CHICAGO — The realistic painting in vivid colors by Adolfo Davis shows two sides of the same street, one bathed in sunlight with a college and an art center and the word “choices” written along the curb. On the other, a prison, a Chicago police surveillance camera, crime scene tape, a memorial and protest signs reading “Stop the violence” and “Enough.”
Smack dab in the middle of the painting — “Choices,” which hangs in one of the reporting centers for court-involved youths in Cook County — is a young person straddling both a place of promise and one of despair.
This high-stakes intersection that Chicago’s youths find themselves in has been brought into sharp relief in recent months in a series of troubling crimes: a 16-year-old already serving a probation sentence for three carjackings accused of fatally shooting 8-year-old Melissa Ortega; another 16-year-old on electronic monitoring for two gun cases charged with killing a 15-year-old by shooting him first in the head, then nine times as he lay on the sidewalk; and an 11-year-old cited in six different carjacking incidents, including some that involved armed robbery.
