By: Matt Rosenberg
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot this week touted a fractional drop in murders and a modest reduction in shooting incidents this year versus the same stretch last year.
Her comments came at a media availability – see 22:12 to 22:30. She states: “What’s important is not to lose sight of the bigger picture. We’re down this year in shootings, we’re down in homicides, we’re down in carjackings. But violence is a persistent problem that has existed in our city for decades.”
She wants you to think the city’s getting a handle on crime. That it’s down. That it’s within normal range. Yet, neither recent nor pre-Covid city data support her inferences.
New Chicago crime statistics show that overall major crimes this year, through Week 11 ending March 13, are up 34 percent over the same time last year. There have been 9,708 criminal complaints lodged so far this year versus 7,257 last year.
That’s almost 2,500 additional crimes in just 71 days.
Major crime categories are spiraling out of control. Compared to last year, thefts are up 63 percent. Motor vehicle thefts are up 44 percent. Burglaries are up 32 percent. Aggravated battery, robbery, and criminal sexual assault are also all up over last year, albeit at lower levels.
It’s bad out there. Why try to finesse it? It destroys trust and credibility.
Here’s the reality. The four percent drop in murders this year – 104 vs. 108 – only looks marginally better when compared to 2021, when Chicago hit a 25-year high.
But compared to pre-Covid 2019, murders are up 86 percent year to date.
Shooting incidents in 2022 through Week 11 are 57 percent greater vs. 2019.
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When Lightfoot plays games with crime data, here’s what she wants you to forget:
Chicago crime exploded in the wake of late-May 2020 rioting and looting. On May 31 of that year 18 people were murdered in Chicago. In. One. Day. In one month, July, 107 were slain. Murders in 2020 rose 55 percent from 2019.
Since mid-2020 Lightfoot has been lost at sea on combating Chicago crime.
Matt Rosenberg is senior editor of Wirepoints, and author of What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son.” He has worked in journalism, public policy, and communications for more than three decades.
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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.
147 cops retired in January of 2022 and were replaced by a new class of less than 30. More leaving, less joining, crime rising, big diqk has it under control.
The Tarpon Springs, FL Sheriff’s Police is looking better every day to Chicago cops. Along with a few hundred other departments. Crippling in-field paperwork coupled with constricted policing powers and poisonous politics is a sure-fire recipe for workforce shrinkage.
Workforce shrinkage is the goal.
I was told that CPD had over 100 Resignations of PO’s under 10 years, since the New Year. One large suburb has an extended waiting list of CPD officers looking to bail on lateral transfer.
Crime is on a trajectory, slowing it down is like stopping a mile long fully loaded freight train. The police pick the criminals up and the prosecutors let them go. The freight train has no brakes.
First it was the *broken windows* philosophy…
Now we have the *🙉🙈🙊* philosophy…
Hiding the sky-high armed carjacking numbers under motor vehicle theft is dirty statistics. Let’s pretend that it’s just teens hot-wiring old cars. The numbers that matter to me are the robberies, carjackings, and burglary (often armed repeat offenders). Those number affect regular citizens. The murders mostly effect gang members.
Well, where exactly they put carjacking isn’t yet fully clear. It’s certainly not shown in a separate breakout item on the weekly Compstat reports. We heard today from a good source they put it under robberies. Will be checking further.
How many crimes go unreported feeling the police won’t respond because they’re handcuffed by maddening restrictions regarding pursuits, “broken windows,” stop/frisk, etc.? The mayor is desperate for any bit of good news, then brags how effective her hollow set of policing policies and “social justice” bureaucracy are working. If you lost a loved one to violence or you hear shots ringing out in your neighborhood weekend after weekend, are you screaming at the TV when you hear the mayor speak proudly about this mirage? Our neighborhoods need serious help, but like so many mayors before her, very little has been… Read more »
Will the communities that are experiencing the crime even consider a non-Dem next election? I doubt it.
I showed in two posts yesterday that the Chicago neighborhoods and Cook County Townships with the highest crime rates voted overwhelmingly and decisively for Kim Foxx.
Identity politics works on those who don’t bother to become informed. She’s black, so I’m voting for her, or he’s a homosexual, so I’m voting for him.
Exactly what I expected. If communities are blind to alternatives, there really isn’t anything the rest of us can do to help their situation. Nor should we feel sorry for them.
Kim Foxx IS the alternative. Everyone in the community knows who she is. That’s where she gets all of her votes. It’s her strongest constituency.
It’s hard to believe, I admit. But not so much when you accept the premise that the prisoners are in charge of the prison, and communities with high crime, and large numbers of criminals, prefer to resolve their disputes extra-judicially, without the interference of the judicial system. Kim Foxx gives them the ability to solve their internal disputes with little interference the police or the justice sytem.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics does an annual victimization survey and they report based on that, sixty percent of violent victimizations nationally (not including murder) are not reported to police, nor are 66 percent of property-related victimizations. In Chicago, particularly due to how witnesses are regarded in communities studded with criminal actors, the percent of crimes that go unreported may be substantially higher.
And with the criminal element fully aware of “bail reform” and soft on crime prosecutors, those statistics will only trend higher.
Thank you, Matt, for joining this most excellent organization, Wirepoints, and adding superb commentary and research.
Thank you kindly! I’m just getting started, but so glad to be aboard!
Lightfoot-“murders and all crime are significantly higher,but i got rid of that racist Columbus statue”!!!
I’m just wondering, even if Lightfoot, Foxx, Preckwinkle, Evans are out next election, and COMPETENT folks take their places, what’s the turnaround time for crime to ‘really’ decline?
The judicial infrastructure is tainted, cancerous. John Dean had nuthin’ on this deal.
I believe that if crime trends don’t reverse drastically in Chicago by 2030 at the outside – and more likely, 2027 – it will leave the city fatally wounded. Lightfoot herself touted a city study on violent crime which identified 177 murders a year as an important target. That’s versus 797 plus a number more from expressway killings in 2021, and 770 in 2020. Hitting the 177 target, the city said then, would put Chicago at roughly the same murder *rate* (per 100,000 population) as New York or Los Angeles. I don’t think much progress can occur toward that goal… Read more »
I think it’s almost too late right now…
CPD leadership is almost all SJW’s…
CPD will, in a few years be mostly SJW’s…
There is that very real danger. The leadership sooner than the rank-and-file. But, yes. So much of this goes back to K-12 and secondary education and how the news of the day and institutions are framed.
100% yes. The education establishment has so much to answer for.
We will continue to be very interested in and report on the levering-in of bias, which then taints any chance of free and open inquiry in public K-12 schools and public universities in Illinois.
Poor public policy results from intolerance in K-20 education. Perpetrators of malfeasant law are so often educated within biased public (and private) institutions fundamentally hostile to modern-day Western Civilization despite its endless ameliorative contortions. Noam Chomsky, anyone? Michael Foucault? Jacques Derrida?
The progressives seem intent on turning public schools into madrassas of progressivism. No responsibility for teaching basic reading, writing and math skills; they are only interested in indoctrination into the cult of victimhood. They have been working at it for years.
I hope we are finally seeing what’s going on more clearly, and can stop it.
Intent? They already are!
Conservatives have been asleep at the wheel the last 10 years while progressives infected every institution. Every institution in my town is compromised. I’ll admit, I was asleep at the wheel. I thought that having an all Republican national government and Supreme Court was good enough while completely ignoring my local political arena. I’ve only recently become familiarized with how deep the rot goes and how completely intolerant those in charge are to any view other than progressivism.
Does Foxx’s mere presence in the CCSA office embolden crime? It might. Her reputation of being soft on crime, whether true or not, precedes her.
If you read the CWB twitter or blog, many a criminal become upset when they aren’t released immediately on i-bond. They expect it.
Who cares? She’s got the biggest d..k in Chicago.
Lightfoot-We were expecting 8,000 murders but only had 7,999. It’s a significant reduction all due the the hard work we had to do. It was a team effort. Pardon me while I will try to pat myself on the back without dislocating my arm. Thank You and Have a Good Day! LL or is it LOL.
lol!!
We saw a *decrease* in the *increase* so we’ll claim victory…
Lying with numbers is a skill politicians learn early on. They do it with greater frequency as their desperation grows. Our tyrant governor can’t go a day without selecting a new metric that he can bend in his favor. Biden and company are so desperate that they would have you believe gasoline prices are dropping significantly. The liberal media plays along, trying to reinforce the message of the day. People living in the real world know better.
In addition to the lunacy, a biological man just won a Division I Women’s swimming title…