Lies, Damn Lies...

And statistics:

• Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis on Friday hailed an 11 percent drop in homicides and a 9 percent dip in all crimes during the first seven months of 2009 as a "very encouraging" sign that his department's strategies are working.

  "I'm satisfied with the overall progress of the year," Weis said at police headquarters. "We've got a lot more to do."

  Through the first seven months of 2009, the city recorded 258 homicides, compared with 290 for the same period in 2008.

So we're down 32 homicides. Any reduction is a good thing, so congratulations. We must be doing something right.

Now looking at the stats a little deeper. The Sun Times article lists Homicide, CSA, Aggravated Assaults, Thefts and Motor Vehicle Thefts as down; Robbery and Arsons are up. Missing seems to be the Aggravated Battery stats.

ChicagoBreakingNews has a very short article, but it says the following:

• Supt. Jody Weis said at a news conference that overall violent crime is down 3.5 percent, but there has been an increase in shootings over last year. As of July, there had been 39 more shootings this year than last, he said.

Only up 39? That seems low. We've seen a marked increase in shootings, especially multiple shootings that the media is covering. CBS did a largish report on over 200 people being shot in July alone, but we're only up 39? Are the numbers being fudged a bit? Is the quoted stat only for July totals? Are "Death Investigations" trending upwards? And as some of our readers asked, Robberies with a "person shot" are classified under which UCR code?

There's a reason the FBI never used Chicago crime stats in their annual report covering national crime trends for years and years. Are they still not using the Chicago data?