Chicago Ties 2011 Mark for Homicides
With a couple of months still left to go in the year, Chicago has already managed to tie the 2011 mark for homicides.
The 435th killing was recorded Sunday night when a man was shot in the chest on the South Side, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Six people were killed over the weekend and 14 injured by gunfire, the newspaper reported.
Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy called the numbers disappointing. "You can't manage murder. One murder is too many, and if we ended the year with 400, that's 400 too many," McCarthy said. "Unfortunately we knew this time was coming. We got way behind at the beginning of the year, and unfortunately this is going to overshadow the progress that we're making."
McCarthy says those signs of progress include 5,500 individual recognizance bonds being denied to gang members in order to keep them in jail, 5,000 more gang members arrested this year than last year and more than 300 more gun seizures.
McCarthy says the month-to-month numbers are more encouraging, with October 2012 murders down 30 percent and shootings down 15 percent when compared to 2011.
McCarthy believes a requirement to report the loss or theft of a gun in Cook County will help stem the tide of illegal guns available to criminals. (msnbc.com)
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