Chicago Records 1,901 Shooting Victims So Far This Year, 1,460 Since Lockdown Began

Chicago has recorded 1,901 shooting victims so far this year, with 1,460 of these people having been shot since the state's coronavirus lockdown began on March 21.

Citywide gun violence data, which is meticulously compiled by the Chicago Tribune, shows there are 550 more shooting victims this year compared with the same period in 2019. The shooting statistics apply to January 1 through July 11, however, and at least 64 people were shot in the Greater Chicago area this past weekend alone. Since Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker issued a statewide stay-at-home order on March 21, at least 1,460 people have been shot in gun violence incidents.

In early April, the Chicago Police Department told Newsweek that social distancing restrictions weren't likely to create much shift in the pattern of potential criminality or gun violence. But the summer months always produce a spike in criminal activity and shootings in nearly every major U.S. city.

The vast majority of Chicago's shootings, both fatal and non-fatal, occurred in neighborhoods in the city's South and West sides, police data shows. Among the city's 50 most recent shooting victims, at least eight were 18 or younger. Of the at least 506 homicides that occurred throughout all of 2019, 408 of the victims were Black, Chicago Sun-Times data shows. So far this year, Chicago has recorded 376 homicides since January 1.

According to the Tribune gun violence data, there were more shooting victims recorded during both 2016 and 2017 during this same seven-month period, but those were two of the worst years of Chicago gun violence since the 1990s.

The Tribune data also shows that this past weekend marked the fourth consecutive one in which a child younger than 6 was gunned down fatally.

Newsweek reached out the city's police department for comment and was referred to the statistics on its website.

This past Friday, Chicago Police Department Chief David Brown spoke to residents of a Woodlawn neighborhood on the South Side and detailed a new Summer Mobile Patrol policing initiative intended to combine community and law enforcement action.

"If it's just the police, it won't work. We need a collaboration with other people in the community.... [We] will be aggressively enforcing the law as it relates to people caught with guns, people doing violent crime, but that is not the end-all, be-all in reducing violence."

In this past weekend's shootings of at least 64 people, 13 were fatal. Those deaths included 15-year-old Terrance Malden, who was shot in the South Deering neighborhood, also on the South Side. He died at the University of Chicago Medical Center Friday evening after a car pulled up and fired multiple shots that struck him in the back, the Sun-Times reported. On Sunday, three teenagers were shot within a 30-minute time period across the city.

This year's Fourth of July weekend saw at least 70 people shot, 14 of whom died.