DDN (Chicago, IL) – With 573 homicides in 2024, Chicago remained the country’s homicide capital for the 13th year in a row.
Ted Dabrowski, president of Wirepoints, sees that as a disease that has been left untreated for too long.
At 21.5 murders per 100,000 people, Chicago had the highest murder rate per capita among large cities, three times more than Los Angeles and almost five times higher than New York City, despite a decline in the nation’s overall murder rates.
“It means we have a real problem and we’re sick,” Dabrowski told The Center Square. “Until we get serious, this murder problem is going to be a drag on the city in terms of attracting people, attracting businesses and, worse, it’s going to keep chasing people away and chasing businesses away. It’s something we have to get our hands around.”
Dabrowski continues by saying that although Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson frequently claims that crime is declining in the city, the reality is that crime is declining nationwide, but not nearly as much in Chicago.
“It’s true the crime is down somewhat, but it’s down dramatically across the country,” he said. “It’s barely down here. You’ve got places like Jacksonville where murders are down 50%. You’ve got places like Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., where it’s down 30 to 35%. Our murders are only down 8%. We’re just part of the national wave, but we’re almost not participating in that national wave.”
Overall, fewer murders occurred in 19 of the top 20 cities for total homicides in 2024 compared to the previous year.
“It’s kind of sickening that we don’t think that we need to have rule of law,” Dabrowski said. “We have a mayor that makes apologies for kids doing big crimes as they’re just being kids; we’ve had a state’s attorney that has refused to prosecute in the way that she should and we have a really low arrest rate, which is a big result of low police morale due to city officials that don’t support police. It’s a broken chain of criminal justice.”
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