Grim milestone: More than 1,000 people shot in Chicago this year
Members of the Chicago Police Department investigate the scene of a police involved shooting in the 3700 block of West Polk Street in the Homan Square neighborhood in Chicago on March 14. Three officers were shot and one suspect was killed at the scene. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune via AP)
CHICAGO » The number of people shot in Chicago this year passed 1,000 this week, a grim milestone as gun violence in the city continues at a pace not seen since the 1990s.
The city reached the 1,000 mark on Wednesday, when 13 people were shot over 14 hours, including a 4-year-old boy hit in the foot as he walked with his mother in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side. Another boy, 6, was cut on the finger during the same incident, according to police.
In the Austin police district nearby, four people were wounded in three shootings during the day.
The 1,000th person shot apparently was a 16-year-old boy wounded in the knee shortly before 4 p.m. in the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex, according to data compiled by the Chicago Tribune.
In recent years, Chicago hasn’t reached 1,000 shooting victims until June. Last year, Chicago recorded its 1,000th person shot on June 4, Tribune data show. In 2013, the city hit that mark on June 26, and the year before that, June 9.
This year’s toll is more than 66 percent higher than the same time last year, according to Tribune data.
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Through April 21, 2015, there were 600 people shot in Chicago; through the same period in 2014, 483 people; in 2013, 513 people; in 2012, 667 people (that year would see a spike in both shootings and homicides).
Chicago’s homicides this year are up by 64 percent, with 161 reported by the department through Sunday, compared with 98 over the same period last year, official police statistics show. In the early to mid-1990s, homicides peaked at more than 900 a year.
The number of people shot in Chicago this year exceeds the nation’s two larger cities, New York and Los Angeles, combined.
Through April 10, 246 people had been shot in New York, a city more than three times the size of Chicago, according to New York Police Department statistics. In Los Angeles, a city with more than a million more people than Chicago, 294 people had been shot through April 9, Los Angeles Police Department statistics show.
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©2016 Chicago Tribune
15 responses to “Grim milestone: More than 1,000 people shot in Chicago this year”
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Black lives matter unless it is not politically expedient.
“Politically expedient?” Maybe using words with fewer syllables would help you on your path to sense.
Look it up. Maybe you will understand it.
tending to promote some proposed or desired object; fit or suitable for the purpose; proper under the circumstances:
Thank you for the definition. Now, explain what black lives mattering or not mattering has to do with anyone’s political expediency.
I can’t say the race of the murdered people (SA censor has warned me) but someone used the word “black” so I’ll say no more.
I am sure that the NRA’s assessment of this situation would be a clear conclusion that we all need to own more guns. Oh wait a minutes lets see if there were fewer guns maybe there would be less shooting. Hmmmm …logic … logic. oh yes, we must not leave out the amount of money that the NRA gives politicians as part of the final assessment.
Chicago has the nation’s toughest gun control laws and the most gun violence in the nation. How would you assess that?
leino, if you were to turn your fondness for logic just slightly in a different direction, just a little mind you, and actually look at Chicago’s crime situation dispassionately, then some disquieting conclusions might be reached. Hint: shootings and homicides in Chicago are not evenly distributed across the city; startling differences can be measured just by crossing the street from one neighborhood to another. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to come back and tell us why this should be.
Oh, and regarding the NRA’s vaunted ability to buy influence, you do realize that the entirety of the NRA’s war chest pales in comparison to the resources at the fingertips of a single Michael Bloomberg don’t you?
The situation is not as clear cut as either you or the NRA present it.
The only thing that is clear cut is that Chicago’s strict gun laws don’t appear to be working do they?
Hard to tell. Someone with a slightly off-color sense of humor would say, “Of course the laws work. Otherwise 2,000 would’ve been shot instead of 1,000.” It’d be unethical as well as completely impractical to conduct experiments on the people of Chicago in situ to find out for sure. They’re hardly lab rats are they?
chicago 2001 through 2016: 8,400 murders.
iraq war, enduring freedom, and afghanistan: 8,321 u.s. deaths.
Good job Barry. The community organizer. Chicago is eagerly awaiting your return.
Is Chicago now the murder capital in America? Our Honolulu Son has chosen to stay and live in Chicago, so be it. After all Black Lives Matter and perhaps Chicago is the place to become enriched with the virtues of ” Black Lives Matter”. Good luck to the Obamas in there hometown.