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The number of homicides this summer is down compared with 2020 and 2021, but City Hall’s messaging on safer streets and fewer killings has at times been undermined by high-profile incidents, including those in downtown, as well as by increases in other crimes. The cost of the city response also has been an issue, as the city was forced to make concessions after an outcry about the Chicago Police Department canceling officers’ days off.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Homicides are down in Detroit too! What’s never mentioned is that previous unchecked crime waves have driven the worker bee population away and what remains is a lack of easy rich targets.
From #4 to #27 in my lifetime. Yes Chicagoans it really can happen and if we don’t get someone cut from Rudy Guillani’s cloth we’ll soon join Detroit with about the 300 murders per year that our Chief of Police touts as his goal.