Rahm Denies ‘World-Class-City’ Chicago is ‘Murder Capitol’

In August, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual told a politico reporter that ““The narrative is: We’re the murder capital. Not close.” This statement followed the 4th of July weekend when 80 people were shot and 14 killed.

Statistically, Chicago ranks 21st in murders per capita. But the study isn’t using an apples to apples comparison:

Emanuel appears to base his conclusion on a study ranking Chicago 21st in terms of its per capita murder rate. However, this ranking compares Chicago (population 2.7 million) to towns with populations as low as 100,000. While apples-to-apples in terms of using rates instead of numbers of crimes, it isn’t apples-to-apples to compare a big city with small towns.

Emanuel further noted that violent crime is down for the first seven months of 2014. However, Chicago’s situation doesn’t appear so favorably when its murder rates are compared to those of other cities and the country, year-in and year-out, over time, from 1985 through 2012. Since the early 1990s, Chicago’s murder rate has been significantly higher than the aggregate rate of other cities of comparable size.

When compared to other large cities (pop of 1 million or more), Chicago murder rates are consistently higher.

National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action 

Shooting incidents in Chicago are up 4% from 2013 and there were 51 murders in August.