Chicago is the nation’s third largest city and will end 2016 with a surging murder rate, a demoralized and distrusted police force and a weary populace that has become inured to daily reports of shootings.
In 2016 over 750 people have been murdered in Chicago, according to police, murder rate have been increased to 58 percent over last year and this the highest total since 1997. There have been more than 3,500 shootings in the city in 2016. Sixty people were shot alone in the Christmas weekend.
Bloody Christmas Weekend in Chicago
As the year is about to come to an end, the residents and community leaders say they are despairing over the ceaseless violence, which city officials are trying to confront with more police officers and new law enforcement strategies.
“We all should be embarrassed of the crime in the city, each and every one of us, that we all have allowed this city to become the poster boy of violence in America,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, an activist and pastor of a Catholic church on the South Side.
Chicago had more criminal homicides in 2016 more than New York and Los Angeles combined. Los Angeles had witnessed 288 murders through mid December, slightly up from 2015 , and New York had witnessed 325 murders this year, a decline from previous year.
Across the country, some cities have seen rise in homicides while others have seen decline in their numbers. St. Louis, which had one of the country’s highest murder rates in 2015, had 183 criminal homicides this year. Milwaukee had 142 this year and 146 in 2015. Criminal homicides have increased this year in Kansas City.
In Chicago, the surge in violence has become a national flash point, the Rev. Ira Acree said” that he has never seen so much attention and energy and focus being put on this epidemic of violence.” Representative Danny K. Davis, a Democrat whose district includes some of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods, said that he believed poverty was fueling the city’s bloodshed, and that Chicago needed to make investments “to revamp whole communities.”
“People are struggling, and on top of that, in many instances, people have lost hope in the authorities,” Mr. Davis said.
“People have lost the hope that something might change for them. And if people cannot keep their hopes alive, then you don’t have to wonder whether things are going to get better or get worse: They’ll get worse.”
-Amandeep
