To be fair, parts of Chicago have major problems with crime and gang culture.

That's been the historical line. But even the more violent parts of Chicago are only violent by volume. Per capita, they're at or below the national average.

Chicago's also got a problem of over-policing, particularly in the wake of the 90s "Tough on Crime" bloating of the CPD staff and budget. More cops with a mandate to catch criminals will find more people to arrest for crimes. Even as crime rates fall, the per-capita population of cops only ever seems to rise. Because cops aren't equipped to treat the causes of crime, only to suppress the symptoms, you end up with neighborhoods where people are too terrified of the cops to leave their homes.

That's before you get into Police Gangs (an epidemic in the LAPD and LASD and certainly not unknown in Chicago). White nationalists love to join the police, the sheriff's department, and the various FBI/National Guard/ICE/DEA whenever they can sneak in. And police are useful intermediaries for cartels and other criminal enterprises (and white collar rackets - debt collectors, unscrupulous landlords, insurance fraudsters) because they protect one another from indictment and prosecution.

"Crime" and "Gang Culture" tend to be code words for "Black people trying to work together to make a living". By contrast, a police helicopter bombing of an apartment block or a series of BLM activists burned alive in their own cars, is totally under reported.

If MLK was alive today, the police would have tagged him as a gang member by now.