39,000 homicides: Retracing 60 years of murder in Chicago
By Kyle Bentle, Jonathon Berlin, Ryan Marx and Kori RumoreContact Reporters Homicide Crime Julian King Garry McCarthy Eddie Johnson U.S. Department of Justice Darnell Donerson
The spike in violent crime that has plagued Chicago since 2016 has even more gravity when viewed in comparison with six decades of homicides in Chicago. Since 1957, the city has had homicide totals of 700 or more nearly half the time, 27 of 60 years, and has been lower than 500 a third of the time, 19 of 60 years. To understand this long-term view, the Tribune asked two experts to give perspective as to what was behind Chicago crime decade by decade, and combed through news coverage going back to the 1960s. The Tribune turned to John Hagedorn, a professor of criminology at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has written extensively on Chicago's gangs as well as Wyndell Watkins, a retired Washington, D.C., deputy chief of police with more than 40 years of public safety experience.............