Friday into Saturday was pretty much what you'd expect. Saturday into Sunday continued in that same vein:
- At least nine people were shot between 11:10 p.m. Saturday and 5 a.m. Sunday, according to Chicago police, including four outside a West Side club about 3 a.m.
We certainly like how the media is spouting the meme that "murders are up 56%, but overall crime is down 10%."
The thing about statistics is they're very manipulable. Take that 35% number. That's year-to-date of 2011 compared to 2012. It's still a bad number, but it sounds waaaaaaaay better than the almost 118% increase when you compare just March of 2011 to March of 2012.
And the 10% decrease in crime? If you're counting raw numbers, maybe crime did "go down." But if there is a population decrease, then the per capita rate is changing a lot less (if at all) from year-to-year.
And trust us, if homicides (killings) are going up, then the other crime is climbing, too. They just use tricks like those we pointed out to make things sound better than they are. Remember, OEC is handling more calls than ever and paying more overtime than they can keep track of - that doesn't sound like crime is down, does it? What happens is the manpower dictates that we can't respond as quickly to minor crime/disorder and people get sick of waiting around for a cop that might not show up for an hour or more.