BY KALEY FOWLER
Homicide Watch Chicago
Chicago finished July with 39 murders, a significant decrease compared to Julys of recent years.
The 39 killings were a 17 percent decrease from 2013, when 47 people were murdered in July, according to police data. It was also a 20 percent decrease from 2012 and a 29 percent decrease from 2011, when 55 people were murdered in July.
This year, 13 of the 39 murders happened over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, when at least 58 other people were shot and wounded. However, the second half of the month was far less violent and had two four-day stretches without a homicide.
Overall, police reported 210 murders in the first seven months of 2014 — a 7 percent decrease from the 227 killings in the first seven months of 2013 and a 30 percent decrease from 302 slayings over the same period in 2012.
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A 58-year-old man has been charged with reckless homicide for a crash involving a CTA bus that killed 71-year-old Frank Kiley Wednesday morning in the Edgewater neighborhood.
Vladimir Tsemekhman was also cited for reckless driving and not practicing due care towards a pedestrian in the roadway, police said.
Tsemekhman was allegedly speeding north on Sheridan Road when he failed to stop at a traffic light and caused a chain-reaction crash involving four other vehicles at 11:12 a.m. Wednesday, police said.
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BY DANIEL KAY HERTZ
danielkayhertz.com
Mayor Rahm Emanuel reacted to Chicago’s particularly violent Fourth of July weekend as he, and many other public figures, have many times before. It’s one of my least-favorite bits of Chicago rhetoric.
Emanuel said gun violence plaguing the city must be addressed in a variety of ways, which he said included policing, tougher gun laws, more investment to help children in impoverished neighborhoods and instilling a “shared sense of purpose and values” in communities across Chicago.
Right: similarly, the Mexican drug war began in 2006 when Mexicans suddenly found themselves without a shared sense of purpose and values.
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Photo by Jessica Koscielniak
BY STEVE BOGIRA
Chicago Reader
Chicago’s homicide rate has drawn headlines this year, locally and nationally, and not without reason. Through July, 308 people had been slain here, 27 percent more than in the first seven months of 2011.
Every life lost to homicide is a tragedy, of course — and a sense that the life was unfairly taken often heightens the pain. Compounding the unfairness, residents of certain neighborhoods are far more likely to suffer that fate.
We illustrated this last month by comparing homicide rates in two sets of Chicago communities — the five poorest and the five least poor. The homicide rate in the poorest neighborhoods was 11 times the rate in the least-poor neighborhoods.
And if that isn’t unfair enough, poverty — and especially the concentration of poverty that segregation causes — kills disproportionately in nonviolent ways as well.
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Police investigate a July 6 shooting / Photo by Alex Wroblewski
BY RICK TELANDER
Chicago Sun-Times Sports Columnist
Some things stop you in your tracks, even if you’re just a sportswriter.
Over the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, 13 people were killed and 58 wounded from gun violence.
We’re talking from Thursday to early Monday morning.
Stunned local and national news outlets compared Chicago to a war zone — an ongoing war zone, that is, because the carnage never seems to end and the same editorials about reckless gun violence in this city seem to be produced month after month, year after year.
I almost chuckled, ruefully.
Chicago is worse than a war zone.
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