Chicago Sees No Shootings, Homicides For 24 Hours Wednesday
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Police say on Wednesday, no shootings or homicides were reported in Chicago for a period of 24 hours, for the first time in nearly a year.
In a statement, police Supt. Garry McCarthy credited the lack of violence to "the tremendous police work of the men and women of the Chicago Police Department."
He pointed out that since May of last year, the department has placed 1,000 officers back in districts from special units, and instituted the data-driven CompStat program to track and fight crime.
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Commanders have been given more resources to reduce crime in their districts, McCarthy said in the statement.
Police say the no-shooting milestone is clearly the result of good police work. Community activists agree for the most part.
But Andrew Holmes adds: "It takes a community to speak out, too."
Tio Hardiman of CeaseFire says the news release is premature, coming after only one day without gunfire.
"You want to get a string of days going without a shooting or a homicide," he says.
McCarthy says it was worth noting the "flipside" to media stories that appear in the wake of shootings.
But he says it's progress -- not an end to the fight.
The only one of the city's 25 police districts that saw a rise in crime was the Englewood District, in which 56 people were killed.
Published reports have also pointed out that while the overall murder rate is down in Chicago, the murder rate in New York is a third of Chicago's even though that city has three times as many people, the Chicago Sun-Times pointed out earlier this month. The murder rate in Los Angeles is about half that of Chicago, the newspaper reported.
