Everything is down. Except that silly homicide number:
Ten days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a point to highlight Chicago went 24 hours without a homicide, he confronted a more sobering statistic on Monday: the murder rate is up 53.8 percent from the same period a year ago.
Through mid-day Monday, Chicago had recorded 40 January homicides, compared to just 26 murders during the same period a year ago. The number of shooting incidents remained constant at 140 during both periods.
- McCarthy argued that Chicago’s overall crime rate is down 20 percent over the same period a year ago and that “every single [other] category of crime” is down.
Everything else is down, but the BIG stat is up almost 54%? Something isn't tracking here. And the number of shootings is exactly the same as last year, even though the weather is waaaaaay warmer? Can you smell the bullshit from here?
- He further noted increases in a host of “enforcement actions” by rank-and-file police officers: contact cards filed by police making stops (up 43 percent); administrative notices of violations (up 48 percent); gang dispersals (up 18 percent) and curfew violations (up 25 percent).
Ah, that explains it. CompStat is notorious for cooking the numbers. In fact, we believe that the book we've referenced the past couple of days exposes the number baking for what it is.