Do You Believe Chicago Is Cooking The Murder Rate??

Question

Any yall seen the Wire on HBO? Well it seems like there is something to the plot in the fictional show about cops hiding murders. The CPD came under fire when a scandal broke out last year about the dissapearing murders that had been reclassified to non homicides. All this wouldnt seem like much, but considering how homicides dropped over night from what was america's muder capital makes you wonder. Then I noticed something funny ealier when I was reading the paper. They admitted murders were up a little from 05, but the murder figure they gave in the article for 05 WAS NOT the same official number CPD released for that year. It was a larger number, thus masking some of the increase from 06. It was also kinda weird how murders went up for the first time in a couple years AFTER the scandal broke. The whole vibe of the city feels different since then. As if their control is failing to what it was back in the day. Peeps just dont even give a *** about them anymore just like the old days.

Answer 1

First of all The Wire is fiction.

I'm sure there are a multitude of murders that are classified as something else, such as accidental overdose or self-inflicted gun shot wound (GSW) that were really intentional acts caused by other persons. I'm also sure that this happens in every major municipality with a murder problem. I'm sure Cleveland OH will be categorizing practically unsolvable murders this way soon because it was just announced that Cleveland's murder rate is 4 times the national average.

Here's what you can do: file an open records law request for official numbers of all homicides and unintentional deaths in Chicago or the county. Do that every year and keep your own numbers. Also you could contact the news outlet that has the different number than you think was reported earlier and see if they know about the discrepancy.