Chicago endured one of its deadliest years in at least the last quarter-century in 2021, according to Chicago Police Department data, information from other law enforcement and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
According to case data from the medical examiner released Monday, that office handled more than 1,000 homicides last year, including 836 in the City of Chicago. It was the first time the office had handled that many homicides since 1994, it reported.
According to the medical examiner, Blacks were the victims of 80% of the homicides handled by the office. More than 1,000 homicides here were gun-related, the office said. All told, there were at least 4,300 gunshot victims, including those who suffered both fatal and non-fatal injuries, according to CPD data. The number is a significant increase from 2018, when 2,800 people were shot.
The increase in violence also came as police departments nationwide found themselves under intense criticism in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by an on-duty Minneapolis police officer. There were specific bright spots in the Chicago data, with police districts that have long suffered from high violence posting noteworthy declines in homicides over the one-year period between 2020 and 2021. Those include Austin on the West Side and Englewood and South Chicago on the South Side, according to department data.
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