Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot might not have shouted “We’re Number One!” while pumping her fist as the clock struck midnight last night. However under her leadership, the Windy City easily clinched the top spot for most homicides of any American city. In fact, it wasn’t even close.
Hey Jackass had the tentative numbers this morning: 842 homicides committed in Chicago city limits. That number reflects a 6% higher body count than 2020. The tally still remains preliminary as additional victims could still surface or wounded parties may succumb to their injuries.
Sadly, Hey Jackass writes about how the numbers oftentimes slowly continue to rise even after the clock strikes midnight.
With mere hours left in this shitshow of a year, we wanted to post a quick note to illustrate how the year end totals are accounted for and how best to compare this year to years past.
Past year end totals reflected on this site account for resolved death investigations, found bodies and late passings that can and will occur for many years after the clock strikes midnight on Jan 1st. We apply those incidents towards the time of occurrence, not date of death. Other agencies, such as the CPD, choose to add those resolved death investigations, found bodies and late passings to the year in which the death was recorded.
For example, when the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2021, the final totals for 2020 were:
Shot & Killed: 719
Shot & Wounded: 3,455
Total Shot: 4,174
Total Homicides: 792
In the nearly 365 lead-filled days since, the totals have shifted as additional homicides have been recorded:
Shot & Killed: 723 (+4)
Shot & Wounded: 3,451 (-4)
Total Shot: 4,174 (0)
Total Homicides: 797 (+5)
2016 showed a similar pattern and eventually broke the 800 barrier unlike this year which accomplished that 90s feat weeks ago. On January 1st 2017, the final totals for 2016 were:
Shot & Killed: 713
Shot & Wounded: 3,665
Total Shot: 4,378
Total Homicides: 795
Over the subsequent years, those totals have been slowly adjusted to show:
Shot & Killed: 722 (+9)
Shot & Wounded: 3,658 (-7)
Total Shot: 4,380 (+2)
Total Homicides: 808 (+13)
Wherever 2021 ends up on January 1st, it will be the most violent year so far this century with a homicide tally that rivals the 1990s and will only increase over the coming years.
3750 additional victims were “merely” shot and wounded, up 9% year over year from a very bloody 2020’s tally.
Never fear, though. Mayor Lightfoot is working hard at solving her city’s crisis of violent crime by producing “Happy Kwanzaa” videos and dressing up as a clown to show she’s doing something about the Chinese flu.
https://youtu.be/3nEzcE0puWI?t=14
In the popular NBC television series Chicago PD, Sgt. Hank Voight’s intrepid intelligence unit solves virtually every homicide thrown at them. Meanwhile, here in the real world, thanks to the “no snitch” culture so prevalent among Windy City residents, the CPD has identified assailants in only 90 of the city’s 842 homicides, or about 10.6% of cases as of December 1st.
As we’ve reported before, police say about one-third of known murder assailants were out on affordable bail from previous serious felony arrests.
Those 842 victims represent more homicides than 47 entire states reported in 2019. Someone catches a bullet in Chicago just under once every two hours. Think about that for a moment.
Illinois has notoriously strict gun control laws, too. Of course, gun-control advocates like the hopelessly overmatched Mayor Lori Lightfoot claim that lax gun laws in other states lead to all the guns used in her city.
For some reason, those states — like Indiana — don’t have hundreds upon hundreds of murders, and thousands more shot and wounded in their big cities. Yet that doesn’t stop Heronner from repeating the excuse whenever the subject comes up.
From Newsweek:
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday suggested that the “lax gun laws” in states such as Mississippi and Indiana are causing the increase in violence in the city.
During an interview with MSNBC, Lightfoot was asked about the rise in violence across Chicago and what she is doing to combat it.
“Well, look, we can’t stop things that happen outside of our borders. Sixty percent of illegal guns that come into Chicago every year are from out of state, from Indiana, from Mississippi, from other states that have lax gun laws,” Lightfoot said in response. “When my people can go over the border to Indiana and buy military-grade weapons and bring them back in any quantity that they want as long as their money is right, that’s a problem.”
Lightfoot’s solution to her city’s murder problem seems to be to throw her hands up and claim, ‘There’s nothing I can do.’ Her term runs through 2023. That’s a long time and a lot more dead bodies to come.
