New research finds small, mid-size Illinois cities have higher per-capita gun homicide rates than Chicago – Chicago Sun-Times

“What’s been a big change is in cities like Rockford and Peoria. Both of those cities went from having about 12 per 100,000 in 2015 to Rockford having 17 per 100,000 in 2020. And Peoria had nearly 25 per 100,000," said Magic Wade, a political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield. “In the ’90s, it is absolutely true that in large cities, the homicide rate was much higher than it is today, even with these recent increases. Now we’re seeing unprecedented amounts of gun violence in communities that never experienced it before or experienced very little.”