Signal to Noise

Here’s another instance of my disagreeing with the editors of the Chicago Tribune:

Through Sunday the Chicago Police Department reported 505 homicides this year, a 66% increase over last year. The number of shooting victims increased 56% to 2,703 from 1,734. Recent Monday morning tallies of weekend violence have made for brutal reading. There were 10 people killed, more than 40 wounded this past weekend. The Tribune identified 10 separate shootings, including three homicides, in just three hours or so starting Sunday at 2 a.m. In one incident, officers making a traffic stop were hit by gunfire and hospitalized. Ten Chicago police officers have been shot this year, 41 have been fired upon.

What is happening in Chicago? Superintendent David Brown’s answer Monday was vague, because there is no simple explanation, and chilling. “Violent offenders have acted with impunity, much more than we’ve seen in the past,” said Brown, describing his first summer on the job. “There’s this sense of lawlessness among violent offenders.”

Chicago is not lawless, but mayhem feels like it’s spiraling out of control. The police chief and Mayor Lori Lightfoot aren’t running away from the problem. They know the city’s in the grip of something frightening and frustrating. Brown has reconstituted the department’s roving anti-gang task force and says he sees progress. Killings have decreased 50% and shootings have decreased 15% over the past six weeks. So this is … progress.

That’s nonsense. By the end of the month of July the number of homicides in Chicago had exceeded the number by the end of July 2016 (the year with the most homicides of recent memory and by my calculation the most homicides ever recorded adjusted for population) and by the end of the month of August we had exceed the number of the end of August 2016. During July and August we had also had multiple episodes of mass looting, something that had not happened in 2016.

A decrease in shootings of 15% is not progress, especially when shootings are running at the hottest rate in Chicago history. It’s noise in the data. Progress would be a 50% reduction or a 100% reduction. We’ll never be able to reduce the number of killings or shootings to zero. I don’t expect that. I do expect the numbers not to increase year-on-year. And for goodness sake there should not be one incident of mass looting.

Until then you’re not making progress. Conditions are merely deteriorating more slowly. They can be right back where they were next week.