CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Violent crime is up across Chicago, but a new analysis finds that some neighborhoods are far more dangerous than others.
There have been 77 shootings, so far, in the 16 police beats that constitute downtown Chicago in 2021. That's triple the rate from 2019 and the largest percentage increase in shootings in the city.
But, a new Sun-Times analysis found that number is close to the number of shootings in just one police beat on the West Side, which has seen 62 shootings so far this year.
The per capita rate of shootings in the West Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side is 20 times the rate of downtown Chicago.
Additionally, the murder rate in the seven most dangerous police districts is 100 homicides per 100,000 residents. That's 30 times higher than the rate in the seven safest districts, where the rate fell to fewer than 4 per 100,000, according to an analysis by the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
The analysis found that the "safety gap" between mostly white, affluent neighborhoods and largely poor, Black, and Latino neighborhoods was wider than ever before.
The "safety gap" is higher now than during in the early 90's, when 800-900 people were murdered per year.
An analyst with the University of Chicago Crime Lab called it a tale of two cities, between downtown Chicago and some neighborhoods where the murder rate rivals violent countries in South America.
“People say it’s a tale of two cities: downtown is like Manhattan and the South and West sides have homicide rates comparable to violent South American countries,” said Kimberly Smith, director of programs for the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
Related
