Homicides Down by 30

Interesting take on the various news outlets. We started by reading BreakingNews:

• The number of homicides in Chicago decreased nearly 13 percent through June and the city saw a greater than 10 percent drop in overall crime, compared to the same time period last year, Chicago police announced today.

  Chicago ended June with fewer than 200 homicides since the beginning of the year for the first time in recent memory, police said. Between 2004 and 2008, Chicago experienced its lowest five-year totals for homicides since the early 20th century, and the city is below that pace this year.

We had to read the whole article twice, but guess what was missing? Something like an actual number of killings might have helped. All BreakingNews would say is "under 200." How childish. We had to go to the Sun Times to get the actual number:

• There were 199 homicides in the first six months of the year in the city, compared to 229 from January through June of last year.

Was that so hard? It's like pulling teeth. A few more tidbits from the press conference:

• Weis admitted that the wet, cold spring may have contributed to the decline in crime, but he noted that Chicago has also seen several fair weather weekends. He said he doesn’t like to use weather as an excuse — good or bad.

Even though the New York Times has finally noticed that weather has a measurable effect on crime, that's not good enough for J-Fed.

• He said police are using intelligence better and “putting our folks where they need to be.” So far this year Police have confiscated 4,031 guns — nearly one gun every hour.

And we're going to go out on a limb and say that's about a 1,000 less than previous years, 1,500 less than in some other years. We're also going to speculate that part of the reduction in crime is people aren't waiting around an hour-and-a-half to fill out a report. If it isn't reported, it never happened. We haven't noticed a let up in RAP-backlogs yet.

And missing from these reports is the number of people shot. As we related, 132 people were shot in Chicago last week. That's close to "one shot an hour" to go along with J-Fed's nearly "one gun an hour" comment. And that seems more than a little on the high side.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.