Chicago is expected to see more than 600 homicides this year. This is the second time the nation’s third largest city will reach the milestone since 2003.
As of this past weekend, the ‘Second City’s’ homicide total stands at 593, the Chicago Tribune reports. This weekend saw five fatal shootings.
The Chicago Police Department has a different total, 581, because it does not include homicides committed on expressways or by police officers determined to have been justified in their use of force.
The news comes after US President Donald Trump made comments early in his presidency painting Chicago as a ‘war zone’.
The city of Chicago is expected to top 600 homicides this year. The total of this past weekend stood, depending on methodologies, at 593 or 581
Police are pictured searching for evidence after a man was shot in the nation’s third largest city in may 2017
Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel (at the podium) is pictured speaking about the latest police districts to start wearing body cameras during a news conference on October 30
This time last year, the total was at 681. By the year’s end, the total climbed to 762, which was significantly higher than years past.
October 2017 was the eighth straight month that gun violence declined, ABC News reports.
The homicide total was about 30 percent less than that of October 2016. A year-to-date comparison indicates that incidents of gun violence – including fatal and non-fatal shootings – is down 18 percent this year versus 2016.
Police told ABC that the decline could be attributed in part to their use of ‘predictive policing’ in specific areas.
The major takeaway from the data is that this year’s level of violence is significantly less than last year’s, but is still higher than years prior.
Community activists gather near a small memorial outside a liquor store on the South Side of Chicago, where Willie Cooper was fatally shot this past July
This year’s homicide numbers in the ‘Second City’ are noticeably lower than last years but are nonetheless significantly higher than years prior
Much of the gun violence in Chicago is concentrated in specific neighborhoods on the vast city’s South Side.
The news comes after President Donald Trump repeatedly brought up Chicago’s gun violence during the first few months of his presidency.
During his first week as US President, for example, he threatened to send federal agents into the city to try to quell the violence.
Donald Trump has previously likened Chicago to a ‘war zone’. Pictured at right is the Trump International Hotel and Tower in the city
Donald Trump has tweeted about Chicago’s gun violence on multiple occasions
In an interview with ABC’s David Muir this past January, he said: ‘Chicago is like a war zone. Chicago is worse than some of the people that you report in some of the places that you report about every night.’
In June, he tweeted: ‘Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!’
The city’s statistics have been a sore point in the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, who has been in office since 2011.