Robbery isn’t the only violent crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown that refuses to comply with the Chicago Police Department’s “crime is down” PR campaign.
Aggravated batteries refuse to decline here, too, and the number of stabbings reported in Wrigleyville and Boystown has soared over the past two years.
Aggravated batteries, agbats for short, are extreme attacks in which victims are severely injured, but not killed. Mere threats of violence are not agbats, they’re assaults, and they are not included here.
The substantial increase in stabbings strongly suggests that street attacks are becoming even more dangerous and potentially lethal.
The Chicago Police Department claims that the number of aggravated batteries reported in Chicago last year was nearly 32% lower than in 2004, decreasing from 11,474 (pdf) cases to just 7,815 (pdf). The citywide decline looks like this:
Yet, Wrigleyville and Boystown has enjoyed no decline. Our chart looks like this:
The real story lies within the agbat numbers. Agbats with “cutting instruments”–stabbings and slashings with knives and other sharp objects–have soared over the past two years in Wrigleyville and Boystown.
The most infamous of those stabbings was caught on video and made headlines for weeks in 2011. Sadly, far more people have been stabbed off-camera.
Once again, crimes that really matter and change lives are not “down” in Wrigleyville and Boystown.
As always, we define Wrigleyville and Boystown as the area within the red dashed lines on the following map:
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