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Friday, Dec 28, 2012 5:42 PM UTC

Chicago homicides hit grim milestone

While murder numbers in New York were at a record low this year

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Topics: Guns, Chicago, New York City, Homicide, Rahm Emanuel, Crime,

Chicago homicides hit grim milestone Chicago skyline (Credit: Shutterstock/MaxyM)

Chicago was home to 500 homicides in 2012 — a grim milestone that was last reached in 2008, when 512 homicides took place. According to the AP, a 40-year-old man fatally shot on the city’s West Side became the city’s 500th victim.

The Chicago Tribune reported that “homicides were up 17 percent over last year in Chicago, and shootings had increased by 11 percent, according to police statistics.” The Tribune, giving little by the way of explanation, cited unseasonable weather early in the year as a factor contributing to an unusually high humber in murders:

Largely contributing to the spike was the unusual number of homicides that occurred during the early part of the year, when the  city experienced unseasonable warmth. In the first three months of the year, homicides ran about 60 percent ahead of the 2011 rate.

Commenting Friday on the 500th homicide, Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the total “an unfortunate and tragic milestone, which not only marks a needless loss of life but serves as a reminder of the damage that illegal guns and conflicts between gangs cause in our neighborhoods.”

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, speaking to a local news channel earlier this month, said that a restructured or strengthened police department would not fix Chicago’s violent crime problem, which is deeply rooted in poverty and a lack of resources for poor communities.

Meanwhile, on Friday New York City boasted relatively good news: 2012 set a record for the all-time lowest number of shootings and murders in city history. As of Friday morning, there have been 414 homicides in 2012 — the previous record low was 471 homicides in 2009. Police Commissioner Ray Kelley pointed to programs restricting gun proliferation to account for the statistics: “We’re taking 8,000 weapons annually out of the hands of people we stop, 800 of them illegal handguns,” he said.

 

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Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com. More Natasha Lennard.

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  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

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  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

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