It’s back. Namely, that specious argument that Chicago’s murder problem is nothing much to worry about because there’ve been other years when the total was considerably higher. The “So what? It used to be worse” argument is utter nonsense and callous, dehumanizing, and dangerous.
Yet in exactly this vein a Chicago columnist for Politico recently wrote that there is “a perception that crime remains a reality even when numbers show otherwise.” The columnist then further articulated that, after all, Chicago’s crime totals were higher in the late 1980s and 1990s than in 2022. In addition, the blog Capitol Fax approvingly highlighted the same defense – the dismissive view that crime concerns are exaggerated now because of greater media coverage and because “…many Chicagoans…don’t remember the 80s.”
But the “remember-the-bad-old-days” partisans evading present-day Chicago crime themselves forget some inconvenient data. In the 12 years covering 2004 through 2015, the city averaged 454 murders a year. That was versus 2022’s 695 criminal homicides in Chicago, the highest in the nation. That 12-year average of 454 annual murders should be the city’s immediate interim target. Not “less than 900.” Then aim for the 177 murders a year acknowledged in 2020 by Mayor Lightfoot in a major crime strategy report (p. 4) as a tough but important performance benchmark. Setting the bar at merely less than 900 homicides a year is effectively a way to rationalize murder. A lot of it, too. It’s a gold-plated invitation to the worst among us.
It’s true that the city’s all-time homicide highs were 970 in 1974, followed by 940 in 1992, and 930 in 1994. But cherry-picking some of the worst years in modern history from 30 to 50 years ago – plus two recent and anomalously high-crime years – in order to minimize Chicago’s nation’s-worst homicide total is an exercise in tone-deaf political spin.
Here are five reasons the argument to downplay Chicago’s still-outsize annual murder total is so wrong.
1. It glibly skates past the reality of hundreds of black men, women, and children being murdered in Chicago today, each year. It amounts to “these black lives don’t matter.” When Politico says there is “a perception that crime remains a reality even when numbers show otherwise,” it means Chicago’s 695 homicide victims of 2022 do not comprise “a reality” of crime. Their loved ones would beg to differ. “It’s not as bad as the 90s” is an affront to human decency.
2. It’s grossly inconsistent. Laquan MacDonald is everything, but 700 murders is nothing? Sorry. We can’t really have it both ways. On the one hand there is a rightful hue and cry and pledges to thoroughly investigate whenever a black or Latino man dies in an officer-involved shooting. Yet some of the very same voices want to downplay the 695 murders in Chicago in 2022. Murders mostly of black men. The only humane and responsible approach is to understand, to espouse, and to act upon the reality that all crime victims and particularly all homicide victims matter.
3. It’s illogical. Many of today’s Chicago violent crime and murder victims weren’t even born when those all-time record highs were set. Ask their grieving families and friends if they’re comforted by the higher homicide levels of 1974, 1992, or 1994. Today’s victims of homicide and other violent crimes in Chicago have known little but urban violence rising and falling each year, and then rocketing higher since mid-2020. To tell the city that crime today is not a urgent concern because annual murders aren’t running higher than totals in selected years or decades past is to forfeit any notion of civic improvement. It is also to turn tail on today’s competition between cities for residents, tourism, and employers – in which crime is a very real consideration.
4. It ignores data from the peaceful years of 2004 – 2015. Then there is the inconvenient Chicago murder data from the relatively peaceful years of 2004 through 2015 when murders averaged a lower 454 per year. Why should this not be the interim standard against which to measure 2022, and 2021, and 2020 murder totals in Chicago. Do we really want to wave proudly a flag that says: “Chicago: Another year of less than 970 murders”?
5. We should be aiming to do much better. Lightfoot herself voiced in 2020 the need to aim for 177 criminal homicides a year in Chicago to pull closer to New York and Los Angeles in homicide rate. That would put Chicago at 6.6 per 100,000, comparable to New York’s 2022 rate of 5.1 and better than L.A.’s 9.9. Instead, Chicago’s 2022 homicide rate was 25.8. That’s less disastrous than the city’s rate for 2020 – but far higher than 2010 or 2000 and not much better than 1980 or 1990. (Details in comments).
The argument that a third straight year of 700 murders or more in Chicago is somehow no great concern because it used to be worse is a vote to let our city rot and sink.
Anyone who supports such an idea has clearly cast their lot with the worried and self-interested political elite and against the people of Chicago. There should be no quarter, no relief, and no tolerance for this retrograde view.
It amounts to an endorsement of murder. That is, so long as there are not more than 900 of them a year.
