Chicago police shootings down in 2015

CHICAGO — While the video release of a Chicago police officer’s shooting of Laquan McDonald in 2014 prompted protests in 2015 against police violence, the city’s officers shot fewert people in 2015 than in recent years.

Chicago police officers shot 22 people last year, eight of them fatally, compared with 2014, when 37 people were hit by police gunfire and 16 of them were killed, according to department figures.

Since 2011, the number of people shot by Chicago’s police has gradually declined. That year, they shot 56 people, 24 of them fatally, department figures show. In 2012, Chicago police shot 45 people, killing 12, and the following year, officers shot 35 people, killing 14.

Chicago officers this past year shot fewer people than police in some other major cities. As of Dec. 21, Los Angeles police officers shot 37 people in 2015, 22 fatally, according to police statistics. New York City police officers shot 32 people, killing nine, statistics from Dec. 29 show.

Interim Chicago police Superintendent John Escalante attributed the drop in police-involved shootings to “better training” and “better front-line supervision,” even though the Police Department and the city have come under national scrutiny for how they handle such shootings, in light of the killing of 17-year-old McDonald by officer Jason Van Dyke.