« Big new Sentencing Project report on felon disenfranchisement | Main | Shouldn't SCOTUS review Georgia's uniquely tough application of Atkins? »

July 13, 2012

Noting the notable racial dynamics in Chicago's spike in homicides

Chi homicideThis new Chicago Tribune article, headlined "Homicide numbers reveal stark contrast," spotlights that the recent increase in violent deaths in Chicago have a distinctive demographic dimension. Here are the details:

Violent crime has long afflicted minorities in Chicago at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and the spike in homicides in the first half of this year provides an especially stark measure: 201 of the 259 homicide victims were African-American.

While blacks make up about 33 percent of the city's population, they accounted for nearly 78 percent of the homicide victims through the first six months of 2012. By comparison, just 11 homicide victims in the first six months of the year were white, and 44 were Hispanic, according to police data.

The pattern is a familiar one in Chicago, where most violent crime happens in impoverished, mostly black neighborhoods on the South and West sides. Annual Chicago police statistics show a majority of both homicide victims and offenders are young black men with criminal records. With one exception, African-Americans have made up more than 70 percent of homicide victims in Chicago every year for the last two decades.

The Tribune reported Monday that 143 of the homicide victims in the first half of the year were listed as being at least affiliated with a street gang. The data obtained by the paper represent the Police Department's preliminary assessment of crimes and are subject to revision as investigations progress.

A deeper review of the numbers shows males ages 15 to 35 made up nearly three-quarters of African-American homicide victims. Police data showed that 133 of those 145 victims had arrest histories. Of the 44 Hispanic victims, 27 were males ages 15 to 35 and had arrest histories, according to the data. Three of the 11 white victims were males in that age range with arrest histories.

As stress escalates in neighborhoods that are as dangerous as foreign war zones, African-American political leaders are expressing frustration with the policing strategies of police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel as well as the systemic problems in their communities....

When Emanuel was running for mayor, violent crime was reaching lows not seen in decades, but the candidate made safety conditions in the city's poorest neighborhoods a centerpiece of his campaign. After his February 2011 election, he wrote in a transition paper: "Far too many Chicagoans still live in homes, neighborhoods, and communities where fear and violence persist. Despite progress in recent years, violence in Chicago, and gun violence in particular, exacts an enormous toll and exacerbates almost every other problem the city faces. As a city, we can and will do better."

Instead, the city has done much worse. Through the first six months of the year, homicides were up by nearly 38 percent over last year. Blacks made up 140 of the 188 victims in the first six months of 2011, according to police data.

Proportionally, there have been fewer children and young adults killed this year compared with last year, according to the data. In the first six months of this year, 45 homicide victims were between infancy and 19 years old, compared with 41 victims in that age range last year. At the other end of the age range, just a quarter of homicide victims were older than 40.

In communities where the cycle of violent crime — disputes, violence and retaliation — has become the norm, young people who have seen too much death develop hardened attitudes about violence startlingly early, Cochran said. After the gang-related killing of 13-year-old Tyquan Tyler last month, Cochran said he met with some of the boy's friends and came away unsettled.

"The most troubling thing I saw recently on the street was friends of the 13-year-old boy who was killed," he said. "Their exposure to this violence — and they are engagers of the violence — and their buy-in to have this prolonged."

July 13, 2012 at 04:33 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e20176166b5664970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Noting the notable racial dynamics in Chicago's spike in homicides:

Comments

Blacks have the same rate of antisocial personality disorder as whites. They have a lower rate of drug and alcohol abuse than whites.

1) Thanks to the feminist lawyer and its male running dogs, what they have more of is bastardy. The feminist lawyer destroyed the black family, after it had survived hundreds of years of severe stresses. That explains the disparity in just about all social pathologies, including the devaluation of life. Try criticizing a slut for spawning little criminals at age 14, instead of going to school. You get immediately fired as a racist from your child welfare job. If a supervisor supports you, they get fired too. The vile feminist lawyer has zero tolerance for any measure that reduces government dependency. The vile feminist lawyer has also defined child abuse nearly the same as Southern child raising methods. So black kids are getting taken from their families for mere strictness of upbringing. The vile feminist lawyer wants the black child running the street, out of control, to generate government make work jobs for feminists lawyers and other unspeakable feminist government functionaries.

2) the feminist lawyer has also deterred the police with ruinous litigation for racism, profiling, etc. So thepolice just sit back, which is in their best interest.

3) The black crime victim has been devalued by the feminist lawyer in charge of the three branches of government. They get less government protection from the investigative stage to the sentencing stage.

4) Prof. Berman, why don't you put up another left wing propaganda post that crime is decreasing? Any such statistics based on police reports is worthless, since the police throw most victim reports in the trash to avoid getting yelled at.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jul 13, 2012 7:07:16 AM

Are any statistics available on the race of the killers?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jul 13, 2012 9:40:10 AM

I had the same question as Bill. If someone knows, please share.

Posted by: Thinkaboutit | Jul 13, 2012 9:55:16 AM

Thinkaboutit --

It seems no one wants to tell us. I wonder why that is?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jul 16, 2012 9:12:03 AM

This omission is a typical ploy in the progressive/liberal media playbook-publicize and lament the victimhood status of young black males while avoiding any mention of their pronounced statistical overrepresentation as perpetrators.

Posted by: mjs | Jul 16, 2012 11:46:21 AM

mjs --

Nailed it. The first thing I thought of when I saw this story was the Trayvon Martin case. The media used that to a fare-thee-well in order to portray black teenagers as the prey of whites (actually Hispanics, as the media eventually had to cough up, after a few days).

Now comes a story about the murders of 201 blacks, but, ol and behold, we just can't find out who killed them.

I'll bet dollars to doughnut holes that every or virtually every killer was also black. This being an "inconvenient truth," to coin a phrase, to those who were beating the drum in the Trayvon Martin case, it's going to remain out of view.

Next time someone wants to play Al Sharpton by pointing out the "disproportionate" number of blacks on death row, we should remember this story. The people "disproportionately" on death row are the people who "disproportionately" commit murder. That's where the truth really lies.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jul 16, 2012 1:17:07 PM

The story doesn't give specific numbers, but it makes pretty clear that the majority of the offenders are other young black males. So I don't really see an issue here of hiding the ball.

But don't let me interrupt your previously scheduled rant at the usual liberal conspirators.

Posted by: Anon | Jul 20, 2012 3:36:51 PM

The first thing I thought of when I saw this story was the Trayvon Martin case. The media used that to a fare-thee-well in order to portray black teenagers as the prey of whites (

Posted by: Raiders Snapback | Sep 11, 2012 8:09:25 PM

Post a comment

In the body of your email, please indicate if you are a professor, student, prosecutor, defense attorney, etc. so I can gain a sense of who is reading my blog. Thank you, DAB