The murder rate in Chicago fell by 13% in 2023 when compared to 2022. Expect a lot of crowing about how the liberals in charge of the Windy City are “fixing” everything based on this statistic. This is important because Chicago will be home to the Democrat National Committee meeting later this year to nominate (probably) Joe Biden again. They need a victory they can point to somewhere, and a slightly falling murder rate in Chicago is better than having to talk about the Biden economy. People shouldn’t fall for this, however. Chicago has been hell on earth for the past 12 years because of Democrat policies.
Chicago recorded 617 murders in 2023, compared to 709 the year before. While that is a 13% decrease year-to-year, the murder rate for the entire country fell by 13% in 2023. Chicago still had more bodies hit the ground last year than any other American city. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans saw their murder rates fall between 21 and 31% last year. Most big cities in America, in fact, recorded larger drops in their homicide numbers than Chicago. (The only exception is Memphis, which saw its murder rate increase.)
New York City and Los Angeles are both larger than Chicago population-wise. Digging into the numbers, Chicago’s murder rate actually swamps that of the two larger cities.
New York City is three times the size of Chicago, but it only had 386 murders in 2023. Los Angeles has a population that is 1.2 million larger than Chicago, and they recorded 328 murders. So, while Chicago’s murder rate may have fallen by 13% in 2023, its 617 murders still led the nation for the 12th year in a row.
When you look at the murder rates per capita, the situation in Chicago is even more bleak. Chicago had 23.2 murders per 100,000 people in 2023. New York City, which has three times the population as Chicago, had only 4.6 murders per 100,000. The Los Angeles murder rate was 8.6 per 100,000. Chicago’s per capita murder rate, in other words, is about three times higher than that of Los Angeles and a staggering five times higher than New York City.
If Chicago had the same murder rate as New York City, they would have only had 121 murders in 2023 rather than 617.
Even though Chicago saw a slight improvement in 2023, the numbers are still much worse than they were before the George Floyd racial reckoning of 2020, when Democrats decided that black neighborhoods shouldn’t have police in them. Chicago only had 500 murders in 2019. After the cops decided to retreat to the donut shop because it’s not worth risking your career over a George Floyd incident, the murder rate skyrocketed in Democrat-run cities.
Thanks to George Floydism, Chicago jumped from 500 murders in 2020 to 772, 800, and 709 over the next three years.
While Democrats are patting themselves on the back for the 13% drop in murders in 2023, what they’re not mentioning is that other violent crimes were 16% higher than in 2022. Sexual assault, aggravated battery, and thefts all increased by 3 to 6%. Robberies in Chicago increased by 23%, and grand theft auto increased by a whopping 37%.
Democrats can brag all they want about improving life for Chicagoans, but that doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground. The Democrats’ “Defund the Police” movement has gotten far more black Americans killed than if they had allowed the cops to just continue doing their jobs.
