The monthly total was 28 compared to 45 last year. The year to date was 177 compared to 193 in the first six months last year.
What surprises me is that there are on a weekly basis a 30 / 40 to one ratio in shootings vs deaths.
I was reviewing the Chicago Tribune stats page and learned at least one thing. They count every incident as one incident even if multiple people are shot. So it appears that a lot more people injured than the 1,072 they are reporting. I also cannot figure out if they go back to see if people shot later died.
http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/homicides
* the homocide pages also include deaths by means other than guns.
Secondly, there appears to be little reporting on the apprehension of the criminals.
Correction, the June total is now 30, but that does not appear to show this weekend’s death.
There’s a very good reason for so little reporting on apprehensions - there are very few, if any, apprehensions happening. If I recall correctly, Chicago is among the cities with the lowest homicide arrest rates in the country.
Here is how to keep up with the score.
http://voices.suntimes.com/news/breaking-news/chicago-weekend-shootings-tracker-for-june-20-22-2014/
“I also cannot figure out if they go back to see if people shot later died.
. . .
Secondly, there appears to be little reporting on the apprehension of the criminals.”
I sent the reporting team a note asking these two questions and got very quick response back.
One, they do review morgue reports to see if wounded victims died and add them to the count sometimes months later.
Two, they agree tracking apprehension and adjudication is very difficult. Here is their response on that.
Just a quick follow up on the subject of apprehension and adjudication.
The “clearance rate” in Chicago in 2013 was approximately 30%. There are good details in this article by Mark Konkol (http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140124/chicago/chicago-detectives-solved-higher-percentage-of-murders-2013). Unforuntately, Mr. Konkol does not seem to understand what homicide clearance means, so you should disregard any talk in that piece of “solved” cases and the like. Clearance means police were able to arrest and charge a suspect on suspicion of murder. A cleared homicide is not “solved” unless you believe that arrested suspects are inherently and automatically guilty.
Data on convictions may be requested via Freedom of Information Act requests to the Cook County Clerk who maintain court records. However, the court’s data is exempt from FOIA requests. Therefore, responding to the requests is at the discretion of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Court. See http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/court.html for details.
To my knowledge, the only successful request for such data in bulk was made by the Chicago Justice Project and covers convictions (not all cases) from 2005-2009. This data will be released to the public in July or August of this year. This data could provide a possible measure of the percentage of all homicides that resulted in a conviction from that time period by comparing against police records from the time, but there are serious methodological questions that would haunt such an analysis without more robust data.
In short, journalists and citizens in Cook County do not have reliable, consistent data about the process and end results of homicide investigations.