A 15-year-old boy managed to bust his handcuffs and break out of the 11th District police station on the West Side. Police say the handcuffs "malfunctioned." more ›

Alton L. Hayes III, 18, faces hate crime charges after he told police he beat up a white man because he was upset about the Trayvon Martin case. more ›

Two young boys in Michigan City, Ind., are facing battery charges after they allegedly attacked their bus driver because they didn't like being told to stop playing around. more ›

The 4-year-old girl told her mother he had put her in the dryer and turned it on because she had peed her pants. more ›

The 2-year-old girl's body was found in the man's home Saturday covered in bruises and "what appeared to be human bite marks." more ›

The victims say they were ordering their food when a male told the women he was going to beat them if they didn't leave. Then a group of males and females kicked and beat them. more ›

Crestwood police are looking for the man who walked into a Shop Mart, made a purchase, then grabbed a cancer patient's donation jar and took off. more ›

Brian DeLeon was found near a park with head injuries so severe EMTs believed he had suffered a gunshot wound. more ›

The body of a 19-year-old Portage Park woman was found in Wheeling, Ind. more ›

Police are still looking for information on the attack. Nothing was stolen from the boy, and there is no apparent motive. more ›

At least six men were killed this weekend in separate incidents of violence citywide. more ›

Police found a man dead on a baseball diamond in the Uptown neighborhood on Thursday, and a Friday autopsy shows the man died from head injuries. The man has not been identified. He was found in Clarendon Park near Montrose and Clarendon avenues. The death has been ruled a homicide. The Sun-Times writes: more ›

This morning, citing police statistics, the Tribune's RedEye reports that the most dangerous time for violent crime - classified as "homicide, criminal sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and aggravated battery" - in Chicago is between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. The lowest point for those crimes is 7 a.m. The midnight to 4 a.m. time period sees the highest rate of murders. The statistics come with the caveat that there are a host of different factors that contribute to them and - of course - violent crime can happen at any time of the day or night, anywhere. more ›

It was a violent July, but for the first six months of 2009, crime was down overall across the city compared with the same time period in 2008. The Sun-Times has a break-down of the stats and shows a nine percent decrease in overall crime, including a three percent decrease in violent crime. more ›

Chicago Police reported Friday that there have been 108 murders in Chicago between January and April, a 19.4 percent drop from last year, which saw 134 murders during the same time frame. They have also recovered 421 more firearms and 49 more assault weapons than during this period last year. Total violent crime is down 2.8 percent overall, and property crime is down 9.6 percent. Police Superintendent Jody Weis attributes the decline to new crime reduction strategies. "With the summer fast approaching," Weis said in a press release from the police department, "we will look closely at the tactics which have made the streets safer and engage the community to help us continue in this direction." more ›