http://cbs2chicago.com/local/chicago.summer.shootings.2.810166.html


125 Shot Dead In Chicago Over Summer
Total Is About Double The U.S. Troop Death Toll In Iraq
CHICAGO (CBS) ― An estimated 125 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.

In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters, wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 125 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1.

According to the Defense Department, 65 U.S. soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over that same period.

In the same time period, an estimated 247 people were shot and wounded in the city.

Police department spokeswoman Monique Bond disputed the numbers, saying in an e-mail that sometimes shootings are re-classified as accidental. She said the CBS 2 analysis did not match official department statistics, but she did not provide details. CBS 2 has asked for that information.

"The department officially releases crime statistics on a monthly basis to ensure the proper investigations are thoroughly conducted to determine manner and motive which also may result in reclassifications, '' Bond said.

Violent crime reports available on the department's website do not break down shootings by month. However, the latest report shows that the murder in the city is up 18 percent from last year. From January-July, the department reports 291 people were murdered, compared with 246 for the same period in 2007.

Bond said gang-related violence presents the most serious danger to Chicago residents.

"Gang and gun violence continue to be the dominating threat on our streets," Bond said in an e-mail. "Up to 60 percent of the shootings are gang related. More than 90 percent of the offenders have criminal histories and up to 80 percent of the victims have criminal histories."

For total shootings, the South Side's Englewood District, which includes the Englewood and West Englewood neighborhoods on the city's South Side, fared the worst over the summer. A total of 11 people were shot dead there, and 46 were shot and wounded.

The highest homicide totals came in the Grand Crossing District, which includes the South Shore, Woodlawn, Park Manor and Grand Crossing neighborhoods on the South Side, 13 people were killed and 24 were injured.

Also hit severely by gun violence over the summer was the Harrison District on the city's West Side, where 11 people were shot dead and 25 were shot and wounded. In the Southwest Side's Chicago Lawn District, 12 people were shot and killed and 15 were shot and wounded. In the Ogden District – which includes the Near Southwest Side's Lawndale and Little Village neighborhoods – nine people were killed and eight were injured.

The South Chicago District on the Southeast Side saw nine people killed and 18 injured, almost all concentrated in the South Chicago and Avalon Park neighborhoods at the north end of the district.

The Far South Side's Calumet District – including the Roseland, Fernwood and Pullman neighborhoods – saw nine killed and 23 injured.

post deleted- no official numbers from the police dept to show how many people the police shot this summer.

...but I'll bet their tally in included in the 125.

Add that to the number killed in New Orleans and we would be close to the first 3 months in Iraq for this year.

How many troops are there in Iraq?

What's the population of Chicago?

Illinois? Hell no I won't go. No blood for... whatever is in Illinoise.

It is currently ranked as the third-most populous city in the United States after New York and Los Angeles, with a population of nearly 3 million people

3 million people in Chicago.
27 million people in Iraq.

I grew up in Chicago.

Been back 6 times in the last forty four years.

Each time has been a reminder of why I left.

It's place that was a great city till the current disolution of enforcement of law and the no discipline structure of the schools parents and people in general has destroyed
A real shame. Also a stain on us, as a people, and a nation.

T

quote:

Originally posted by SurfaceDog:
3 million people in Chicago.
27 million people in Iraq.

We're counting civilian deaths in Iraq now?

The OP is trying to analogize Iraq and Chicago but does it poorly and misleadingly by comparing violent US troop deaths in Iraq to all violent deaths in Chicago.

Better comparisons would be:

Violent US troop deaths in Iraq to violent Chicago police deaths, or

All violent deaths in Iraq to all violent deaths in Chicago.


Either way, I think, would paint a considerably bleaker picture of Iraq than of Chicago.

I did [Withdraw from Illinois].

Why blame Illinois when the problem is in Chicago?
That's like blaming the rest of Oregon for the nutz in Portland.

There have been 95,000 documented civilian deaths from violence in Iraq since the start of the war. The World Health Organization conservatively estimates the war dead to be upwards of 223,000. But let's just stick to the 95,000 we can document (add in the over 4000 US combat deaths and round up to 100,000 recorded deaths). All we need to do is compare the last 65 months blow by blow.

Iraq population 27,000,000
Chicago population 3,000,000 (9 times smaller than Iraq)

Average number of murders in Chicago for 2003 through 2007: 480 per year, 40 per month or 1.33 per 100,000 residents per month. (courtesy of City-data.com)

Average violent deaths in Iraq for the entirety of the war: 18,461 per year, 1538 per month or 5.69 per 100,000 residents per month.

Comparing apples to apples, we can see that Iraq is far more dangerous than Chicago. If we consider that the true number of Iraqi dead probably exceeds what has been documented, and it almost always does, it gets even more dangerous.

Edit to add: I forgot to tally in the 10,000 Iraqi troops killed and the more than 19,000 insurgents killed.

Additionally, the ORB estimates the total casualties to be more than 1.2 million. If that estimate is correct - or even if it's only halfway correct - it would make any comparison of Iraq to a city in the United States unthinkable.

In America we love gangsters and the violence they produce. We've made hero's out of Billy the Kid, Al Capone, John Gotti and the like.

We flock to movies like "Little Ceasear", "Goodfellas" and "Scarface". We live in a culture of violence. We love it. And piously pretend we don't.

So since some here think that Chicago is more violent than Baghdad, then they'll probably think they're much safer in Baghdad.

As for me, I'll take Chicago on it's worst day.

quote:

Originally posted by The_Bonesaw:
There have been 95,000 documented civilian deaths from violence in Iraq since the start of the war. The World Health Organization conservatively estimates the war dead to be upwards of 223,000. But let's just stick to the 95,000 we can document (add in the over 4000 US combat deaths and round up to 100,000 recorded deaths). All we need to do is compare the last 65 months blow by blow.

Iraq population 27,000,000
Chicago population 3,000,000 (9 times smaller than Iraq)

Average number of murders in Chicago for 2003 through 2007: 480 per year, 40 per month or 1.33 per 100,000 residents per month. (courtesy of City-data.com)

Average violent deaths in Iraq for the entirety of the war: 18,461 per year, 1538 per month or 5.69 per 100,000 residents per month.

Comparing apples to apples, we can see that Iraq is far more dangerous than Chicago. If we consider that the true number of Iraqi dead probably exceeds what has been documented, and it almost always does, it gets even more dangerous.

Edit to add: I forgot to tally in the 10,000 Iraqi troops killed and the more than 19,000 insurgents killed.

Additionally, the ORB estimates the total casualties to be more than 1.2 million. If that estimate is correct - or even if it's only halfway correct - it would make any comparison of Iraq to a city in the United States unthinkable.

The one point I feel needs to be made is that Chicago is not a war zone. If there are 9 times more people in Iraq then muliply the chicago total by 9 to come with a true number for apples to apples.

Not everyone is fighting in Chicago. they are mostly trying to show the real people with totals here.

It is safer in Iraq then Chicago

quote:

Originally posted by mainedawg:

quote:

Originally posted by The_Bonesaw:
There have been 95,000 documented civilian deaths from violence in Iraq since the start of the war. The World Health Organization conservatively estimates the war dead to be upwards of 223,000. But let's just stick to the 95,000 we can document (add in the over 4000 US combat deaths and round up to 100,000 recorded deaths). All we need to do is compare the last 65 months blow by blow.

Iraq population 27,000,000
Chicago population 3,000,000 (9 times smaller than Iraq)

Average number of murders in Chicago for 2003 through 2007: 480 per year, 40 per month or 1.33 per 100,000 residents per month. (courtesy of City-data.com)

Average violent deaths in Iraq for the entirety of the war: 18,461 per year, 1538 per month or 5.69 per 100,000 residents per month.

Comparing apples to apples, we can see that Iraq is far more dangerous than Chicago. If we consider that the true number of Iraqi dead probably exceeds what has been documented, and it almost always does, it gets even more dangerous.

Edit to add: I forgot to tally in the 10,000 Iraqi troops killed and the more than 19,000 insurgents killed.

Additionally, the ORB estimates the total casualties to be more than 1.2 million. If that estimate is correct - or even if it's only halfway correct - it would make any comparison of Iraq to a city in the United States unthinkable.

The one point I feel needs to be made is that Chicago is not a war zone. If there are 9 times more people in Iraq then muliply the chicago total by 9 to come with a true number for apples to apples.

Not everyone is fighting in Chicago. they are mostly trying to show the real people with totals here.

It is safer in Iraq then Chicago

Your argument doesn't make sense. You'd have to compare the total of violent deaths in the United States to that of Iraq to get apples to apples.

In CONUS people die in small numbers, one here, two there and so on. In Iraq people die in crowds as well as small numbers. Nobody really believes Iraq is safer than the US. I think any troop that's been over there would agree.

quote:

Originally posted by mainedawg:
If there are 9 times more people in Iraq then muliply the chicago total by 9 to come with a true number for apples to apples.

This is wrong. The whole point of putting data into rates like murders per resident per month is that it normalizes them by population. You are already dividing the number of murders by the number of people to see how many murders there are per person; to multiply for population at the end would make your comparison worthless, because you'd be comparing absolute numbers of murders rather than relative prevalence.

quote:

More killed in Chicago than Iraq this summer. Why no call to withdraw from Illinois?

When were American troops sent in to Illinois to quell an insurgency? Does that operation have a name?

Apparently, everyone doesn't get the fact that I compared both Chicago and Iraq on an equal footing. I reduced the number of murders down to a per 100,000 residents. All agencies who compile crime statistics do this (including the FBI) which is where I got the idea.

From my original math - which, as I mentioned, is wrong due to the fact that I failed to account for the 10,000 Iraqi troops and 20,000 insurgents killed - both Chicago and Iraq were compared equally as the number of deaths per 100,000 residents. I went out of my way to place those figures in bold just for that comparison.

Chicago's 480 violent deaths per year were divided down among their 3 million residents to get a figure of 1.33 deaths per 100,000 residents per month.

Iraq's 18,461 average deaths per year were divided down among its 27 million residents to get a figure of 5.69 per 100,000 residents per month.

It works the same no matter how you do it. Had I divided Iraq as a percentage, so that it equated with Chicago, the math would have been exactly the same. 1.33 per 100,000 vs. 5.69 per 100,000.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: The_Bonesaw,

quote:

Originally posted by Thud357L:

Your argument doesn't make sense. You'd have to compare the total of violent deaths in the United States to that of Iraq to get apples to apples.

The original comparison was that Chicago is "deadlier" than Iraq (comparing all of Iraq to Chicago). So the comparison must be made between the statistics of deaths per 100,000 residents of each in order to get a complete picture that the comparison is untrue (Iraq is, in fact, far deadlier than Chicago).

Had I compared Iraq to the United States, we would have found that the statistics for the entire U.S. drop even further since we're including all the rural areas where there are lower murder rates into the mix.

Just for fun, let's make the comparison; only let's use ORB's figures of 1.2 million Iraqi dead, which is 10 times worse than the conservative figures I originally used. According to ORB's poll, they have an accuracy of plus or minus 2.5%, so we're going to reduce the number or Iraqi dead from their figure (1,220,580) by exactly that amount for a sum of 914,935 total deaths.

According to US Crime Statistics, there are approximately 16,500 murders on average per year since 2000. If we divide that per month, we get 1,375 murders per month in the United States. We now divide the U.S. population of 300,000,000 by 100,000 and get a figure of 3000 (this tells us what we need to divide 1,375 by). Doing that - 1,375 divided by 3,000 - gives us a figure of 0.45 murders per 100,000 residents in the U.S.

In Iraq, we have 914,935 deaths over the course of 65 months according to the ORB poll, or 14,075 violent deaths per month. Now we simply need to make the same average comparison to the U.S. by dividing the Iraqi population of 27,000,000 by 100,000 for a figure of 270. Divide 14,075 by 270 and we get an insane number of 52.1 violent deaths per 100,000 residents per month.

Does anyone have any questions about how I did the math? Does anyone still have an issue about how I did the math?

Does anyone still want to make any comparisons about how much safer it is in Iraq than in the United States?

quote:

Originally posted by The_Bonesaw:
Apparently, everyone doesn't get the fact that I compared both Chicago and Iraq on an equal footing.

I got that, and I'm part of 'everyone'