By: Ted Dabrowski
There’s a narrative out there among politicians and the media that’s promoting Chicago’s recent drop in homicides. “Chicago’s murder drop ‘mirrors a lot of big cities…’” WBEZ reported last week, not bothering to tell Chicagoans the whole truth.
Yes, everything else equal, Chicago’s drop in murders since its peak in 2021 is a good thing. Back then, Chicago had 804 murders and by 2024 it had dropped to 573. That’s a whopping 29% decline.
But our pols and the media continue ignore the broader context, that murders are down even more across much of the country (see appendix below). It’s a national wave in which Chicago has lagged. And that means in 2024, Chicago held both ugly titles when it comes to comparing murders in the nation’s 20 largest cities: the most total number of murders and the highest murder rate.
Chicago is the extreme outlier. No amount of good news from the media or the likes of Mayor Brandon Johnson can hide that.
Perhaps what best captures Chicago’s continued failure to make inroads in its murder rate is the below graphic that shows the statistic for the nation’s three largest cities from 1990 to today. All three cities had comparable rates back in the early 1990’s – around 32 murders for every 100,000 residents. And all three experienced big drops throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s, though Chicago significantly lagged the other two.
New York City credited the implementation of its “Broken Windows” policing theory, while Los Angeles attributes much of its decline to community policing.
After 2004, those two cities continued to improve, but Chicago either remained stagnant or worsened significantly. It’s the shaded part of the graphic that should get all the attention here in Chicago. It represents some 5,000 to 6,000 additional murders that were perpetrated in the Windy City over the last 20 years because its murder rate failed to fall to Los Angeles’ levels.
The above graphic is one of the reasons why I reject the “good news on crime” rhetoric. That rhetoric hides the truth about our leaders’ failure to protect Chicagoans. It hides the continued assault on our police officers and the resulting, dismal 6% arrest rate. And it hides the impact of the state’s anti-prosecution, decarcerationist policies.
That rhetoric simply doesn’t tell Chicagoans the truth.
Appendix
Read more Wirepoints:
- 2024 homicide rankings: Chicago, St. Louis lead nation yet again – A Wirepoints survey of America’s 75 largest cities
- Adults murdering kids. Kids murdering kids. “Random” bullets killing kids. Nearly 100 dead youth in Chicago in 2024
- No ShotSpotter and no cash bail in Chicago is a big mistake. 8 reasons why.
- New teacher contract: CTU wins, CPS wins…Chicago taxpayers lose
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
I’m old enough to remember when we were over 1,000 murders a year. It’s okay to celebrate good news, fellas. Maybe we’re not New York or Los Angeles but we never were, and we never will be.
Even they do drop , so what. They are unacceptably high. To put any type of positive light on this is just :”Defining Deviancy Down”.
Only Six Percent and his water carrying media pals would have the chutzpah to do a victory lap over lower crime. NY and other similarly sized cities have a much lower crime rate than CHI, year after year.
Can’t believe any of Chicago crime number when they downgrade charges.