Chicago: Murders Exploded in January, While Overall Crime Died

 

Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy, right foreground; Mayor Rahm Emanuel, left background
 

By Nicholas Stix

[Of related interest: “Detroit: Murder Up 12%, but ‘Serious’ Crime is Down; Broken Windows Policing is on the Way”]
 

Like I always say, the first law of lying is plausibility. (Economy and consistency are tied for second.)

In this case, the chief liar is Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry “Heat Stroke” McCarthy. Or should I say, “34-Days-in-January” McCarthy?

“Heat Stroke” refers to the racial fairy tale McCarthy concocted last May, whereby as many as three Chicago beaches were shut down during Memorial Day weekend due to people suffering from “heat exhaustion.”

Skeptical Chicagoans asked why, if conditions were so unhealthy, weren’t all of the beaches weren’t closed?

Racist black gangs were terrorizing whites at no fewer than two city beaches: North Avenue Beach and Rainbow Beach.

The city shut them down.

I recall reading of a third Chicago beach that was also shut down (Oak Street?), but could no longer find any references to it tonight.

“‘There was no gang activity that was involved in the commander’s decision to close the beach,’ said police Supt. Garry McCarthy.”[“Doubts Mount About Why City Closed North Avenue Beach,” CBS Chicago, June 2, 2011, 5:31 a.m.]

In a June 29 story, NBC Chicago reporter Dick Johnson wrote,

Police presence has been boosted significantly at [North Avenue] beach since Memorial Day.

In his video report, as the camera showed large clumps of uniformed cops on a city beach, Johnson said more:

Clearly, something has been done. At Oak and North Avenue Beaches, four weeks after Memorial Day, a much stronger police presence is undeniable.

To which I observed,

But I [sic] there was no violence, why waste tens of thousands of dollars on clearly unnecessary additional cops?

Rather than sweep the beaches and arrest the malefactors, which would have increased the city’s May crime stats, which is what is supposed to happen when thugs are committing violent crimes right and left, McCarthy shut down the beaches and announced that he did so due to cases of “heat stroke.” Never mind that the weather was beautiful, with the thermometer never going beyond the 80s.

Even after the lie blew up in McCarthy’s face, he consistently stuck to his script for over two months. But then, with an air show approaching on the weekend of August 20-21, the Chicago papers reported that police officials said they were beefing up coverage, so that there wouldn’t be a repeat of the Memorial Day gang violence.

CHICAGO (CBS) – As many as 2 million people were expected to take in the Chicago Air & Water Show on Saturday and Sunday and that means a big job for Chicago police.

As CBS 2’s Suzanne Le Mignot reports, some officers are working 13 hours each day because of the event. Others are beginning as early as 6 a.m. to start patrolling the lakefront.

Friday was practice day for the Air & Water Show, but for Chicago police officers, the practice run was just like the real deal.

Sources said that gang officers would be saturating the lakefront along with officers from different areas and districts….

Tactical officers were being deployed at Oak Street Beach as well….

At North Avenue Beach, high-ranking officers were part of the foot patrol on Friday and police and paramedic bike units were patrolling along with the full mounted unit.

Sources said officers have been told to be diligent – if they see a situation where crowds are gathering and there’s the potential for trouble, the situation needs to be handled immediately.

Police don’t want a repeat of the mob attacks that plagued North Avenue Beach on Memorial Day. [N.S.: My emphasis.]

[“Cops To Be Out In Force For Air & Water Show,” by Todd Feurer, ‎Friday, ‎August ‎19, ‎2011, ‏‎6:11:39 p.m.]

For three years, the Chicago newspapers have been publishing shocking numbers of shootings on a weekly basis, and yet every month, the CPD announces that crime is down. Even some reporters are openly doubting the police.

And did you know that January now has 34 days? Superintendent McCarthy tells us that the first 29 days of January murders were up, but that for the last five days, there have been no murders in Chicago.

* * *

Homicides up more than 50 percent in January, overall crime down 20 percent
By Jeremy Gorner
Chicago Tribune
9:14 p.m. CST, January 30, 2012

Homicides in Chicago have risen sharply so far in January compared with a year earlier, continuing a trend that began over the last few months of 2011, police records show.

In a telephone interview Monday, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy noted that Chicago had gone the last five days without a single homicide, but he acknowledged for the first 29 days of January, homicides rose to 40, up from 26 for the same period a year earlier, more than a 50 percent jump.

The increase follows an upward trend in homicides citywide in the last three months of 2011. In that final quarter of the year, homicides totaled 115, compared with 92 homicides for the same period in 2010, a 25 percent increase, according to city crime statistics.

McCarthy said much of that increase was the result of a bloody 17-day stretch from October into November. The overall homicide rate fell a bit in 2011, compared to the previous year.

The homicide category was the only crime category up in the first month of 2012 with overall crime down by about 20 percent, McCarthy said.

The superintendent continued to express confidence that homicides would go down when shootings fall. So far in January, the number of shootings is identical to the same period last year at 140.

When asked what accounted for January’s spike in homicides, McCarthy replied: “We’re at 73 percent murder-by-gunshot right now, which means that the other categories have stacked up…stabbings, asphyxiation.”

But Michael Shields, president of the Fraternal Order of the Police, suggested the increase in homicides could be the result of the mild winter, but McCarthy laughed at that explanation.

Shields maintained that if the department takes credit for five days without a single homicide, it must be prepared to take the blame when homicides rise.

“If they’re going to take credit for the good, they have to take credit for the bad,” he said.

University of Chicago professor Jens Ludwig cautioned against reading too much into statistics over such a short period of time, saying there can be a lot of fluctuation year-to-year.

At an unrelated news conference Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel highlighted Chicago’s continuing gang problems as the source of the continuing concern over the homicide rate.

“Chicago has a problem unlike any other major city given the size of our gangs.,” the mayor said. “… Nobody can be content, but we are making progress in the right things that are necessary to bring a level of safety to our streets.”

McCarthy recently introduced a new strategy to combat violence in the Englewood and Harrison police districts, two of the more dangerous parts of the city, by calling for the saturation of officers in hot spots within those districts for a lengthy periods [sic] of time.

[N.S.: That’s COMPSTAT talk.]

Over roughly the first half of January, many of the city’s homicides occurred in those two districts, McCarthy said. But since the department implemented its strategy in those neighborhoods, the situation has improved, he said.

[He’s talking mush. How many murders were committed pre-and-post-saturation deployment? He won’t say, because he’s blowing smoke.]

McCarthy also pointed to the drop in overall crime in January as a promising trend. “If the other stuff was going off the charts, then I’d be a lot more concerned than I am,” he said.

Tribune reporter Hal Dardick contributed.

jgorner@tribune.com
 

[From WEJB/NSU’s Chicago Files:

“Illinois Sentencing Guideline for Robbery + Assault + Attempted Murder by a Black on a White: One Year;

“Chicago: 21-Year-Old Shoots 84-Year-Old for ‘Disrespecting’ Him (with a Surprise Ending!)”;

“Chicago is Enriched by ‘Jaliscan’ (or is It ‘Arizonan’?) and ‘African’ Diversity”;

“Shooting at Whitey: Running the Gauntlet in Chicago Public Transportation”;

“Amish Gone Wild: Chicago Police Brace for ‘Flash Mob’ Attacks”;

“Walter Williams: America's new racists”;

“Chicago: Fifty-Strong, Black Robbery Mob Hits Walgreens on the Magnificent Mile”;

“The Great Chicago Memorial Day Gang Attack Cover-Up”;

“Convicted Murderer to Chicago Tribune’s Dawn Turner Trice: ‘I’m Not a Murderer’”;

“One Act of Memorial Day Weekend Violence That Neither the Chicago Police Department Nor the New York Times Tried to Cover Up”;

“Cognitive Dissonance in Chicago: Last Weekend, 20 People were Shot and 5 Killed of All Ages and in All Situations, Yet Crime is Dropping Like a Rock!”;

“Chicago Tribune Editor to Readers: It’s None of Your Damned Business, Who’s Racially Targeting Whites and Asians for All of These Ceaseless, Brutally Violent Crimes!”;

“Speaking Truth to Black Power in Chicago”;

“Edward Vincent Hanrahan (1921-2009): He Helped Kill Fred Hampton”;

“Air Conditioner Attacks Chicago Sister, Causing a Brother’s Murder”;

“Lynch Mob of Seven Blacks Rob, and Try to Stomp to Death Raceless 18-Year-Old in Chicago’s Chinatown”;

“DADT/Due Diligence, Diversity-Style: For Years, Illinois State Program Did No Background Checks, and Paid Black Convicted Rapists to be Baby-Sitters”;

“The Black Wall of Silence: Harvey, IL, Police Department Conspired for at Least 14 Years to Protect Black Rapists; County Prosecutor’s Office Had to Raid Local PD, in Order to Rescue Stashed Rape Kits”;

“Video: In Racist Attack in Chicago, Two Huge, Fat, Black Sisters, 17 and 18, Jump Skinny Spanish Girl, 14, in Bio Class, Beat Her for 6-7 Minutes, Leaving Her with a Concussion and Internal Injuries; Frightened, Helpless,White Teacher Does Nothing”;

“12 Shot in 11.5 Hours, as Violent Crime Continues to Plummet in Chicago”;

“In Chicago: Happy Birthday … You’re Dead!”;

“7 Dead, 3 Injured Out of Ecuadorean Extended Family in Minivan; Van Hit Deer, was Hit by Semi; No One Wore Seatbelts”;

“The Kelli O'Laughlin Slaying: The Crazy Card, Again”;

“Media Alchemy: Sun-Times, Fox News Staffers Transform a Robbery into “a Fight over a Cell Phone”;

“Federal Judges Thwart Justice, on Behalf of Cop-Killers… Again”;

“Chicago Tribune Breaks with Policy, and Racially IDs Perps in Home Invasion!”;

“The Gouger II: Exulam I. Holman Allegedly Gouged Out Uncle’s Eyes Over TV Remote”;

“Chicago Cops Release Photos of Negro Execution-Killers Celebrating Christmas”;

“Here’s a Mass Murder That Not Only the Nat'l MSM, but Even the Local Chicago Tribune Doesn’t Want Known: Cedric Anderson Murdered 4 Yesterday”;

“Chicago: Spree-Killer Dante Simmons Murders Troy Cameron, 22, Anton Sanders, 15, Shoots Up Chicago Walgreen’s, City Bus, Then Does Taxpayers a Favor”; and

“Chicago: Rogers Park Gang Hit at Traffic Light Claims Lives of Dion Miller and Jonathan Bell; Killings Follow Pair the Previous Night.”; and

“Six Shot Saturday Night on Chicago’s South Side; One Dead, as Crime Continues to Drop!”]