#500!
I don't think that "celebrate" is the right word ... but we sure did take over the national news story once we, as a city, experienced our 500th murder to kick off this weekend.
And now the spin starts, as it was famously said ... there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.
It's bad that we have more homicides at this point than Philly, Houston, LA or NYC -- but, when calculated as "homicides per 100K people", we're not as bad as Philly after all. And although it's bad that 500 have died, it's not as bad as when I first got to town in 2001, nor is it as bad as 1974, when we had nearly double that count. And the po-po will say that, based on how this year started, it's not as bad as it could have been, since we're something like 18% down from where we would have ended had the trajectory kept up throughout the year.
Then it gets trickier as today's paper reports that 415 of the 500 had criminal records and 300 of the 500 had known gang affiliations. Past analysis of violent crime has pointed to four really bad neighborhoods and a few up-and-coming bad 'hoods (sorry Uptown and Rogers Park), which tends to "isolate" this violence somewhat.
Two more statistics I heard bandied about (do folks still "bandy"?) -- Chicago captures illegal guns at a rate of 9:1 compared to NYC -- and in the category of "officers per 100K people", we have the least number of cops from that earlier list of five metropoli (metropolises? anyone know the proper plural?).
What's the answer? There's not enough room in a post to even scratch the surface. But I'll tell you -- I'm beginning to have a new appreciation for urban agoraphobia. Don't be surprised if you don't see me out and about as much! And Happy New Year (where the murder count resets itself every year!)
LOCAL NEWS COVERAGE OF MURDER 500:
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8934288
THE MAYOR'S COMMENTS ON MURDER 500:
http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Overnight-Shooting-Marks-Chicagos-500th-Homicide-185036691.html
REFERENCE MADE TO BREAK DOWN OF MURDER 500 IN THE TRIB:
http://www.chimpout.com/forum/showthread.php?265392-Chicago-marks-500-homicides
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