We Are Still Losing: Chicago Homicide Rate Hits 500 Mark in 2012

30 Dec We Are Still Losing: Chicago Homicide Rate Hits 500 Mark in 2012

This time there were no flags flown at half-mast. No Presidential press conferences held while the President and the nation forced back tears. You will not be inundated with days of news coverage designed to make sure you know that these victims are human beings, with loved ones and legacies left incomplete. Instead, December 27^th passed like many others. We heard the number. 500. The number of homicides logged in the city of Chicago in 2012. It has been 4 years since we had that many murders (there were 512 homicides in 2008).  Still, some of us remember when that number was significantly higher. We lived through 1992 and 1994 when the numbers were 943 and 931. Yes. 943 and 931 people killed in one year. In one city. And now, like price-gouged gas, we have learned to be relieved when the numbers are not as high as they were once.

They won’t plaster your television screen with the faces of Chicago’s lost, lest you start to believe that these individuals are people. People who deserve just as much sympathy as those lost to acts of terrorism and war. It is, after all, a war-zone. A war we are losing because we never showed up to battle.