For Chicago, 2016 closed out as the deadliest year in two decades.
And it seems as if 2017 may be setting up to become just as grim; the Chicago Tribune reports that shootings and homicides in the Windy City are higher than they were this time last January.
According to the report, as of early Monday, at least 228 people have been shot so far this year, a 5.5 percent increase from the 216 that had been shot within the same time period last year. There have also been at least 42 homicides, marking a 23.5 percent jump from the 34 homicides that occurred during the same period in 2016.
As the Tribune notes, Chicago closed out January 2016 with 50 homicides, the most for the month in the city in at least 16 years. The year ended with 783 homicides, the most since 1996.
This January, the city has already seen several violent weekends. Over New Year’s weekend, 55 people were shot, five of whom were fatally wounded. The following weekend, two people were killed and seven injured in shootings.
Over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, 39 people were shot, 10 of whom were killed. And over this past weekend, 54 people were shot, six of them fatally.
The grim data came out just days before President Donald Trump sent out a series of tweets taking aim at the city, telling it to fix the “horrible carnage” going on or he would send in the feds.
Lord knows what that means, but it doesn’t sound as if it would be a solution (to use the word lightly) that anyone should look forward to.
Read more at the Chicago Tribune.