By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
An alarming report at The Center Square says Chicago police data “shows at the same time transit system arrests have dropped, overall violent crime across the system hit its second-highest level since 2015 in the 12 months ending in July.”
While the report may alarm some, it probably does not surprise residents of the Windy City, where homicide appears to be a daily occurrence, according to data found at the popular website Heyjackass.com. Checked Tuesday, the site says homicides for October stand at 25, with 22 of those being victims of gunfire. Another 94 people have suffered gunshot wounds. To date this year, Heyjackass.com says 367 people have been murdered, of which 308 were fatally shot. Another 1,345 have been shot and wounded.
According to The Center Square, a Chicago Democrat lawmaker, Rep. La Shawn Ford, is worried that the violence could continue rising across the transit system if federal authorities fulfill threats to cut Transit Authority funding.
Quoted by The Center Square, Ford stated, “This government clearly has decided to take a position of cutting funds because of crime, but they’ve cut funds to reduce funding for housing, for substance abuse, for crime prevention. When you have the federal government cutting funds for safety net programs and at the same time saying that we need to reduce crime they’re actually playing a role in making sure that people don’t have the resources they need. You had a federal government that used to be a partner, now the federal government is the enemy and that’s impacting all of Illinois.”
More importantly, The Center Square notes, “With less than 1-in-5 of all such crimes ending in arrest, data highlights most of the carnage was concentrated in the same areas of the city, topped by the South Side’s Red Line at over 3.5 transgressions out of every 100,000 riders.”
The story says battery is the most common crime reported, but there have been “at least four murders” on Transit Authority property.
Heyjackass data for the years from 2021 to 2024 shows homicides on the decline in Chicago, but the city is still a killing ground. In 2021, the city posted 734 slayings, but the number declined by more than 100 to 621 in 2022. In 2023, Chicago suffered 445 killings and last year, 528 people were murdered, according to the website, which is not connected to the Chicago Police Department.
The high number of gun-related killings in the city happen despite the strict gun control laws passed in Illinois over the past several years.
