The spray and pray method isn’t effective as it used to be.
Via Guns
Despite yet another violence-filled weekend in the Windy City, statistics released from the police department last week suggest that while shootings are on the rise in Chicago, homicides are actually down for the first half of 2014, the Associated Press reports.
Over the Independence Day weekend, from Friday to Sunday, Chicago saw at least 50 people shot, seven fatally, bringing the total tally for the year so far to 1,129 shooting victims in the city – an 8 percent increase from this time last year. Over this same weekend last year, more than 70 were shot, 12 fatally.
Yet even as astounding as those numbers are, there still remains a positive side — the city reports a 5 percent decrease in murders, the fewest in the first half of the year for more than 50 years.
Nonetheless, there are some communities within the city that are more plagued with violence than others, and those cities have been part of the focus in an attempt to reduce the ever-growing violence.
“We looked at these communities, and we’ve put additional resources into these communities,” Robert Tracy, chief of crime control strategies for Chicago Police, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Those resources include not only additional law enforcement, but social services as well, Tracy said.
“We will keep building on our strategy, putting more officers on the street in summer months, proactively intervening in gang conflicts, partnering with community leaders,” Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said in a statement.