- In a year in which the rise in homicides has brought unwelcome national attention to Chicago, police on Thursday announced one encouraging statistic: October saw its second-lowest number of killings in at least 30 years.
The month ended with 36 homicides, down eight from October 2011 and the second-lowest the department has recorded since 1982. The city had 34 homicides in October 2004.
Shootings also fell in last month to 208, down from 231 in October 2011, the department said.
Still, through the first 10 months of 2012, homicides have risen by a little over 22 percent over a year earlier, putting Chicago on pace to potentially record 500 homicides for the first time since 2008. Through October, there have been 442 homicides, compared with 361 during the same period last year.
So we're still up 80 homicides.....stop paying attention to that.
The grasping at small trends is a hallmark of CompStat is the obvious lesson here. Talk up the supposed drop in burglaries one month. Talk about less CTA robberies by downgrading everything to a Theft. A one-month aberration in homicide numbers and all our strategies are working.