Only eight days into the month, Chicago’s homicides were only four short of the total from February of last year.
A Chicago Tribune feature on Tuesday reported that 16 people had been killed through the first eight days of February 2016. In all, 330 residents have been shot since Jan. 1; 73 of those died.
For years, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and now-departed police superintendent Garry McCarthy attempted to create the impression that Chicago’s homicide rate was under control by employing a combination of number-fudging, changing definitions and deferring dates of death. However, twice as many people have been shot by violent criminals in 2016 than at this time in 2015, a rate too alarming to disguise.
