Most of those I’m familiar with, but I was surprised to learn that Peoria, Illinois, has a much higher murder rate than Chicago. Chicago can improve quite a lot. But it’s not the death-infested-hell-hole the Right makes it out to be.
“Chicago” has been synonymous with gun violence here in Israel for as long as I remember; I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the same elsewhere around the world. The thing is, I don’t think it has much to do with the city’s current racial makeup, which few foreigners have much knowledge of. Instead, I suspect that it goes back to Prohibition and Al Capone and the thousands of violent gangster movies that Hollywood has inundated the world with. When non-Americans think of violence in Chicago, they don’t think gangbangers - they think tommy guns.
I live about 30 miles from Highland Park.
I am ashamed to say that my first reaction to the news was, “Well, given how things are going these days, shooting up an Independence Day parade almost seems like a very American thing.”
In general, the large liberal cities have much lower crime rates than mid-sized “red state” cities, despite the conservative gaslighting.
Doing back of the envelope math, the city in NC where I live had a murder rate in 2021 3.5x the murder rate in NYC, and it’s similar to other cities in the region.
Comparing crime rates honestly can be tricky because there are a lot of confounding factors. One factor is the size of the incorporated city proper relative to the size of the metro area. St. Louis (with a murder rate 35 times that of NYC) has a population of less than 350,000, while the St. Louis metro area has a population over 2 million and it’s a little unfair to compare that crime rate with the crime rate of a region where more than 80% of the “metro area” population is located inside the city limits.
But even correcting for that, liberal large cities are generally way safer than red state mid-major cities. When I compared the crime rate of my city to NYC, I took into account that both places have about the same percentage of the “metro area” population located inside the city limits,
Peoria looks pretty variable. The problem is that the murder rate per 100,000 citizens, and Peoria is just a little bit more than 100,000 people. You back one year, with 10 less murders, and it doesn’t even make this list.
Lies, damn lies and statistics. This is a great example.
If you live in a town of 10 people and one person gets murdered you have a 10,000 in 100,000 murder rate which puts you off the linked list by miles.
The question then becomes, is there a better way to measure it?
And maybe they’re right.
I wondered about an anti-Semitic reason too but absolutely no one else was mentioning it.
That’s my reaction as well. I don’t think racism.
So news stories report that in September 2019, the police responded to a report by a family member that the suspect said he was going to “kill everyone” by visiting the home and they removed “16 knives, a dagger and a sword” from the house. But of course that did nothing to prevent him from obtaining firearms.
We need laws like these (at the federal level) but I doubt they have any chance of passing (and given the current SCOTUS will likely be deemed unconstitutional):
Police say there was no racial or religious motive (I only just saw this and it was too late to edit my previous post):
Yeah – when I lived in Europe back in at least the late 90s/early 00s, the reputation for Chicago and violence was more born of Al Capone, not black street gangs. Perhaps the perception has changed in that time, but I had never gotten the impression during my years there that there was a racial component to the thought of Chicago as a violent city. (Of course, by that time, mentioning Chicago was more likely to get replies of “Michael Jordan?” than “bang bang Al Capon-ay,” though the latter did get mentioned from time to time.
I mean, yeah, sure, of course, but once you get to 100K+ population cities, it starts becoming comparable.
I think that has changed significantly, especially if you’re younger and/or into rap. It’s been nearly a century since Capone’s heyday, and the Capone/prohibition gangster movies were most popular in what, the eighties? If you talk about violence in Chicago I’m much more likely to think of the once-popular term “Chiraq” (Chicago + Iraq) and right-wing talking points about “inner city” crime and black-on-black violence.
Sure, but I’d be surprised if a European is using “Chicago” as a dog whistle for “black-on-black” crime. I’m not saying they’re completely unaware of it – it’s a pretty interconnected world these days – I’ve just never come across it, and I still keep in contact with a lot of people on the other side of the pond.
And why the use of “affluent neighborhood”? Does violence only occur in the po’ parts of town?
Well everywhere on the planet the poor neighborhoods have more crime than the rich ones. The pro-gun lobby however has the idea that the gun murders that happen in poorer, majority non-white, neighborhoods are not the fault of US gun policy (even though there are far more of them than in other western countries that have poor, majority non-white neighboorhoods). Hence the knee-jerk reaction when this happened of just “Oh thats Chicago being Chicago” (translation: black people being the victim of gun violence, and hence nothing to do with guns). Even though it happened in a very rich, majority white neighborhood.
When I was in Europe in the early 90s the most common reaction to, “I am from Chicago” was asking about Michael Jordan.
My parents however, who were on that trip with me, noted that they remembered earlier trips (60s/70s) where they were asked about Capone.
YMMV
“California Cool” by Mike McClellan:
I wonder what it’s like in old Chicago.
Are the streets still full of gangsters with a gun?
I heard they shoot on sight in old Chicago.
I know if someone stared, I’d turn and run.
Do they still wear hats with their brims so low and stick their hands in overcoats?
Does Cagney haunt the bars there late at night?
I’ve seen it all on TV shows, I’ve rode the rods to old Skid Row.
Chicago, I might never see your face.