- Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Monday touted the department's crime-fighting strategies in tamping down the city's murder rate since earlier this year when homicides skyrocketed.
"This is not a zero-sum game. There has to be a recognition that we're doing better," McCarthy told reporters at a news conference at police headquarters. "I can't change what happened in the first quarter. What I can do, is to fix it going forward."
Well, if you want the credit now, then you have to take the blame from before, and even Stevie Wonder could see that disbanding the citywide response units ended up directly affecting the number of killings by a complete lack of response to the mayhem. We used to be able to shut neighborhoods down - not so much anymore.
- By April, homicides had soared 66 percent in Chicago compared with a year earlier, but that rate has been gradually brought down to about an 18 percent increase at this point, McCarthy said.
McCarthy credited the reduction to the city's decision to demolish more vacant buildings, arrest more gang members and focus police attention on individuals who are more likely to commit crimes. In general, the city is seeing less overall crime that it did decades ago, McCarthy said.
Really? Now we're claiming a lack of vacant buildings as a crime fighting tool? Next, are we going to say the weather actually DOES effect the crime rate? Because you wouldn't know it checking today's stats, something like 3 or 4 dead on a Monday when the temps never got above 37 degrees.
And seriously, an 18% increase in the homicide count is nothing to brag about. Who gives a shit if it was at 66% for 3 months this year? Statistics are a long term proposition. We could argue killings are down 400% in the last hour since no one has died via gunfire, but we'd look like idiots.
- "The city is enjoying the lowest crime rate it has had in 30 years," McCarthy said. "We might be in a position where we are leading the nation in crime reduction."
Sure it is. If we set 1,000 fires tonight, we could claim that arson is down tomorrow because we ran out of buildings to burn. This CompStat is so much bullshit and the guy running the calculator is stacking it five stories high.