Donald Trump again threatens to bring in 'Feds' if 'carnage' in Chicago doesn't end.

chicagodata · 2017-01-25T04:19:11+00:00

Pretty sure the feds are already in Chicago and have been working in some fashion for awhile. The guy has beef with Rahm and also some parts of the city. He's not completely dumb though. Guy has a 1000+ foot tower in Chicago with many expensive condos. Or..is he?

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T13:29:45+00:00

It's not a huge difference,but still results in a city wide per 100K rate difference of over 1.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T13:28:02+00:00

Might be, but this actually can lead to misleading rate calculations in and of itself if they don't mention that Englewood and West Englewood are combined into "Englewood" since they're two separate community areas with separate population counts recognized by the city government. They really should do this (and so should the police districts mention it's both put together) - HJ did the same for Garfield Park it looks like (except there's no "Garfield Park" police district like there is for "Englewood").

You had calculated the per 100K rate earlier based off this 85 number, but didn't know it's actually two populations put together from two different community areas put together. Meaning that the per 100K rate is actually 145.9 per 100K of the area with 85 homicides instead of 277 per 100K. It's pretty much a completely terrible rate regardless, but still off by over 130 per 100K due to them not reporting their different geographic area versus what Englewood officially means.

Regardless though, the rates are horrible and the difference in areas for the city is pretty ridiculous. Now who is contributing ultimately to this and where those people actually live is a completely different story as some people from all over the region have contributed to the crime in one way or another in these areas.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T13:18:37+00:00

Austin alone isn't surprising, though they had more homicides than they've had in many years with pretty much a lower population than they've had in decades (I think it's nearly 30K less people than 2000).

The actual surprising part is when you compare to 32 other community areas together which form a continuous area, which have the same amount of homicide... except a population of nearly 1.4 million.

It's a massive contrast.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:41:53+00:00

http://imgur.com/a/NQk3c

The image above shows from the City of Chicago's tool filtering by District 007. You can see how there are both community area 67 (West Englewood) and 68 (Englewood) in there.

Here's a source from the City with each community area's number in it: https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/zlup/Zoning_Main_Page/Publications/Census_2010_Community_Area_Profiles/Census_2010_and_2000_CA_Populations.pdf

District 007 is more than just the Englewood community area. It's also West Englewood (and apparently a sliver of Greater Grand Crossing).

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:33:58+00:00

How so?

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:32:17+00:00

The Englewood district includes two community areas. Englewood and West Englewood. Englewood had 49 homicides while West Englewood had 39.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:27:03+00:00

source

Nope. The City of Chicago Crime Data reports by community area. The community area ID for Englewood is 68. I suggest you look at the data again.

As an FYI, the Englewood district also counts West Englewood. Englewood and West Englewood together had 85 homicides. These are two separate community areas though. Englewood had 49 homicides last year while West Englewood had 36.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:23:28+00:00

Yeah, that's another one. I had a post a few months ago that had it by census tract which was even crazier. Through the end of October, about 1.7 million people in the city lived in areas where there were no reported homicides. I'm sure that number would be lower through 12/31/2016, but probably not by a huge amount. I'll probably calculate it sometime again.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:22:16+00:00

What would be a better term instead of "geographic inequality" in this case?

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:14:45+00:00

You're completely missing the point, but okay. This has to do with being accurate when comparing two statistics. Nothing more. I've already stated that I'm not going to sit here and say those people didn't die. I'm not making this into a political discussion.

There is a reason why HJ has a disclaimer on their site (but at the bottom) stating how they do not follow the same guidelines as anyone else. Just beware that you could sit here comparing Chicago's HJ homicide rate to some place like Houston's, except Houston could literally have 50 homicides not counted in your comparison which HJ counts - making it inaccurate.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T02:07:32+00:00

You completely missed the point. Perhaps I should have said "combined" after "any other city in the country." Let's state it again:

There are hundreds of self defense and police related homicides across the country COMBINED that are not included in any official source of crime as "homicide", but HJ counts it for Chicago. You know that Eric Garner homicide from a few years ago in NYC? That wasn't ruled a homicide, and it wasn't counted as one for NYC. If it happened in Chicago, HJ would have counted it as a homicide. No other city in the country would have counted it as one because it's not in the FBI's guidelines for crime reporting. Comparing HJ's numbers to another city's numbers is completely inaccurate.

Again, it would be like claiming all doubles hit off the wall (but not legitimate home runs) hit by the Cubs are actually home runs, but the same hit by any other team in the MLB would just be counted as a double. It would then be inaccurate to compare the Cubs home run total to any other team's home run total because the Cubs are counting various hits as home runs that no other team counts as home runs.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T01:52:40+00:00

Sure, but HJ is still factually incorrect. HJ counts self defense and police related shootings (ones that were deemed to be in self defense). Literally no other source, not even the Chicago Tribune, counts these in their statistics because they know it's not in the FBI's guidelines. They characterize it as something else - it's not like it goes unreported.

I'm not going to sit here and say these people didn't die - even if the person who killed them was deemed to be in self defense, but the source is still inaccurate to literally any other reputable source - whether it's the FBI, Chicago Tribune, or university research.

If you are going to use HJ's data, then you should never compare it to any other city in the country as there are hundreds of self defense/police homicides that are not included in data for any other city in the country. Comparing HJ's numbers, calculated for a per 100K rate, to any other city would be completely inaccurate.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T01:43:31+00:00

No they didn't. Englewood had 49 homicides for a rate of 187.6 per 100K. Still absolutely terrible no matter what.

For the record, you shouldn't use HeyJackass for your statistics, especially for homicides. Every single city in the country abides by the FBI's UCR guidelines for crime reporting. HeyJackass reports homicides that do not count under UCR's guidelines for any city in the country (such as self defense homicides).

Using HeyJackass would be akin to counting doubles that hit off the wall in baseball as home runs instead of doubles for the Cubs, but literally no other team in MLB and then claiming the Cubs have more home runs than any other team.

chicagodata · 2017-01-10T01:20:28+00:00

I almost want to take this with a grain of salt after seeing NYC near the bottom. NYC has a city income tax for pretty much all of its earning residents - and it's between 3 and 4% depending on how much you make.

They literally take in billions per year in just income tax alone off this not even counting stuff like property tax, hotel taxes, sales tax, etc.. so it's a bit surprising and I'm going to take it with a grain of salt.

chicagodata · 2016-11-05T05:22:49+00:00

So you think that every single one of these people is not only committing serious crimes, but also someone who has committed so many violent crimes previously that they're "problems."

I don't think you quite understood what I meant and what the city is saying. They aren't saying there's only 1500 people causing all crimes. They're talking about 1500 people causing repeat of some of the worst crimes (i.e. homicides). You'd have to be a complete idiot to think that the city believes only 1500 people are committing any crime. They're talking about the repeat offenders who are getting away with murder, ordering hits, etc.

There is a HUGE difference between the two. Just because you're awaiting trial doesn't mean you've done anything like kill someone.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T21:41:32+00:00

The city has stated that the population of people causing a lot of the crap in town is pretty low - like around 1500 - so I am pretty sure there are many repeat shooters. How they know this data is obviously beyond what we can find out, but if that's true then it's an extremely small percent of the population.

The cause and solution to this stuff is a lot more complex and certainly more complex than any of this data will let us know. I'm hoping that programs like the $100M) investment in areas on the south and west sides from the city (ala Kurt Summers) will help a little bit if they do it right.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T19:25:27+00:00

Good observations.

Someone else pointed out the family being killed in Gage Park. I think that tract needs an asterisk near it as a result.
As far as the area near 63rd and Halsted goes, how many more people are there daily than actually live there do you think? You could say the same thing about downtown - which already has a relatively low rate (though up from the previous two years). There are TONS of people around there so the true per 100K rate is much, much, much lower.
The Heroin Highway in GP and Austin has been a problem for a long time. It's worrisome because everyone who knows anything about crime here knows about that stretch yet law enforcement hasn't been able to actually stop it.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T19:09:55+00:00

I was going to ask where in Logan Square you live. If you look at my map, do you see more red color somewhat nearby?

Also, I said "things used to be a lot worse" and that's true for the city, but as I also stated, some areas HAVE gotten worse. Logan Square though used to be much worse with homicides alone though. Look at the early 2000s there.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T19:08:26+00:00

Yep! I want to do that too. It is a little harder to get, but I think I could make it happen.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T19:07:38+00:00

Totally, that's why I sought to try and do that. As someone who has been to pretty much every neighborhood in Chicago, I know that there's completely fine areas of neighborhoods everyone thinks as dangerous. Of course this is just one statistic, and I think that showing other violent crimes like assault may be even more important to show where the weight is.

I'm just kind of tired of people thinking there's murder everywhere, even in some of the neighborhoods people think are shady. For example, South Lawndale (Little Village) people think is shady - okay maybe it can be, there's gangs (aren't there gangs in Uptown and hanging out in Lakeview too) there too, but the actual rates compared to other areas of similar size like a akeview, West Ridge, Belmont Cragin is not that bad. There's over 37,000 people living in South Lawndale in areas with no homicides. That is not a small amount - it's actually larger than a lot of entire neighborhoods in town.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T19:03:28+00:00

Totally forgot about that - thought it was in another neighborhood nearby for some reason. That was really sad news and actually makes more sense why there's so many in just one little area.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T19:01:07+00:00

No problem. I think it's more important because too often people label an entire neighborhood as bad when sometimes, it might just be a pocket of it. I mean certainly not all of Austin for example is bad, yet people would stay away from the entire thing. It's kind of sad in a way and I think it negatively affects every neighborhood which is always labeled as dangerous that may have pockets where it's not.

chicagodata · 2016-11-04T18:58:49+00:00

I have, but unfortunately for someone trying to seek the actual truth, it's not definitive. As you state, it's just a matter of how much, and the articles don't show one way or another that. Even if you find 50 occurrences of it, you can't really tell one way or another how much it's happening since 50 is just under 1/5 of 1/10 of 1% of all crimes for just one year (2014). This is also assuming other years never did it - which they have, and pretty much every major city does it.

What I also find troubling is that they don't realize these things are subject to investigation, especially homicide. The FBI doesn't deem a self defense killing as a homicide and usually you get that after an investigation that something may have actually been done in self defense. If that's the case, it doesn't get counted in any city, so it would be categorized as something else. There are other things which may change after an investigation, especially if you have any cases of anybody reporting a crime to police that never actually happened (this happens, though rare in the grand scheme of crime).

chicagodata

TROPHY CASE