The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has warned that some of United's 737s had rudders at risk of jamming, and data shows that crime is down. I'll talk with Crane's contributor Steve Henderson about why it may not feel that way. For good reason. Again, this is not a situation where it's like, you know, because people are slow on the uptake. If something traumatic happens to you in late 2022 and then 18 months later, it's like hey, it's time to calm down that look, look, this graph is going to, first of all, the graph hasn't gone to absolute zero. You know, these trends are receding, but if you have an experience like that, you will be on alert for a while. I'm Amy Goof, and this is Crane's Daily Just for Tuesday, October 1st. When I dive deeper into the topics you've heard here, read the full stories and get access to all of Crane's award-winning coverage with a Crane's Chicago Business subscription. Crane's Daily Just listeners can get 20% off a one-year Crane's Chicago Business digital subscription by visiting ChicagoBusiness.com/GIST and using promo code GIST at checkout. Once again, to redeem this offer, visit ChicagoBusiness.com/GIST and enter code GIST to get this deal while it lasts. So data indicates that crime is down across the U.S., often a perception gap exists between how safe people feel and their actual risk of being the victim of a crime. Here to talk about that, Crane's contributor, Steve Henderson. Steve, welcome back to the podcast. Always a pleasure. Amy, good to see you again. So talk to me about this. This was such an interesting piece of reporting that you did. In particular, I thought there were just so many layers to this and so many considerations. Often, we look for a quick "what's the deal" sort of answer or a solution to a thing. But in this case, there are so very many layers. So talk us through those, if you will. Yeah. I mean, that was the assignment, right? The way you teed this up, the data suggests that crime is falling, polls indicate that people are still very concerned about crime. What's up? And as I began to dig in, I have these personal experiences as a Chicago, and there have been two shootings on my block in the last 12 months in the way that there hadn't been in the previous decade and change. So rather than immediately push to the sort of, "Yeah, what is wrong with people? Why can't they sort of adjust their attitudes in light of the data I wanted to dig deeper and make sure that they were not, in fact, wrong?" So I ended up structuring this as a series of hypotheses to interrogate. One of which is, could the data be wrong and maybe a little bit, but probably not. Substantially. But obviously we had that huge surge across a lot of crime categories across the pandemic. It's now receding nationally in Chicago and in big metros, especially then to back up to national again. Crime is a big concern. There's a political dimension to perceptions of crime in big cities like Chicago, and that is like dramatically exacerbated to how it used to be, but that's also not really where I wanted to spend a lot of time or energy because you also have polls. I wrote the story not only to apply to Chicago, but also to Detroit and Cleveland. You got polls in those places suggesting that the residents of these blue cities also feel less safe than they did. Crime is a big concern. So, just to be clear, as a framer, I'm less worried about how people in far away states view Chicago without having visited, but the perception gap also exists in these places and so that plus my personal experience and just talking to lots of folks, I was curious and like, what is going on? Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's start with crime. How far down is crime generally? So again, with this multi-city lens and nationally, I mean, it varies across some categories and also because I'm looking comparing different cities and nationally, I zeroed in on two crime stats, homicide and vehicle theft, both of which surged during the pandemic, but that's not really the reason to zero in on them instead. Those are the two crime stat categories that are most likely to hold up across space and time, different jurisdictions report things differently, different administrations within the same city report things differently over time, but one body tends to make it into the register statistically a car for insurance claim reasons. So that was the main, you know, that in sort of all violent crime levels, things like that. So those things surged. They are coming down again, I was actually kind of avoiding the city specific lens. So I don't know if I can quote you individual Chicago stats because I just wanted trends that applied nationally and across these three cities, but big spike homicide came down more quickly. I believe vehicle theft dropped more quickly in the other two cities and across the country. It like hung on in Chicago, but finally in 2024 is coming down as well. Sure. And generally, what were the forces behind that that led to that reduction? I mean, this is mysteries of the post pandemic. Sure. Yeah. Right. I feel like that's the answer to so many things right now, the post pandemic abyss. Who knows? Right. So then what about that perception gap? What's driving that? And I, and I really appreciate that you named not leaning too far into this kind of political narrative because in fact, that is a piece of it, but there is so much more to it. So what did you find there? So a few different categories, which are fairly discreet from one another. So one, for example, was the phenomenon of the ring doorbell and apps like Next Door. And another one was classic media perception. So you know, you go back to the, you know, 80s, 90s narratives around cities and it was like a lot local TV news driven, you know, every night there's a crime. And the news that influences my perception, you know, academics have studied that and it's a real gap. But obviously for the perception gap to be broader now than at other times you dig into that a little bit more, but that still continues. There's an argument there that really high profile stuff like, you know, street race takeovers or smash and grabs on the magnificent mile grab people's attention differently. So there's a different level of resonance in the same coverage. But the ring doorbell next door stuff is interesting because it's not sort of false representation. It's just that now people really have more data about what happens in their neighborhood when they're not home in the middle of the night, could be crime, could be coyotes walking down the middle of urban streets that you didn't previously know existed. But it's just you have a fuller picture, not an incorrect one, but you're on greater alert because you have this picture of raw data that exists that, you know, you weren't reading police data reports earlier. And it's not necessarily that you're seeing those types of crimes on say a ring doorbell, but you are seeing like the porch pirates. I feel like there's always that all over social media. There's always somebody posting a video of somebody, you know, taking something from their porch or something like that, you're seeing these other types of crime, lower level types of crimes being committed that perhaps, you know, paints a picture of just, hey, there's this feeling of lawlessness right now. You know, it sounds like that's kind of what you're describing for sure. And when I say ring doorbell, I also mean that more broadly than just what you caught on your own video feed because there's also a like hyper local social network dynamic there. So people are communicating and you're hearing what happened down the block. But yeah, I mean, again, back to that, the stats I zeroed in on our car theft and homicide. That's not how most people experience lawlessness. Probably the most important single hypothesis that I hit on was this sense of diminished environmental control and like most people don't get murdered or have their car stolen or even know someone who does, but they do sort of sense a change in environmental control. And I think that's maybe some of what you're getting at that you just see society functioning differently, whether it's with your eyes, reviewing your footage or, you know, hearing from your neighbors. Yeah. You mentioned that in your reporting. And I thought that was really interesting in particular, talking to someone who was describing feeling less safe on public transportation. Although that person had not witnessed such a crime, they described kind of seeing an increase in other things like maybe people selling drugs near CTA stops or smoking on the train and things like that. And that kind of brought up the perception of generally at its core, fewer people are following the rules. And hey, this is my evidence. Yeah. Yeah. And some of that is pandemic. Some of that is, I mean, we made some policy changes in the beginning of the pandemic. And it's like the point of this story is not to assess their, you know, validity or rightness with like those things may make the train feel differently or just like the sort of number of officers and the way things are enforced and things like that. I mean, there's a lot of things that I think may be a little bit different and they don't necessarily lead to higher crime rates or, you know, depending on how you want to fold in some of those like drug type offenses like you described or smoking, et cetera. But you know, if you're on the train and you're just looking for an implicit abstract sense of safety, stuff that works against that instead of for that, I also do not want to question the validity of anybody's perception or experience of safety. But you know, this idea is interesting, right? This idea that what might feel unsafe could also just be a symptom of something being different and unfamiliar. So then what might cities do to kind of guard against or maybe boost a sense of environmental familiarity or control for its citizens? So with the Chicago specific sidebar, I zeroed in on community violence intervention, which is this kind of, you know, non-police, nonprofit-driven movement, but what you're taking people, guys mostly who have, you know, sort of come from the streets are now past that, but you're sort of sending them back out to reduce the temperature, but also just be presence. And I think presence, I guess, is maybe where I'm headed with this answer, especially in an era when encounters with the police themselves can be, you know, more unsettling than in a mayberry version in your mind where a greater police presence calms everyone down and a greater sort of sense of lawlessness riles everyone up. Well, that dynamics a little off these days, but other is sort of like neighborliness, whether it's a CVI, that's, again, community violence intervention, whether it's that sort of, you know, very organizational funded initiative or just neighbors doing neighborly things. Right. And you reported that as violence intervention programming has gained some credibility that dollars have flowed into that. What kind of funding uptake are you seeing there? So the state has made a big commitment and then also the civic committee of the commercial club of Chicago is in the midst of a couple of parallel, huge fundraising efforts, both to boost CVI directly and I think that was 100 million and I think that money is committed, but then they're also in mid-rays for a bunch of other parallel things, whether it's, you know, supporting the police department in a couple of ways or add on supports for CVI, sort of like the professionalization of that is really important. So you've, again, a CVI worker tends to be someone who used to be sort of on the street at close proximity to violence and now you're asking them to continue to go there but to bring the temperature down and sort of increased stability, but that is a stressful job. So professionalization is like, you know, as you're asking people to do that work, please also offer them job training and a path forward to a different life so that this, you know, that's not a long-term career, but the people who have volunteered to do this and are doing it well, you know, provide a path forward. So that's another one of the pots of money that the civic committee is raising. I think there was maybe another one. I mean, it's a big effort and, again, combined with the state effort, which is also more than 100 million dollars. I mean, this is, it's catalytic money, for sure. Yeah. And in addition to violence prevention programming, more broadly, what kind of refrains did you hear from civic leaders that you talked with in reporting this? What are the refrains in terms of this is what we need to do? Maybe solutions or maybe kind of pointing to here's the issue really or here's the thing no one's talking about, maybe. Those disinvested neighborhoods, you know, there's a lot of crime and there always has been and there's a sense that violence is sort of spilling out from those. Interestingly, you know, the head of the University of Chicago's community violence intervention leadership academy, Dr. Chico Tillman told me and I quoted him here how safe he felt as a kid growing up in, I think it was Austin and the idea was I knew the rules. So it has in some ways, perception has less to do with your absolute safety than your comfort level with your relative safety. So in lots of parts of the city, if things feel different, if there's a delta from a few years ago, then that sense of relative risk is high and everyone's on alerts, maybe they're traumatized by something that has happened to them. So that's what's different. That said, does the energy go to going into, you know, Lakeview and trying to help everyone feel extra safe and maybe to some extent, certainly I think the magnives in mild loop all the downtown areas you've got to do that. But I think the refrain was let's continue to invest not only in sort of acute in the moment violence prevention, but also in community building, all of that stuff in the neighborhoods that are especially violence prone in general. What was the sense you got in your reporting about what can be done to change the perception of that? Yeah, that was a trickier one. I don't think there was a silver bullet solution out there. I mean, I sort of, you know, when it came to the solutions part of this, I pointed to that CVI work when you're writing a perception story or thinking about a perception narrative, I mean, it's real. It matters. Absolute safety matters. But whether people feel safe in your city, 100% matters, it then becomes harder though to disentangle things that make you feel safer compared to things that make you safer. But for instance, both on the magnificent mile and in the loop, you know, you've got people in brightly colored vests just sort of stationed up and down the street now that are, you know, helpful to tourists, but also keeping their eyes open. They never engaged, they only would report bringing the police. But again, that's like a move to assert presence that sort of, you know, it makes it everything feel a little more coordinated, orderly, et cetera, instead of, oh, this is more chaotic than I remember again, it certainly has a perception benefit. You, I think, can argue that it also has a reality benefit. And that's where like a story like this is hard to disentangle what helped perception and what helped reality. But things like that do both. You also noted in reporting, and I thought this was really interesting too, the idea that sentiment can be a lagging indicator. For good reason. Again, this is not a situation where it's like, you know, because people are slow on the uptake. If something traumatic, dramatic happens to you in late 2022 and then 18 months later, it's like, hey, it's time to calm down that look, look, this graph is going to, first of all, the graph hasn't gone to absolute zero, you know, these trends are receding. But if you have an experience like that, you will be on alert for a while. And you know, sort of rightly so, I remember when I was maybe college age, I was in Minneapolis as part of this group for a week, you know, remember the first time I was doing music in a park and there was a shooting in the park and I thought, you know, everybody suddenly, I looked around at all the people that were listening and everybody was down on the ground and I thought it was some sort of like, you know, spiritual experience in response to the music that I was leading, then I very slowly was like, oh, that guy has a cut. Oh, maybe I should do something later in the same trip. It happened again. I was performing in a venue this time and a bullet went through a window and I was on the floor in like 0.003 seconds, like your body adapts quickly to these traumas in ways that are like expedient if you're in constant danger, but not healthful in the long term. And so if a lot of people had more traumatic experiences in 2020 through 2022, it just makes sense that everybody is on alert and they process things differently and the things that register is dangerous, stick with you and maybe register is more prominent in your minds than they would have previously or will in the future. There's so many layers here in this reporting. What are the takeaways you most want readers to have from this? Again, I mean, I think it's good to know that the worst is over. We saw a surge and things are calming down. And so it is good rationally to sort of, you know, have that frame. I mean, from a civic perspective, I mean, this notion of environmental control is really interesting to me, especially if things aren't temporary. I think it is just maybe relevant to the policy conversation to consider that changes in environment are messing with people. So, you know, there's different dynamics there. One is, well, once a change is normalized, will everyone calm down? And the new normal will then be perceived as safe like that hypothesis, I think makes a lot of sense. So maybe we just stay the course. When we change the way that this thing is enforced or considered, there's like a psychological impact that's different than you can see in the data relating to this or that crime. I think those two ideas, without any like clear prescription of, this is what you should do based on that insight, you know, somewhere in there, like a lot of things changed. Do we really understand their impacts and effects? Maybe we should take some time to study that and make sure that all that's getting factored in to what we decide should be the new normal because the new normal, I mean, things changed outside of our control and the pandemic. But we also have some civic ability to affect what cities feel like going forward. Absolutely. All right, well, thanks so much. I really appreciate you stopping by today to talk this through. Thanks, Amy. Coming up Amtrak's Chicago to Miami route is actually just one big construction detour. We'll talk about that and more right after this. Thanks for listening to Crane's Daily Gist. Remember, we provide a daily news brief that drops right in your inbox. It's our newsletter called the Crane's Morning 10. They're the 10 stories that will fuel a smarter workday. To subscribe, visit ChicagoBusiness.com/Morning10. This is the Crane's Daily Gist with Amy Gu. The U.S. national transportation safety board warned that a faulty component in some Boeing 737 aircraft could cause the plane's rudder control system to jam. Bloomberg reported that about 350 parts are affected by the issue and were supplied by Collins Aerospace, a unit of RTX Corporation for some 737 MAX and 737 NG aircraft, according to the NTSB. The agency issued urgent safety recommendations to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing to address the issue. Bloomberg noted that the FAA said United Airlines is the only U.S. airline that had the affected parts, but the agency said it understood that the carrier is no longer using the parts. According to the NTSB, a sealed bearing on the components known as actuators was incorrectly assembled during production. The agency said that left the unsealed area more susceptible to moisture that could freeze and limit movement of the rudder system. Bloomberg said it's working with its supplier to "develop additional guidance to address the potential condition with the rudder system." It told operators of a possible issue in August, and a spokesperson said in an emailed statement "We will also ensure flight crews have the appropriate operating procedures." A spokesperson for RTX said the company will "continue to work closely with the NTSB and Boeing on this investigation," adding that it was supporting the plane maker and airlines to mitigate the impact on operations. But as Bloomberg noted in reporting, the issue is the latest headache for Boeing, which has been in crisis mode since January after a fuselage panel blew off a 737 MAX aircraft shortly after takeoff. The plane maker is also dealing with a contentious labor strike that has idled its jetliner factories near Seattle. The NTSB said it discovered the flaw during its investigation of a February 6 incident in which rudder pedals of a 737 MAX 8 operated by United Airlines got stuck during landing at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. No one was injured, and the plane was undamaged. The NTSB said Boeing should examine its procedures for pilots who encounter similar scenarios. The agency also recommended that the company notify crews operating planes with the affected component that the system could jam during flight. Bloomberg also reported that the safety board urged the FAA to determine whether the faulty parts should be removed from the planes, and if so, direct operators to take that action. In addition, the NTSB said the FAA should notify aviation regulators overseas if it determines removal is appropriate. The FAA said it accepted the NTSB's recommendation and said that it would convene a review board on Friday to determine next steps. The agency said it is a party to the NTSB's probe and has been monitoring the situation closely. PCI pharma services plans to grow its largest manufacturing facility by more than 50 percent, pouring about $146 million into a 545,000-square-foot expansion of its Rockford facility. Crane's John Asplund reported that the Philadelphia-based contract pharma manufacturer said in an e-mailed statement that it now has five facilities across more than a million square feet at its Rockford campus and employs more than 2,200 people. The facility's perform advanced drug delivery and drug device combination assembly and packaging, the company said. Asplund noted in reporting that with the expansion, expected to be complete next fall, an additional 475 new jobs will be created, including in packaging operations, engineering, quality control, and project management. That according to the statement. The phased-in expansion includes a 475,000-square-foot projector for injectables packaging and additional warehousing. Asplund noted that that space will house more than 20 customer suites and feature scalable technology for the clinical and commercial scale final assembly and packaging of vials, pre-filled syringes, auto-injectors, and pen cartridge combinations. Additionally, PCI is planning a 70,000-square-foot expansion for drug delivery and patient-centric drug device combination assembly and packaging, the release said. The facility is in response to customer needs and will support low to high-speed packaging technologies for a variety of advanced drug delivery categories. Asplund reported that the company has also recently acquired a pharmaceutical packaging and device assembly facility near Dublin to provide large-scale temperature-controlled storage capabilities. The new facility is part of an about $220 million investment in expansion in Europe. Crane's John Fletz reported that computer science programs at Illinois colleges and universities are less white and male than they used to be, but they're still not as diverse as the overall population of students or the state as a whole. According to a study by the University of Illinois Discovery Partners Institute, the biggest gains were made by women who accounted for 21.5% of computer science majors in four-year programs in the 2022-23 academic year, and that's up from 11.7% a decade earlier. The percentage of Asian students nearly doubled to 26.5% from 14.3%, and Latino students grew to 16.9% of computer science majors from 9.5%. The percentage of black students declined slightly to 7.5% from 8.2%. And the percentage of white students dropped from 54.4% in the 2012-13 academic year to 31.1% by last year. Fletz noted in reporting that what makes the gains even more meaningful is that they occurred as overall computer science enrollment at four-year programs roughly doubled as demand for coders soared. The changes also came during a decade when the technology industry came under intense criticism for its lack of diversity. Meg Bates, director of the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative at Discovery Partners Institute, which conducted the study, told Crane's quote, "It's something to celebrate. The story is one of improvement. The increase in women's students is a huge improvement, yet so far from 50%. And Fletz noted that that's a sentiment echoed by Kate Calabra, interim CEO of the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition, who said quote, "While it is a win worth celebrating, it is important to understand that with women representing roughly 39% of Illinois's stem degree earners, the current year-to-year pace of improvements means we're far from achieving proportionate representation compared to the state's demographics." The study looked at both two-year and four-year schools, as well as public and private institutions across the state. The authors of the study wrote quote, "There are no four-year institutions in the state enrolling female students into computer science at the same rate as they are enrolled in their respective undergraduate student bodies. However, well-known computer science programs, such as the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Chicago, Northwestern, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, scored better on an index measuring parity of women enrolled than all but a few of the smallest schools." Let's noted that it showed computer science enrollment at two-year institutions dropped slightly. That matters because black and Latino students are better represented in computer science programs at two-year institutions than at four-year quote, "pointing to a place of improvement for institutions," said the study's authors. Crane's Jack Griev reported that Amtrak rolled out the red carpet to announce its new direct connection between Chicago and Miami. In a press release, the rail company pitched it as an exceptional and sustainable journey between the two cities with enhanced dining options and other expanded amenities. Be that as it may, the new Floridian route is less Amtrak-actively appeasing Midwest travelers and more a side effect of the substantial rehabilitation project on the Northeast Corridor. The reason, Griev noted, is that Amtrak expects construction to start later this year on a $1.6 billion restoration of the East River Tunnel in New York. The 115-year-old tunnel was damaged during Hurricane Sandy, and the project could take three years during which one of the tunnel's four tubes will close. So Amtrak must divert some rail traffic accordingly, so it came up with the Floridian redirect idea. Griev reported that the new Chicago to Miami connection will temporarily combine the existing routes of the capital-limited and Silver Star trains. The capital-limited runs between Chicago and Washington, D.C., and the Silver Star connects Miami to New York, importantly with a stop in D.C. Under the new routes set to start on November 10, northbound Silver Star trains will follow their usual path from Miami until they hit D.C., at which point they'll redirect West along the capital-limited route towards Chicago. The Silver Star redirecting in D.C. will mean one less line that New York has to handle. The Floridian will make the same stops as the capital-limited between Chicago and D.C. However, the rail cars will be different. While the capital-limited currently tows a couple of two-story superliner sleeper cars, the Floridian will have all single-level equipment. All told, the Floridian will serve nearly 50 stations, with stops spanning from Cleveland and Pittsburgh to Savannah, Georgia, and Orlando, Florida. Start to finish, the trip will take about two days. And that route was born out of necessity, but at least some folks are looking forward to the direct connection. Jim Matthews, president of the Rail Passengers Association in a statement provided by Amtrak, said, "Our members have a longstanding dream of restoring a one-seat ride from the Midwest to Florida, and we're thrilled that a new generation of American passengers will be able to experience this service for themselves." His statement continued, quote, "This move will free up badly-needed equipment while taking pressure off Northeast Corridor infrastructure during the renovation of the ERT project." That's Crane's Daily Just For Now. Check in on our continuous news feed at ChicagoBusiness.com. Thanks so much to today's guest, Crane's contributor, Steve Hendershot. You can follow all of our conversations on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to get your audio on demand. Don't forget to subscribe and please rate and review Crane's Daily Just. Our show is produced by Todd Manley at Earsight Studios. I'm Amy Gooth, thanks so much for listening, and I'll meet you right back here next time.
