Chicago

The Brennan Center for Justice has just updated its annual crime report, and the surge in violent crime and murder rates across the country is somewhat staggering.  While the Brennan Center continues to downplay the YoY increases, saying "concerns about a national crime wave are still premature," the numbers seem to paint a different story with murder rates in the largest 30 U.S. cities expected to increase 15.5% in 2016.  Meanwhile, that number would be over 17% if the study reflected the most recent 2016 Chicago murder estimate of 800.

Submitted by via InternationalMan.com,

In 1871, a large portion of the city of Chicago burned to the ground. The Chicago Tribune attributed the fire to a cow owned by a Mrs. O’Leary. The Tribune stated that the cow kicked over a lantern as she was being milked, burning the barn and much of Chicago.

Fact or Fiction?

With cartridge accumulations reaching two feet or more in some areas, experts say Chicago is on track for the highest annual ammunition-depth total on record.

 

Promising that every effort would be made to limit the impact on residents’ day-to-day lives, Chicago officials announced Wednesday that a fleet of plows was working around the clock to clear more than 18 inches of fresh bullet casings that had blanketed the metropolitan area overnight.

 

I knew my involvement in civic matters in northwest Indiana would eventually take me to Gary, about 25 miles from my town of Valparaiso. As I’ve driven along Interstate 90 heading to and from Chicago, I’ve often peered down from the expressway into the city’s empty streets and dilapidated neighborhoods. For many long-time residents of the area, the town’s very name is an epithet for a landscape of failure and fear where it’s thought that no one stays who can find a way to leave.

We've covered the tragic events in Chicago quite extensively, most recently with the violence on Memorial Day weekend that helped lead to the deadliest May in 21 years for the city.

Now, the NYT gives us a glimpse of what takes place as residents just try to survive a weekend in the Windy City.

From the NYT