Chicago sees drop in homicides, shootings

CHICAGO» The Windy City ended 2017 with fewer homicides than the year before, but gang violence in the most dangerous neighborhoods kept the total number of killings above the 600 mark for only the second time in more than a decade.

The Chicago Police Department released statistics Monday that show the number of homicides fell from 771 in 2016 to 650 last year. The number of shootings dropped from 3,550 to 2,785 during the same period.

Although the drops were significant, the homicide total, in a repeat of 2016, eclipsed the number of killings in New York City and Los Angeles combined.

“You still have to start with the fact that 600 people dead in Chicago is a hell of a lot of people to be dead in one year,” said the Rev. Marshall Hatch, whose

Baltimore breaks its record for killings per capita in 2017.

Baltimore has set a new per-capita homicide record as gunmen killed for drugs, cash, payback — or no apparent reason at all.

A surge of homicides in the starkly divided city resulted in 343 killings in 2017, bringing the annual homicide rate to its highest ever — approximately 56 killings per 100,000 people. Baltimore, which has shrunk over decades, currently has about 615,000 inhabitants.

Some attribute the increase to more illegal guns, the fallout of the opioid epidemic or systemic failures such as unequal justice and a scarcity of decent opportunities for many citizens. The tourism-focused Inner Harbor and prosperous neighborhoods such as Canton and Mount Vernon are a world away from large sections of the city hobbled by generational poverty. church is in one of the most violent neighborhoods on the city’s West Side.

Still, the drops — and the reasons behind the lower numbers — have police and others optimistic that some of their efforts will lead to more declines over the next year.

Police have been particularly encouraged by the results of setting up Strategic Decision Support Centers in six of the city’s 22 police districts, including those in the most violent pockets of the city.

The centers are equipped with sound-detection technology that enables the department to instantly know where the sound of gunfire is coming from and to alert officers through computer screens in their squad cars and smartphones.