Craig Renaud on set at the Chicago Police Department
We first arrived to Chicago in early October 2009, just weeks after Derrion Albert was beaten to death by classmates near Fenger High School. Dateline NBC had called us shortly after Derrion’s murder went viral on the internet, and asked us to go to Chicago and find out how serious the youth violence problem in Chicago really is, and more importantly what people in the affected communities are doing to address it. So with no contacts or characters in place, we started making blind calls and paying visits to families and community leaders on the South and West sides of Chicago, where the majority of the killings were taking place. We also made the Chicago Tribune the home page of our internet browser, and were shocked to see the daily reports of kids being killed, mostly by other kids; we quickly realized that Derrion’s death was by no means an isolated incident. By the end of the 2009/2010 school year, 31 Chicago Public School students lost their lives and another 218 were shot. (cont. on CHICAGO-DISPATCH 2)
