Chicago's Top Cop Continues 'It's Not That Bad' Approach To Homicide Rate
By Chuck Sudo in News on Jan 31, 2013 6:50PM
Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy is once again trying to spin the city’s homicide rate as being not as bad as it seems. That’s funny, because we took a look at Chicago’s murder totals for January and saw 42 people were killed. That’s the highest total for January since 2002 and there’s still time in the day to match the 2002 total of 45. Among that number is 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot on a balmy Tuesday a week after she performed with her high school at President Obama’s inauguration.
McCarthy, as he usually does whenever Chicago’s murder rate gets national attention, tried to accentuate the positives and noted the city saw fewer shootings overall this month than this time last year.
“That’s just not the way those numbers usually play out,” Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Tuesday, adding that as of Friday afternoon the murder rate had been down nearly 30 percent for the month when compared to last year. He said there had been 13 fewer shootings last week compared to the same week in 2012.But the number of murders for the week compared to last year remained about the same.
“Unfortunately that’s the way it goes sometimes ... more people die percentage-wise from the shootings,” he told reporters at a news conference in which he spoke of a White House meeting where he and other officials discussed gun policy.
“By reducing the shootings you expect to reduce the murders,” he added, saying the number of deaths was “frustrating.”
Unfortunately for McCarthy, the numbers that play the best outside of Chicago are 506 (Chicago’s 2012 murder total) and 42 (the current number of murders for January). So long as he tries to parse the details, there will continue to be this perception of disconnect between McCarthy and the violence that has rocked Chicago’s South and west sides for over a year. Comparing the homicide rate in relation to an overall decline in violent crime in Chicago only makes those numbers stand out further.
This isn’t the first time McCarthy has tried to downplay the rise in the homicide rate. He told the Union League Club last June there was a “perception issue” on crime in Chicago. After a post-Independence Day holiday last year where 20 people were injured in shootings, McCarthy noted that number was half the total shootings for the same weekend in 2011. McCarthy and the Police Department consistently pointed out the murder rate and overall crime decreased after a fast start to 2011.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe tried to look deeper into the problem this morning, with a panel that included Rev. Al Sharpton and Playboy CEO Christie Hefner, who’s also a member of the Center for American Progress. Sharpton and Hefner touched on Chicago’s history of segregation, the “no snitching” culture, how guns are still making their way to Chicago despite the city having some of the strictest regulations in the nation and even the unseasonable warmth of Chicago’s past two winters as factors influencing the rise in homicides.
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