The Hartford Courant.
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TAPPING THE RIGHT-WING VEIN
Peter Wolfgang lays out a strategy to convert "indifferent Republicans."
Peter Wolfgang has led The Family Institute of Connecticut for six years. He told Mark Pazniokas that he's now "comfortable as the most visible social conservative" in the state, "where one party is hostile to his cause and the other is wary." His interest lies in bringing more life to social conservatism by making the most of an "untapped vein."