Chicago Starts 2021 With More Carjackings Than City Has Seen In At Least 20 Years

By Christopher Hacker

CHICAGO (CBS)  — There were 124 carjackings reported in Chicago in just the first two weeks of 2021 — more than double the largest number of carjackings in the city in the first two weeks of the previous 20 years.

Publicly-available data from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) goes back to 2001. It shows the number of carjackings in the first two weeks of 2021 was more than four times the 27 carjackings reported during the same two-week period of 2021, according to data analyzed by CBS 2. The year with the next most carjackings in that short period was 2002, when there were 52 such reports.

The unprecedented rash of carjackings has outraged residents and led federal authorities to step in to try to prevent the often-violent incidents, which have claimed several lives in recent months.

In December, two men were charged in a pair of carjackings, accused of shooting two people while trying to steal their cars. Just a day before they were charged, a retired Chicago Fire Department Lieutenant was shot and killed in another botched carjacking.

Just this week, two teens were charged with a West Side carjacking in which one of the teens allegedly put a 60-year-old victim in a chokehold. That same day, another teen — this time a 14-year-old boy — was charged with committing a string of carjackings at gunpoint.

And Thursday night, two carjackings were reported on the same block in Edgewater.

The spike early this year puts Chicago on pace to exceed the number of carjackings in 2020, which already saw an increase of 135 percent over 2019.

Carjackings By Neighborhood, 2020 v. 2019

Place cursor over each neighborhood or enter the neighborhood name in the search bar to compare.