UPDATE SEPTEMBER 4: After consulting Chicago Police Department annual report archives, we can now report that Uptown’s murder count for 2015 is the highest for that neighborhood since at least 1998.
The updated graphic on this page adds the years 1998-2000 to our original chart and also corrects the homicide numbers for 2001 and 2002, which we erroneously overstated previously.
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With a double-homicide being recorded overnight, the Uptown neighborhood has now recorded ten murders in 2015—more than in any full year this millennium, Chicago Police Department records show. And we still have four months to go.
Publicly-available homicide statistics, shared via the city’s data portal, only go back to 2001.
While Chicago police try to contain the North Side’s growing gang violence problem, they are hampered by reduced resources and, in the case of our district, a manpower reduction of nearly 30% since 2012.
Meanwhile, one of Uptown’s aldermen, James Cappleman, has no trouble publicizing a one-month crime statistic to make it appear that “crime is down” in his neighborhood even though full-year statistics show violent crime there is up 33%.
We get the government we deserve. Yes, we do.
