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I thought Chicago was getting better with the assistance of LA's and New York's police departments in fighting gangs and homicides. It looks like Chicago took a giant step backwards a couple of days ago.
What happened is that the weather got warm. Chicago in recent years has averaged over 400 homicides per year. This works out to be a bit more than 8 per week. With seasonal variation, there are more than 8 in the warmer months and less than 8 in the colder months. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), 9 homicides in a weekend isn't out of line with historical norms.
BTW, LA murder rate is up compared to last year. Not sure about NYC.
It was a bad weekend, but not unheard of. Almost all shootings take place in the same few neighborhoods, and actually murder is down 1% from March of last year. This weekend though, the numbers were high, and more importantly, the local news actually blew it up into a big story (which it should be anyway, right?). The AP got ahold of that, and boom, it's all over CNN and MSNBC, etc. It's just cause the media decided to pay attention to all the killing going on in "those other neighborhoods on the south/west side". I can tell you about 80% of the population of the city would have had no clue this was going on if it hadn't been blasted all over the media. Our city has done a really good job at turning its back to violence, as long as it stays quarentined in the 4-5 neighborhoods that are out of control.
Here's where they were located this weekend:
North Side: 2 shootings (in the small pockets with gang problems, Uptown and Rogers Park)
Northwest Side: 0 shootings
West/South Sides with large numbers of poor and gangs: 28 shootings
South Loop/South Lakeshore: 1 shooting
Far South/Southwest Side: 2 shootings
Take away the real trouble spots that most people in the city who don't live there go to lengths to avoid, and you have 5 shootings, compared to 28 in the West/South neigborhoods. This is why most of the city turns it's back on the crime, it's highly segregated. Today the Sun Times actually posted it's entire front page backwards, to try and point out how the city and it's residents are turning a very blind eye to the problems not personally affecting them....
Last edited by Chicago60614; 04-22-2008 at 11:46 AM..
Follow this story. Crime in Chicago IS continuing to plummet, it's just the fact that youth violence isn't that's disturbing people.
Chicago is a very safe city, but, like every other major city (LA, New York, Philly,Boston, San Francisco) it has it's extremely sketchy and scary areas, and that's where most of the violence is occurring.
There are going to be ignorant anti-Chicagoans on this thread who will say
"You see- I told you so- Chicago isn't safe!", but they aren't looking at the whole picture and don't realize that their city is likely suffering the exact same issues at the same time (and yes, people ARE starting to go out more because it's warmer outside).
Do people tend to forget that Chicago has almost 3 million people??? How can you generalize about the entire city of something that big???'
Many, many parts of Chicago (including the South Side) are very safe, and most incidents are very isolated, though I do think the Chicago cops need to imporve on their tactics to stop the violence against teenagers.
I just did a cross section to see the population and racial breakdown of the few neighborhoods that contained 26 of the 31 shootings, and all but 1 of the killings.
100% of the shootings happened in neighborhoods that house 25% of the city's total population. This means that 2,126,895 people who live in the city, or 75% of the population live in neighborhoods that saw zero shootings or murders during this past weekend's "crime wave". For the most part, those 75% of people probably live in areas that very rarely would see a shooting, let alone murders.
Of the neighborhoods that saw 26 out of our 31 shootings, and 5 of the 6 homicides, here's the population breakdown, rounded to nearest thousand:
460,000 Black
70,000 Hispanic
10,000 White/Asian
The rest of the city which normally doesn't see this insanity:
700,000 Black
710,000 Hispanic
910,000 White
140,000 Asian
That's a pretty stark contrast in the high crime areas, 85% Black, 13% Hispanic, 2% White/Asian
Are other cities like this with such a huge connection in crime vs. race? It's always made me really sad about this factor in Chicago. It's virtually two different worlds, let alone two different "cities" between the north and the south/west. Even the two neighborhoods on the north side that saw shootings, the % of the black population in those two areas is much greater than any other north side neighborhood. It's a very strange factor in large American cities compared to anywhere else I've gone in Europe, Canada.
Last edited by Chicago60614; 04-22-2008 at 11:41 AM..
What happened is that the weather got warm. Chicago in recent years has averaged over 400 homicides per year. This works out to be a bit more than 8 per week. With seasonal variation, there are more than 8 in the warmer months and less than 8 in the colder months. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), 9 homicides in a weekend isn't out of line with historical norms.
BTW, LA murder rate is up compared to last year. Not sure about NYC.
NYC murder rate was up about 30% by the end of March. Not sure what it is now.
I just did a cross section to see the population and racial breakdown of the few neighborhoods that contained 26 of the 31 shootings, and all but 1 of the killings.
100% of the shootings happened in neighborhoods that house 25% of the city's total population. This means that 2,126,895 people who live in the city, or 75% of the population live in neighborhoods that saw zero shootings or murders during this past weekend's "crime wave". For the most part, those 75% of people probably live in areas that very rarely would see a shooting, let alone murders.
Of the neighborhoods that saw 26 out of our 31 shootings, and 5 of the 6 homicides, here's the population breakdown, rounded to nearest thousand:
460,000 Black
70,000 Hispanic
10,000 White/Asian
The rest of the city which normally doesn't see this insanity:
700,000 Black
710,000 Hispanic
910,000 White
140,000 Asian
That's a pretty stark contrast in the high crime areas, 85% Black, 13% Hispanic, 2% White/Asian
Are other cities like this with such a huge connection in crime vs. race? It's always made me really sad about this factor in Chicago. It's virtually two different worlds, let alone two different "cities" between the north and the south/west. Even the two neighborhoods on the north side that saw shootings, the % of the black population in those two areas is much greater than any other north side neighborhood. It's a very strange factor in large American cities compared to anywhere else I've gone in Europe, Canada.
This is a world-wide phenomenon. Read the Color of Crime. Blacks simply commit more crime all over the world. Don't feel sad. Many scientists believe it has to do with the higher testosterone level in blacks, which leads to aggressiveness, particularly violent crime. It also explains why men commit more crime than women; much higher testosterone levels.
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