Crime Down Again!

We heard that the CPD is actually importing crime nowadays just to keep up appearances:

• Even as violent murders and beatings make headlines across Chicago, police Supt. Jody Weis said violent crime is down 11 percent in the city and the murder rate so far this year is below the five-year average for the same time period.

  "While the public perception is that violence has increased to unprecedented levels, the facts do not support that conclusion," Weis said today.

So it's the media's fault that the "perception" of crime is up? Wow. And this?

• Homicides and motor vehicle thefts increased this year compared to the same time period last year. Other categories, including criminal sexual assault, robbery, arson and aggravated battery, saw decreases of 5 percent to 20 percent, police said.

  Homicides increased 8 percent from Jan. 1 to April 30, compared with the same time period last year, from 111 to 120 slayings, in part because of a spike of violence in April, Weis said.

You mean during that warm spell? Are we due any warm days soon? And that opening paragraph had this ridiculous statement:

• ...the murder rate so far this year is below the five-year average for the same time period.

When you can't prove crime dropped, fall back to the old "below the five-year average."

The more we see this guy spout statistics, the more we wonder. There were a dozen comments on the BreakingNews site and just about every one of them has a problem with J-Fled's numbers. We don't think we're imagining things - cops are trained BS detectors and we've been redlining since J-Fled got here.