Things are pretty grim in Chicago following its deadliest summer in recent memory.
By Oct. 21, Chicago had recorded 435 murders, ahead of 339 in New York and 241 in Los Angeles. The Windy City has the highest murder rate of all Alpha world cities, according to NBC Chicago.
And while things are finally starting to slow down, the mood in the city definitely isn't great.
As an Illinois ex-pat living in New York and looking on at one of my favorite cities from afar, I have to wonder, how did we get here?
Before the bloody summer, things were going well.
From 2002 to 2011, crime in a majority of the city's neighborhoods had been dropping drastically.
In the Hyde Park-South Kenwood community for instance, crime dropped 39 percent from 2002 to 2011, according to the University of Chicago.
And in 2002, the total number of homicides in Chicago dropped below the total in LA with 20 fewer murders that year than in 2001.
As of 2010, Chicago had more cops per 100,000 residents than any other big city, according to the Chicago Justice Project.
So how did things get so bad? It started with massive cuts to the Chicago Police Department.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel drew the ire of Chicago's police union last year when he proposed slashing the police department's budget by $190 million, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.
There was also speculation that Emanuel would cut about 1,400 police vacancies, which would save the city $93 million.
“How does ‘eliminating vacancies’ save $93 million when zero dollars were being spent on the vacant spots in the first place?” Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields told the Sun-Times. “That’s some real Enron-style accounting.”
Emanuel's office cited the city's $635 million budget gap as the reason for the cuts.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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