Chicago Crime
Crime in Chicago
The largest city in the Midwest has one of the highest crime rates among all other U.S. cities. It’s difficult to say why crime in Chicago is high. violent crimes, such as homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assult, and violent crime — the numbers are staggering. Though, in 2019, the crime rate decreased from the previous year.
Crime in Chicago spiked beginning in the late 60s as far as violent crimes are concerned. The mid 1970s was the peak of violent crimes, murders, in “the windy city.”
After the early 1990s, the rate of murders began to steadily decrease and around 2005, the decrease was more than 50%. In the mid 2000s, CPD elicited recommendations from the LAPD and NYPD, which contributed to the lowest rate of homicides since the mid 1960s.
In 2010, the murder rate in Chi-town was well beyond that of major metropolitan cities like, Los Angeles and had more than doubled the homicide statistics in New York City. Not much has changed within the last 50 years, as far as, gang violence, aggravated attacks, armed thefts, and murders.
Homicide rates in “the loop” vary across the board from neighborhood to neighborhood. Some of the African American predominant neighborhoods are under-developed, poorly educated, and contain many residents who are poverty-stricken leading to many of the area’s youths joining gangs, which results in high volumes of gang activity.
Some of these neighborhoods such as, the West side’s neighborhood of Austin and Englewood which is located on the South part of Chicago have murder rates of ten times more than other neighborhoods in the city.
Crime in these areas has a perilous impact to the educational progress for many of the children growing up in these neighborhoods, and takes a toll on schools especially providing much needed school social work programs counselors to help these children cope with the trauma associated with these types of violence.
Part of the criticism towards this Illinois metropolitan area crime has been the unusually light punishments aimed at those who are caught possessing a firearm without appropriate legal documentation. In 2015, “the windy city” was given the name “mass shooting capital of America.”
On top of this, Chicago is considered to have the highest gang population, over any other city in the U.S. Over 60% of murders in this city are said to be contributed to gang-related activity.
“Chi-town” was one of the first cities in America to utilize an emergency-response effort related to the National Counterterrorism Center, which responds to emergencies related to gang violence, natural disasters, and terrorist-related attacks. It employs over 2000 cameras and communicates with levels of local government.
The CPD started installing cameras that have the ability to rotate a full 360 degrees and zoom in with a high level of detail. These Police Observation Devices (otherwise known as POD’s) are designed to be bullet-proof, record 24/7, and offer night vision mode. The CPD contributed the results of these efforts to the major decrease in crime starting in 2004.
Fighting crime has been an ongoing struggle for many decades, but employing observation and crime-fighting techniques will hopefully continue to decrease crime in Chicago, making neighborhoods safer for its residents. View more
