In the Windy City, nearly 60 people were shot over the Christmas weekend. Eleven people were killed. Not even on the holidays did the carnage subside for what became another very bloody weekend for Chicago. The homicide rate currently stands at 763 people killed. There were 492 homicides for all of 2015. As the city’s murder rate rapidly approaches 800, the number of residents shot has soared to 4,307 people shot so far this year.
The Chicago Police Department said that many of the shootings were in neighborhoods fraught with gang activity (via Chicago Tribune):
Thirteen people wounded in shootings Monday morning and afternoon brought to more than 50 the number of people shot since Christmas weekend began Friday afternoon.Eleven of the 57 people shot between about 4:50 p.m. Friday and about the same time Monday died from their wounds. More than a dozen others were listed in serious or critical condition.
The city has seen eight multiple-victim shootings, including two double homicides. One was an attack in the East Chatham neighborhood that left five dead and two wounded, and an attack in the Austin neighborhood left two dead.
Much of the violence happened in areas "with historical gang conflicts on the south and west side of Chicago," said Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department. He also referenced the department's "strategic subject list," which is generated daily from a computerized algorithm and assigns a score from 1 to 500 based on such factors as a person's arrests and the activities of his associates. Those people with a score in the upper 200s or higher are considered in danger of being shot or of shooting someone else.
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