Homicides are Now Up

That's the trouble with tooting your own horn - eventually, it's going to bite you in the ass:

• Homicides in Chicago rose in March following two months of decline, according to statistics released Friday, yielding a 4.3 percent overall increase for the first three months of the year. The increase follows a double-digit decrease reported through the end of February. Violent crime overall, however, dropped by almost 15 percent. Police Superintendent Jody Weis said the department was cracking down on illegal parties that draw large crowds. Such a gathering led to at least one shooting last week on the South Side, police said. Weis also said that the department would be announcing safety initiatives for the summer in coming weeks.

All it took was one single weekend in the 80's for the downward trend to become an upward swing and who knows how far J-Fled would have had to flee to escape that bad news. Once again, the weather holds off what could have been a real disaster. Tom Skilling deserves all the credit here.

On a side note, we'd advise the J-Fled policy group to hold off on those "safety initiatives" announcements seeing as how underwhelming the "spring break safety initiatives" went over last week.

Gotta run.