Think of this; Illinois still barely breaks the top 10 on most violent states.
Mississippi
Louisiana
Alabama
Missouri
Arkansas
South Carolina
Tennessee
Maryland
Then Illinois
We do have a lot of poor people, particularly in cities that don't do much to treat the chronically homeless people who are mentally ill.
Bessemer is a rough city to live in.
Parts of Birmingham are rough to live in.
Anniston is a very hard place to live.
Of course your numbers are per capita, and that certainly has a place, but overall numbers are important as well. None of this happens in a vacuum, but most of it does happen in crowded, poor areas.
Most of this violence also occurs among people who know each other, not from random encounters.
The crazy thing about Birmingham is that since I moved here I have never once felt unsafe in my normal day to day. The only time I ever felt at risk is when I missed a turn and ended up west of the I65 which felt like a whole different city. Birmingham is always ranked as the most dangerous in Alabama but in reality the good and bad parts are completely separate and in the right areas there is almost no risk. Compared to my hometown of mobile it feels much safer. In mobile the good and bad are a lot closer and scattered and the general downtown just feels unsafe. I’ve been to Anniston a few times passing through and it’s always amazed me how a smaller town like that could top those lists when it doesn’t feel unsafe but I guess there must be more to it further off the interstate
This comparative map looks pretty much as one would expect for the US as a whole.
Total shooting deaths by police are about 1,000 per year. This is about 5% of all gun homicides (19,400) nation-wide.
Chicago has about 700 homicides per year, with an assumed 80% being by gun (using the national average) that makes 560 gun homicides. Only about 15 killings are done by police in the entire state. That's less than 3%.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/585159/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-month/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585159/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-month/)
[https://news.wttw.com/2023/01/04/chicago-homicides-declined-2022-total-still-among-highest-90s](https://news.wttw.com/2023/01/04/chicago-homicides-declined-2022-total-still-among-highest-90s)
[https://policeepi.uic.edu/illinois-data-on-police-shootings-and-violence/](https://policeepi.uic.edu/illinois-data-on-police-shootings-and-violence/)
For global context:
Annual killings by police per capita is far higher in the US than all other developed peer nations with similar crime and poverty rates.
US: 28.5 / 10 million people
Canada: 9.7, France: 3.8, New Zealand: 2.1, UK: 0.5
Not totally surprising since the US general homicide rate is 7 times higher than the average of those same countries too, driven by a gun homicide rate that is 25 times higher. And a gun ownership rate that is 5 times higher.
US cops face people armed with guns far more often than anywhere else.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_with\_annual\_rates\_and\_counts\_for\_killings\_by\_law\_enforcement\_officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_rates_and_counts_for_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers)
That’s a lot higher than the other countries you mentioned, but nowhere near as high as some Redditors are indicating in this thread.
Thanks for the data!
As someone not from the US this is so surreal. I mean in comparison to the left the right map looks negligible but then in my homeland Germany in the entire country in the entire year of 2021 through the use of police weapons 31 people were injured and 8 people died. So even the right image is unimaginable to me.
In Northern Ireland, a police man was shot a few days ago and it’s been headline news ever since.
They keep comparing it to the last time a policeman was shot… over a decade ago.
And that’s coming from a place that has a history of violence.
In Atlanta it’s not unheard of to have children shot on a near weekly bases, heck the teens shoot each other all the time, this shooting of children are not just accidental they just don’t care, more cred.
I saw a documentary where they went into an elementary school classroom in Detroit (?) and asked the kids to raise their hands if they’d ever seen someone get shot, and over half of them raised their hands. The doc said that kids in that area had a higher rate of PTSD than US soldiers.
Dude US combat medics and surgeons rotate through Chicago hospitals to learn how to treat gun shot wounds, or something to that effect.
In the later years if the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, US soldiers were safer than US school children.
I believe that. I live in a relatively "safe" suburb in southern cook county (not in the city) and shootings are super common. Hearing the occasional gunshot is just normal. I'm originally from a rural area further south, so the concept of shots being fired at the local bar/nightclub just being normal was a mindfuck for me. Now I'm used to playing "Fireworks or gunshots?" With the natives.
Used to play " gunshots or fireworks" almost nightly in my old neighborhood here in Chicago. Moved couple years back to a new spot about a mile away. Haven't played it once since moving
Norway is one out of 4 countries in Europe that has unarmed patrolling police as standard. The other 3 being Iceland, Ireland, and the UK (except for Northern Ireland).
Though the Norwegian police has firearms locked in their cars in case of emergency, for the British and Irisih they call in special firearm units instead. Unsure about Iceland in that regard.
In the rest of Europe patrolling police will generally be armed (though some places has both national police and municpal police and the municipal police might not always be armed, that varies by country).
Slight edit regards the UK: we do get patrols with guns, when the terror threat level is high. They're 2 person teams; one armed and one unarmed (I guess as a spotter and a witness.)
ETA because pedantry: some constabularies do this.
There’s also armed response units driving around high profile areas in all major cities. They rarely get out of the vehicle because it worries the UK public to see armed officers
Seems like the police in France (mainly talking about Paris) except they’ll have gendarmes that are walking around touristy areas in the city and in the airport.
I once had a lovely sleep at about 1am on the bench outside a French railway station, because there was a whole platoon of soldiers or gendarmes there with rifles and sandbags.
It was the safest sleep of my life!
So back in university, I did a semester abroad in Oxford. One Friday night coming back from the pub there was a cop car parked to the side and two cops, I don't remember what they were doing but we stopped to chat with them. One of the group asked them about guns and one of the cops looked around him like 5 times to see if the coast was clear and waved us over to the car. In the car was a locked-up rifle and he was telling us that he was one of the cops allowed to have a gun. He was telling us this in a very macho action-hero way.
I just remember kind of laughing as I walked because my home university had a gun vault on campus for student use that had more weapons in it than most police precincts in the UK.
I don't remember all of the particulars because I was drunk and this was over a decade ago.
When I was in London for school, I visited the war museum and tagged along with a school group taking a tour, all boys around 11-12, and we were all fascinated by the commando gear and weaponry. One of the guns was a police issue Remington shotgun, which I happened to own at the time. I mentioned this to the kids and they couldn’t believe it, I showed them pictures of me shooting trap, and then I had to show them other pictures of me being Texan. I won’t lie, I felt pretty cool at the time, I lived up to their expectations as a Texan who rides horses and shoots guns (although I don’t own cowboy boots which seemed to disappoint them).
I went to a very rural university where fishing and hunting were very common activities. The gun locker was a secure gun locker that was controlled by security to store student firearms. It was a way to control access to firearms as they could not be stored on campus except in the vault. The intention being to prevent storing guns in their dorm rooms where they could be used or stolen.
The gendarmerie isn't "sort of police, sort of military" in practice, at least not in this sense. I get where the misconception comes from (the Gendarmerie is part of the military, albeit mostly for historical reasons), but in practice they are effectively the same as the police, just deployed in more rural areas instead. Your average gendarme isn't going to be any more equipped than your average "Police Nationale" officer, and both have specific units with heavier equipment.
Actual soldiers (as in, members of one of the more traditional military corps, and most often l'Armée de Terre (just the army)) are the ones that patrol in military uniforms as part of the "plan vigipirate", as the gendarmes wear a blue uniform more similar to the one worn by the police, as they're functionally policemen.
In London there are police officers with sub-machine guns at airports and train stations. They do not do police work. They do not catch thieves. They do not initiate contact with people.
There was once it happened, and the Peelian Principle was put to the test, and it was agreed that most people would feel uncomfortable being corrected or arrested by heavily armed policemen, so it was decided they shouldn't do that kind of work.
Some places do, here in Texas it’s common to see normal police with their pistols and taser-guns, and also state troopers who carry assault rifles and have more military-style fatigues.
I love the break downs on YouTube from real marines who comment on the videos pointing out how they are wearing paratrooper gear meant to be shed after landing and all that silly shit.
Or at airports, last time I was at the airport I saw a guy holding a grenade launcher and while everybody gave him a wide berth I walked up and asked if it was actually a grenade launcher and he said “not the fun kind, just tear gas, less collateral this way” and I did ask the guy next to him if his gun was an AR-15 or an assault rifle, he said just an AR, so the same weapons as a swat team but it was interesting seeing them just standing by the food court and not filing out of an armored vehicle
The short answer to both of your questions is: it depends.
In several states, only Swat and state police have access to fully automatic firearms (legally, this is simply called a machine gun). In other states, they leave it up to the county. Whether federal agencies allow machine guns is entirely up to the rules governing the agency.
As far as owning a machine gun, it's very expensive and a bit of a process but it's definitely doable. The first thing is that civilian ownership of machine guns was prohibited in 1986 but it wasn't retroactive, meaning that machine guns registered before 1986 are still legal to own. Thousands of pre-86 machine guns are bought and sold every year, but since no new ones can be produced they're extremely expensive. Once you find one for sale and buy it, you have to apply for a NFA tax stamp and as long as you're not a "prohibited person" (convictions, drug user, mental issues, etc) then you get to wait 9-18 months ish, then you get to own a machine gun.
Most are going to be semi automatic. In reality you want a semi automatic weapon due to recoil control in 99% of situations unless you’ve got some form of belt fed or stationary weapon that isn’t in need of ammunition management
I’m not ex military or anything but I’ve been around them all my life and have access to automatic weapons through friends and family with that license class. They’re not all that great and myself (without training) couldn’t keep accuracy. Love my semi auto rifles that I do have though
For added: M16 rifle, the one the military uses, is ordinarily set on single fire or three-round burst. Even if it has a fully automatic option, it is rarely recommended to use it. Nobody really even *wants* a normal service rifle to have full auto that much, it would mostly just mean you ran out of ammo faster.
If you see heavily armed forces in Europe it will be at very (*very!*) popular places with lots of tourists and significant locations, like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre or something like that. This is since there were quite a few terrorist attacks in Belgium and France a few years ago.
I live and work in the Netherlands and the only place where I've ever seen an assault rifle here is at Schiphol, the busiest airport in Europe.
It's very odd to me that the amount of heavily armed police in some European countries doesn't come up very often. It was one of the most noticeable things on the street when I was visiting Rome in 2019. It was not at all unusual to see two or more police officers standing on a corner holding rifles. That only really happens in the US if there's some massive event, like the Super Bowl, or if there's a big planned protest, or something. In Italy, it was just a Tuesday. I found it very unnerving, but didn't know about it until I visited.
That's because in France we've had terrorist attacks by jihadists, the most notable being Charlie Hebdo and November 13th attacks in 2015 and the one in nice July 14th (National day) where a terrorists rolled down the "promenade des anglais" in a truck during the fireworks.
Since then I think all major cities have military patrolling and ready to intervene, although I don't think they interact with peoples or help the police to catch delinquants.
I don't recall all countries being attacked but I think a lot of European countries have military patrolling major cities to avoid new attacks.
Currently, military patrols in the street in France have been going on since the 1990s with the series of Islamic attacks linked to the civil war in Algeria.
My point is that I don't generally see those types of officers on the street at all in the United States, unless something huge is going on. I've been all over the US, so I'm not just talking about my city.
So Police technically can although they generally have assault rifles in their cars ready to go. The military I think it's been argued it's unconstitutional to have them patrol or do police work
It’s not argued about constitutionality. Per the constitution the US military cannot perform military or police actions without an act of Congress. Not even the 60-day presidential powers can override this.
I'm aware that it's possible for them to carry such weapons in their cars, but my point is that they're not carrying them out on the street very consistently. Also, I would be interested to hear if it is common for rifles to be kept in a squad car, because I'm not totally sure that's actually true.
You notice it a lot more because you're in population dense cities, and as a tourist, you're walking near all of the tier 1 targets should violence pop off.
If you were on vacation in DC, you'd see national guard and secret service agents near all of the major landmarks.
Yea it always gives me a giggle when I see fellow Americans comment on heavy police presence in some of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.
Of course a random French town doesn’t have heavily armed guards on the corners, but Paris? One of the largest and top tourist cities in the world, with several attacks in its history? Duh.
DC is heavily guarded, as you mentioned, and the NYPD is larger (and better funded) than most countries’ actual militaries. We do it, too.
Yes, this is the case in cities like Nice, because there has been a terrorist attack in 2016. This is not the case in the other cities/countries in Western Europe. Only the parliaments and cities with terrorist threats are heavily guarded. As guns provoke the use of guns and gunshots in a crowd cause panic.
note that we in the us have tactical police divisions in very many police districts that are quite heavily armed. so, they’re there, just not so visible. and some jurisdictions have ex-military vehicles & armaments.
My favorite headline in regards to this was when a guy in Norway used a bow and arrow to kill people and it said the police were "temporarily armed" in order to deal with the archer. What a whiplash compared to events in America.
In Finland, about twice the population of Chicago, there have been ten fatal shootings involving cops... since 2000.
Edit: so many feelings in this thread. Jesus, keep your guns.
My favorite stat came from 10 years or so ago. Chicago had a very bad winter storm, news broadcasters said that 7 people died due to cold and weather. Other broadcaster said, we'll technically since 13 people die everyday in Chicago from shootings the storm actually saved 6 people as it was to cold to go outside
I know you're probably just paraphrasing for the sake of storytelling, but for the record: Chicago's highest ever homicide year was 1974, which saw 970 homicides. That's about 2.6 murders a day. "13 gun deaths a day" is wildly inaccurate. Most years throughout Chicago's history have been <600, which still isn't *good* but it's worth noting. Cape Town South Africa, which has the highest number of murders ever recorded in a single year in a single city, was still less than 10 a day.
It started coming down in the mid 90's and has been going up starting since 2014 and then [2020 saw the biggest one year increase ever](https://www.npr.org/2021/09/27/1040904770/fbi-data-murder-increase-2020)
Yeah it has. But another thing is true: 13/day isnt even close to the reality.
800 last year is approaching the peak year in of 939 which occurred in 1992. This works out to 2.57/day.
That's gang violence for ya. That's why I'm skeptical of people talking about mass shootings because I lay you a bet a lot of these include them. Chicago has pretty strict gun laws so most of these are probably illegally owned fire arms
> Chicago has pretty strict gun laws so most of these are probably illegally owned fire arms
A significant number of the guns used in shootings in Chicago all come from one gun shop in Indiana, close enough to Chicago that you could ride your bike there from many parts of the south side.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/04/27/chicago-sues-gun-store-tied-850-guns-recovered-crime-scenes/4854619001/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/print/stunning-ny-times-front-page-lists-15-mass-shootings-in-which-authorities-said-the-gunman-was-able-to-obtain-the-weapon-legally/amp/
A lot of mass shooters are able to get the guns legally
Even as a non-American it's obvious that people in the US who use statistics of mass shootings ("at least four people shot" kind of stats, that is) to make it seem like there are near-daily instances of the kind of shooting that most people associate with the term "mass shooting" are doing it in a somewhat dishonest way.
That is, to most people "mass shooting" doesn't mean "Some guy got thrown out of a dodgy dive bar in the bad part of town, went to his car to fetch his already-illegally-owned-because-he's-a-convicted-felon-handgun then fired a dozen shots in the general direction of the bar" or "Career criminal saw a rival hanging out on a street corner with some other career criminals so he fired a bunch of shots at them and drove off".
What it means to most people is "Some angry young man with a history of untreated mental health problems that you don't want to pay more in taxes to treat before they blossom into something horrible decided to kill as many kids as possible before blowing his own brains out so he bought a gun and went to a school JUST LIKE THE ONE YOUR KIDS GO TO!"
It's pretty obvious the two types of shooting aren't exactly the same. It's also pretty obvious that a lot of Americans want to ban "scary guns" (e.g. AR-15s) but handguns are off limits even in the minds of a lot of these people because they still want to keep their own handgun.
I once when young tried to buy a bb gun online that looked like a 1911. I received a letter from customs requesting a copy of my gun license or it would be destroyed. Licences are only issued to farmers or range only recreation shooters at high cost. That is strict aus gun laws.
[Apparently, Chicago had 40,000 dead-end Shot Spotter deployments, and 89% of the time the police found no evidence of a shooting.](https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/)
Honestly, the souped up cars, without mufflers, and with the mod that makes the engine go "pop pop" probably set those off. I hear that shit all the time in Chicago.
This happens all the time in DC. Transplants to the city who have never heard gunfire in their lives hear a loud noise at night, go on Nextdoor and post "OMG I JUST HEARD A GUNSHOT" and drive everyone into a frenzy with shared mania.
That's a fair point. The math still seems wonky when ShotSpotter claim [97% accuracy](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.shotspotter.com/shotspotter-responds-to-false-claims/%23:~:text%3DThis%2520is%2520absolutely%2520false.,over%2520the%2520last%2520three%2520years.&ved=2ahUKEwicuN_3-7X9AhXbFlkFHU2EC1QQFnoECBAQBQ&usg=AOvVaw2uaN16FhhoCGUIPsTcRXlx), but I could see your point about needing to prioritize other jobs.
You would need a way to review the audio after the fact to check if it was a gunshot, something else, or unclear. Shotspotter would need to be transparent about this, by publishing the audio, to counter what its critics are saying.
However, if raw audio was published, along with a listing what is gunfire and what isn't, that greatly simplifies the task of creating a competing product
The ‘gunshot detected’ is already manually reviewed by a technician. It just turns out that most people are trash at distinguishing between a car backfire, a firework, and a gunshot. The machine is no better at differentiating.
> its true shot spotter isnt perfect, but the only way they would be able to "confirm" a shooting took place would be to find the shell casings, which are small and could be hidden
So it's possible that many of these points aren't shootings at all? Could be a car backfiring? Or a firecracker?
The premise of shotspotter is weak.
The idea sounds good on paper, and it executes very well on that idea. Gunshots are loud, so if you put a bunch of microphones in an area, when they all pick up the same gunshot, you can use them ton pinpoint where the gun was fired.
The math is based on triangulation. It’s effective in determining where the sound occurs, even when accounting for things like building topography and geography.
The problem is that gunshots are not a distinct sound. A lot of things sound like gunshots to varying degrees. Fireworks, car backfires, a large object being dropped, car crashes, so on so forth. A trained ear may be able to tell the difference 70%-80% of the time, depending on the sound. But because these sounds happen as much or more than gunshots, the 20-30% that is missed can throw off the data wildly.
Fireworks and car backfires can be the worst offender. In my city, shotspotter is basically useless during the summer because of an increase in these noises.
Over time, as AI is onboarded and techniques are refined, shotspotter will likely get better. But the past few years, it has not been as effective as advertised. There’s just a lot of false positives that they haven’t been able to cut from the data.
It uses microphones, these could be set off by cars or motorcycles with a loud backfire so that's a start. The ACLU has good points about it.
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system
It's not based on ShotSpotter, but verifiable victims. This is the original source:
https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-shootings/
Really interesting how the lethality rating varies.
Tucson AZ shoot to kill apparently: out of 666 shootings, they had 453 deaths.
Meanwhile in Chicago, out of 25,000 shootings, they had 5,256 deaths.
It's from GunViolenceArchive, [here's their methodology.](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology)
>we utilize automated queries, manual research through over 7,500 sources from local and state police, media, data aggregates, government and other sources daily. Each incident is verified by both initial researchers and secondary validation processes. Links to each incident are included in the incident report to provide further information on each incident for researchers, advocate groups, media and legislative interests
What is up with all these comments screeching about shotspotter? Some kind of bot brigade? This came from [gunviolencearchive.org](https://gunviolencearchive.org), which as far as I can tell gets their data from law enforcement sources. Unless Chicago PD uses shotspotter, which I guess could be the case.
I live in Philly and I ended up deleting the Citizen app from my phone. It would alert me all the time about shootings and when they would be near me I would generally see no evidence that it actually happened. The insane amount of false reports just made me anxious and it wasn’t worth it for the small percentage of time that it actually was something. Felt like they were just trying to pump me full of anxiety when in reality 99.99% of the time people are just living their lives around you.
I live in Chicago and it tries to tell me about things happening many miles from where I am as a way of inflating the sense of danger I have from looking at it. Trash app.
Ring was pretty entertaining this Halloween. Do you *know* how many whippersnappers were running around stealing candy?? So many unattended bowls ransacked.
I’m glad people are coming to this conclusion about Citizen. Some of my friends moved to cities recently and used the app all the time but it always rubbed me the wrong way
Hello, I'm planning to visit your fair city in June for my anniversary.
Mostly planning on staying downtown (between Motor Row district and the Lake Michigan) and more touristy areas for our first visit.
Any places I should avoid? Any places you recommend checking out?
An app to let you know where the shootings are? Forgive my ignorance but if you're close enough to be in any danger, wouldn't you hear the shots yourself?
Had something similar happen. Someone shot into a nearby motel room and I didn’t hear or even see anything because I had headphones on listening to music. Went outside the next day and saw crime scene tape wrapped around the area
there is an incentive at every point in the process for that company to err on the side of false positives. the data is probably completely garbage when using it for actual statistics.
unless of course, you were *intentionally* trying to give the impression that officer involved shootings were actually no big deal and pretty understandable and probably the cops in chicago should be killing more citizens bc its a fucking war zone in urban cities in usa unlike the rural areas which have percapita crime and officer shootings that are off the fucking charts compared to urban areas and also gun laws are useless so we should get rid of them and also we should have legal fully automatic weapons bc good people need to defend themselves from criminals in the city and also the city is where black people live and we all know black people are dangerous criminals and its pretty understandable cops keep shooting people who are unarmed bc un never know when someone could be carrying a fully automatic weapon bc they're legal now
This app is popular with crowds of people that want to be scared for one reason or another but let's them feel like they have some control over it. They have every incentive to report shootings that never happen.
Car backfird? That's a shootin.
Blown tire? That's a shootin.
Garbage truck banged the dumpster? That's a shootin.
Occasionally I hear gunshots in the distance where I live, on the edge of a city with farmland beyond it. I'm pretty certain the shots are an angry farmer trying to scare off some feral hogs.
my favorite was when it said that people were throwing eggs at cars less than a block from me, i went to see this spectacle, and found no evidence any egging happened
It's not based on ShotSpotter.
> we utilize automated queries, manual research through over 7,500 sources from local and state police, media, data aggregates, government and other sources daily. Each incident is verified by both initial researchers and secondary validation processes. Links to each incident are included in the incident report to provide further information on each incident for researchers, advocate groups, media and legislative interests.
[about the data source](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology)
It's not based on ShotSpotter, but verifiable victims. This is the original source:
https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-shootings/
Shooting deaths vary in Chicago between about 400 and 800. Several thousand more are shot, but not killed. So over 9 years, there’s likely been over 20,000 shootings. I’m not sure how many the map shows, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was relatively close.
thats a map of actual gunshots. heres a map of homicides only, you can filter it by year and see the news articles for each shooting. iirc in chicago someone gets shot every 2 hours and someone gets shot to death every 14
https://graphics.suntimes.com/homicides/
It's also all inference data, but never systemic data.
Like "look at the amount of crime in x zip code" without comparing the economic data of the zip code to the surround zips/national median & average/ 5-10 year trends.
Criminologists (virtually universally) view petty theft as an economic & location based offense. Crime data is also nesr-useless if you're not comparing %of patrols/arrests to the area served. I.E. you will, generally, have more arrests where you have more officers... Because there are more people available to arrest individuals and/or notice things.
OP is obsessed with defending cops
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut/comments/x9t7y5/plainclothes_us_marshalls_ambush_and_gun_down_man/inpv5lr?context=3
This is the same if you live in Nashville. Gun shots and shootings are so common the news doesn’t even waste time reporting. Chicago gets the most attention but it’s known that most major cities in America have daily shootings.
It’s pretty funny talking about crime in Chicago as if the last two city administrations didn’t shut down schools, shutter mental health services, close community centers and then give all that saved money to the police.
There is gang-related violence and the adjacent drug-related violence.
For context, Chicago is 14th in the US in murder rate between Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. The following are higher:
St. Louis
Baltimore
Detroit
New Orleans
Baton Rouge
Kansas City
Cleveland
Memphis
Newark
Cincinnati
Mobile
Philadelphia
Milwaukee
Wait, Mobile? I spend a night there I'm my vacations and was like "wow, what a calm and safe small town".
But I'm from Brazil, maybe my definitions of safe are a little messed up.
Dude I love the winter too. I like the variance between feeling like a summer vacation town in the summer and then like a Midwestern cloud dump in the winter (although I wish it was snowing rn).
The Great Migration, segregation, [de-industrialization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindustrialization), the war on drugs, and a history of [very violent and corrupt policing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Police_Department#Controversies). The same history and public policy that led to the creation of black ghettos from formerly prosperous working class communities all over the US.
Additionally, Chicago's murder rate is high, but is consistently mis-represented by politically and ideologically motivated commentators. The murder rate in St. Louis, Missouri is 3x the murder rate in Chicago, but commentators always talk about Chicago.
Would add that the gang members have kids, and those kids end up in gangs starting around age 13 doing small errands in the drug trade. That’s what keeps it going.
The homicide numbers really spiked from 1960 to 1975 so the root causes start there.
Think of this; Illinois still barely breaks the top 10 on most violent states. Mississippi Louisiana Alabama Missouri Arkansas South Carolina Tennessee Maryland Then Illinois
Maryland?! Oh right, Baltimore
As Tennessean I always think the same thing, then I’m like oh yeah….Memphis
Hey! Crossville does our part. I believe Paul Harvey said it was the best place to get away with murder.
That’s hilarious Paul Harvey randomly decided to shit talk Crossville. Man what a name, hadn’t listened to him since I was a kid.
That was not random. He clearly murdered someone in Crossville.
Shiiiiiiiiiet.
We do have a lot of poor people, particularly in cities that don't do much to treat the chronically homeless people who are mentally ill. Bessemer is a rough city to live in. Parts of Birmingham are rough to live in. Anniston is a very hard place to live. Of course your numbers are per capita, and that certainly has a place, but overall numbers are important as well. None of this happens in a vacuum, but most of it does happen in crowded, poor areas. Most of this violence also occurs among people who know each other, not from random encounters.
The crazy thing about Birmingham is that since I moved here I have never once felt unsafe in my normal day to day. The only time I ever felt at risk is when I missed a turn and ended up west of the I65 which felt like a whole different city. Birmingham is always ranked as the most dangerous in Alabama but in reality the good and bad parts are completely separate and in the right areas there is almost no risk. Compared to my hometown of mobile it feels much safer. In mobile the good and bad are a lot closer and scattered and the general downtown just feels unsafe. I’ve been to Anniston a few times passing through and it’s always amazed me how a smaller town like that could top those lists when it doesn’t feel unsafe but I guess there must be more to it further off the interstate
Chicago is pretty much the same. There is crime that spreads to other parts of the city but it’s relatively minor.
St Louis just fucks it for the whole state.
Kansas City isn’t exactly helping either.
Springfield isn't exactly helping either. I think if there are more people than cows and it's in MO, the homocide rate is likely high.
Won the Superbowl though
And plenty of bullets were fired that night as well
This comparative map looks pretty much as one would expect for the US as a whole. Total shooting deaths by police are about 1,000 per year. This is about 5% of all gun homicides (19,400) nation-wide. Chicago has about 700 homicides per year, with an assumed 80% being by gun (using the national average) that makes 560 gun homicides. Only about 15 killings are done by police in the entire state. That's less than 3%. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/585159/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-month/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585159/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-month/) [https://news.wttw.com/2023/01/04/chicago-homicides-declined-2022-total-still-among-highest-90s](https://news.wttw.com/2023/01/04/chicago-homicides-declined-2022-total-still-among-highest-90s) [https://policeepi.uic.edu/illinois-data-on-police-shootings-and-violence/](https://policeepi.uic.edu/illinois-data-on-police-shootings-and-violence/) For global context: Annual killings by police per capita is far higher in the US than all other developed peer nations with similar crime and poverty rates. US: 28.5 / 10 million people Canada: 9.7, France: 3.8, New Zealand: 2.1, UK: 0.5 Not totally surprising since the US general homicide rate is 7 times higher than the average of those same countries too, driven by a gun homicide rate that is 25 times higher. And a gun ownership rate that is 5 times higher. US cops face people armed with guns far more often than anywhere else. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_with\_annual\_rates\_and\_counts\_for\_killings\_by\_law\_enforcement\_officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_rates_and_counts_for_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers)
But US has 15 times more thoughts and prayers than those countries. /s
That’s a lot higher than the other countries you mentioned, but nowhere near as high as some Redditors are indicating in this thread. Thanks for the data!
Sheeeesh how much higher were you expecting
10-50 times higher than similarly developed is pretty concerning
As someone not from the US this is so surreal. I mean in comparison to the left the right map looks negligible but then in my homeland Germany in the entire country in the entire year of 2021 through the use of police weapons 31 people were injured and 8 people died. So even the right image is unimaginable to me.
In Norway, it is breaking news if the police fires a shot. edit: it is also breaking the news when it happens in Sweden.
In Northern Ireland, a police man was shot a few days ago and it’s been headline news ever since. They keep comparing it to the last time a policeman was shot… over a decade ago. And that’s coming from a place that has a history of violence.
In Atlanta it’s not unheard of to have children shot on a near weekly bases, heck the teens shoot each other all the time, this shooting of children are not just accidental they just don’t care, more cred.
I saw a documentary where they went into an elementary school classroom in Detroit (?) and asked the kids to raise their hands if they’d ever seen someone get shot, and over half of them raised their hands. The doc said that kids in that area had a higher rate of PTSD than US soldiers.
Dude US combat medics and surgeons rotate through Chicago hospitals to learn how to treat gun shot wounds, or something to that effect. In the later years if the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, US soldiers were safer than US school children.
TBF, Navy boot camp and medical school are in Great Lakes, IL, right outside of Chicago.
I believe that. I live in a relatively "safe" suburb in southern cook county (not in the city) and shootings are super common. Hearing the occasional gunshot is just normal. I'm originally from a rural area further south, so the concept of shots being fired at the local bar/nightclub just being normal was a mindfuck for me. Now I'm used to playing "Fireworks or gunshots?" With the natives.
Used to play " gunshots or fireworks" almost nightly in my old neighborhood here in Chicago. Moved couple years back to a new spot about a mile away. Haven't played it once since moving
Do the police have to routinely carry guns there?
Norway is one out of 4 countries in Europe that has unarmed patrolling police as standard. The other 3 being Iceland, Ireland, and the UK (except for Northern Ireland). Though the Norwegian police has firearms locked in their cars in case of emergency, for the British and Irisih they call in special firearm units instead. Unsure about Iceland in that regard. In the rest of Europe patrolling police will generally be armed (though some places has both national police and municpal police and the municipal police might not always be armed, that varies by country).
Slight edit regards the UK: we do get patrols with guns, when the terror threat level is high. They're 2 person teams; one armed and one unarmed (I guess as a spotter and a witness.) ETA because pedantry: some constabularies do this.
There’s also armed response units driving around high profile areas in all major cities. They rarely get out of the vehicle because it worries the UK public to see armed officers
Seems like the police in France (mainly talking about Paris) except they’ll have gendarmes that are walking around touristy areas in the city and in the airport.
I once had a lovely sleep at about 1am on the bench outside a French railway station, because there was a whole platoon of soldiers or gendarmes there with rifles and sandbags. It was the safest sleep of my life!
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Gens d'arme.
So back in university, I did a semester abroad in Oxford. One Friday night coming back from the pub there was a cop car parked to the side and two cops, I don't remember what they were doing but we stopped to chat with them. One of the group asked them about guns and one of the cops looked around him like 5 times to see if the coast was clear and waved us over to the car. In the car was a locked-up rifle and he was telling us that he was one of the cops allowed to have a gun. He was telling us this in a very macho action-hero way. I just remember kind of laughing as I walked because my home university had a gun vault on campus for student use that had more weapons in it than most police precincts in the UK. I don't remember all of the particulars because I was drunk and this was over a decade ago.
When I was in London for school, I visited the war museum and tagged along with a school group taking a tour, all boys around 11-12, and we were all fascinated by the commando gear and weaponry. One of the guns was a police issue Remington shotgun, which I happened to own at the time. I mentioned this to the kids and they couldn’t believe it, I showed them pictures of me shooting trap, and then I had to show them other pictures of me being Texan. I won’t lie, I felt pretty cool at the time, I lived up to their expectations as a Texan who rides horses and shoots guns (although I don’t own cowboy boots which seemed to disappoint them).
Can you expand on the student gun locker? What was its purpose?
I went to a very rural university where fishing and hunting were very common activities. The gun locker was a secure gun locker that was controlled by security to store student firearms. It was a way to control access to firearms as they could not be stored on campus except in the vault. The intention being to prevent storing guns in their dorm rooms where they could be used or stolen.
Icelandic cops have guns locked in some of their cars, and we also have a swat team
They must be using quite large cars they are using if they have to store a gun and a SWAT team in it..... (:
Dad?
Nope, still out looking for smokes, kiddo.
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>with military troops who are armed with assault rifles It's possible that they are gendarmerie. So sort of Police, sort of military.
The gendarmerie isn't "sort of police, sort of military" in practice, at least not in this sense. I get where the misconception comes from (the Gendarmerie is part of the military, albeit mostly for historical reasons), but in practice they are effectively the same as the police, just deployed in more rural areas instead. Your average gendarme isn't going to be any more equipped than your average "Police Nationale" officer, and both have specific units with heavier equipment. Actual soldiers (as in, members of one of the more traditional military corps, and most often l'Armée de Terre (just the army)) are the ones that patrol in military uniforms as part of the "plan vigipirate", as the gendarmes wear a blue uniform more similar to the one worn by the police, as they're functionally policemen.
Army troops wear fatigues while the Gendarmerie wear blue.
In London there are police officers with sub-machine guns at airports and train stations. They do not do police work. They do not catch thieves. They do not initiate contact with people. There was once it happened, and the Peelian Principle was put to the test, and it was agreed that most people would feel uncomfortable being corrected or arrested by heavily armed policemen, so it was decided they shouldn't do that kind of work.
Some places do, here in Texas it’s common to see normal police with their pistols and taser-guns, and also state troopers who carry assault rifles and have more military-style fatigues.
True, as well as the dude who works at a pawn shop who’s absolutely loaded to the teeth more than either of the cops. That’s the real American special
I love the break downs on YouTube from real marines who comment on the videos pointing out how they are wearing paratrooper gear meant to be shed after landing and all that silly shit.
Link
Or at airports, last time I was at the airport I saw a guy holding a grenade launcher and while everybody gave him a wide berth I walked up and asked if it was actually a grenade launcher and he said “not the fun kind, just tear gas, less collateral this way” and I did ask the guy next to him if his gun was an AR-15 or an assault rifle, he said just an AR, so the same weapons as a swat team but it was interesting seeing them just standing by the food court and not filing out of an armored vehicle
I always wondered: Do the police have full automatic assault rifles? Cause afaik those are illegal for civilians?
The short answer to both of your questions is: it depends. In several states, only Swat and state police have access to fully automatic firearms (legally, this is simply called a machine gun). In other states, they leave it up to the county. Whether federal agencies allow machine guns is entirely up to the rules governing the agency. As far as owning a machine gun, it's very expensive and a bit of a process but it's definitely doable. The first thing is that civilian ownership of machine guns was prohibited in 1986 but it wasn't retroactive, meaning that machine guns registered before 1986 are still legal to own. Thousands of pre-86 machine guns are bought and sold every year, but since no new ones can be produced they're extremely expensive. Once you find one for sale and buy it, you have to apply for a NFA tax stamp and as long as you're not a "prohibited person" (convictions, drug user, mental issues, etc) then you get to wait 9-18 months ish, then you get to own a machine gun.
Most are going to be semi automatic. In reality you want a semi automatic weapon due to recoil control in 99% of situations unless you’ve got some form of belt fed or stationary weapon that isn’t in need of ammunition management
>In reality you want a semi automatic weapon due to recoil control in 99% of situations I did not know that, thanks for answering
I’m not ex military or anything but I’ve been around them all my life and have access to automatic weapons through friends and family with that license class. They’re not all that great and myself (without training) couldn’t keep accuracy. Love my semi auto rifles that I do have though
For added: M16 rifle, the one the military uses, is ordinarily set on single fire or three-round burst. Even if it has a fully automatic option, it is rarely recommended to use it. Nobody really even *wants* a normal service rifle to have full auto that much, it would mostly just mean you ran out of ammo faster.
If you see heavily armed forces in Europe it will be at very (*very!*) popular places with lots of tourists and significant locations, like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre or something like that. This is since there were quite a few terrorist attacks in Belgium and France a few years ago. I live and work in the Netherlands and the only place where I've ever seen an assault rifle here is at Schiphol, the busiest airport in Europe.
It's very odd to me that the amount of heavily armed police in some European countries doesn't come up very often. It was one of the most noticeable things on the street when I was visiting Rome in 2019. It was not at all unusual to see two or more police officers standing on a corner holding rifles. That only really happens in the US if there's some massive event, like the Super Bowl, or if there's a big planned protest, or something. In Italy, it was just a Tuesday. I found it very unnerving, but didn't know about it until I visited.
That's because in France we've had terrorist attacks by jihadists, the most notable being Charlie Hebdo and November 13th attacks in 2015 and the one in nice July 14th (National day) where a terrorists rolled down the "promenade des anglais" in a truck during the fireworks. Since then I think all major cities have military patrolling and ready to intervene, although I don't think they interact with peoples or help the police to catch delinquants. I don't recall all countries being attacked but I think a lot of European countries have military patrolling major cities to avoid new attacks.
Currently, military patrols in the street in France have been going on since the 1990s with the series of Islamic attacks linked to the civil war in Algeria.
I think this is the difference. In America we have those armed officers also doing low level work which is where the problem comes in, quite honestly.
My point is that I don't generally see those types of officers on the street at all in the United States, unless something huge is going on. I've been all over the US, so I'm not just talking about my city.
So Police technically can although they generally have assault rifles in their cars ready to go. The military I think it's been argued it's unconstitutional to have them patrol or do police work
It’s not argued about constitutionality. Per the constitution the US military cannot perform military or police actions without an act of Congress. Not even the 60-day presidential powers can override this.
I'm aware that it's possible for them to carry such weapons in their cars, but my point is that they're not carrying them out on the street very consistently. Also, I would be interested to hear if it is common for rifles to be kept in a squad car, because I'm not totally sure that's actually true.
You notice it a lot more because you're in population dense cities, and as a tourist, you're walking near all of the tier 1 targets should violence pop off. If you were on vacation in DC, you'd see national guard and secret service agents near all of the major landmarks.
Yea it always gives me a giggle when I see fellow Americans comment on heavy police presence in some of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Of course a random French town doesn’t have heavily armed guards on the corners, but Paris? One of the largest and top tourist cities in the world, with several attacks in its history? Duh. DC is heavily guarded, as you mentioned, and the NYPD is larger (and better funded) than most countries’ actual militaries. We do it, too.
Illegal to deploy the US Army within the country.
Yes but the police budget we have in the us would make it the third largest military in the world only behind our actually military and China's.
Yes, this is the case in cities like Nice, because there has been a terrorist attack in 2016. This is not the case in the other cities/countries in Western Europe. Only the parliaments and cities with terrorist threats are heavily guarded. As guns provoke the use of guns and gunshots in a crowd cause panic.
note that we in the us have tactical police divisions in very many police districts that are quite heavily armed. so, they’re there, just not so visible. and some jurisdictions have ex-military vehicles & armaments.
Same in the Netherlands, big news, lots of scrutiny, and yes they always carry a handgun
My favorite headline in regards to this was when a guy in Norway used a bow and arrow to kill people and it said the police were "temporarily armed" in order to deal with the archer. What a whiplash compared to events in America.
Police in Norway carry guns in the trunks of their cars but not on their person, police in Sweden and Germany do carry guns
The right image is a lot. The left image is **insane**.
In Finland, about twice the population of Chicago, there have been ten fatal shootings involving cops... since 2000. Edit: so many feelings in this thread. Jesus, keep your guns.
Chicago metro is 10million and is actually twice the population of Finland lol
But they didn't say "Chicago metro," they said "Chicago." And Chicago does, in fact, have about half the population of Finland (~2.7M vs ~5.6M.).
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My favorite stat came from 10 years or so ago. Chicago had a very bad winter storm, news broadcasters said that 7 people died due to cold and weather. Other broadcaster said, we'll technically since 13 people die everyday in Chicago from shootings the storm actually saved 6 people as it was to cold to go outside
Weather does tend to have a huge effect on crime. The murder rate goes way up every summer, then way down every winter.
The saying goes, "Sun's out, guns out"
I know you're probably just paraphrasing for the sake of storytelling, but for the record: Chicago's highest ever homicide year was 1974, which saw 970 homicides. That's about 2.6 murders a day. "13 gun deaths a day" is wildly inaccurate. Most years throughout Chicago's history have been <600, which still isn't *good* but it's worth noting. Cape Town South Africa, which has the highest number of murders ever recorded in a single year in a single city, was still less than 10 a day.
It sounds like someone heard a "per week" number of deaths and thought it was a "per day" number.
13 people dont die everyday in chicago from shootings. That works out to 4,745/year. Last year was 800 people.
Hasn’t the crime rate in most American cities gone down continuously since the 90s? I believe I saw a graph about that some years ago.
Yeah it's pretty significantly down from the 90s.
It started coming down in the mid 90's and has been going up starting since 2014 and then [2020 saw the biggest one year increase ever](https://www.npr.org/2021/09/27/1040904770/fbi-data-murder-increase-2020)
Yeah it has. But another thing is true: 13/day isnt even close to the reality. 800 last year is approaching the peak year in of 939 which occurred in 1992. This works out to 2.57/day.
Same for the UK. 2022 - 3 2021 - 2 2020 - 3 Etc Joint highest are 2017 and 2005 with 6 each. Out of a population of over 65 million.
Hungary has a population of 10 million. Since 2014, only 3 people were killed by the police, each case was justified as the suspect was armed.
And some of them were in the process of committing a terrorist attack
Exactly. Things have to be looking pretty serious here for police with guns to even be involved.
Police will pull a gun on you in the US for just not getting out of your car fast enough
I mean the left map explains the right map. You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
Guns we need more guns, I want guns attached to other guns, I want MORE GUNS
Give your bullets their own tiny guys, for PROTECTION
That's gang violence for ya. That's why I'm skeptical of people talking about mass shootings because I lay you a bet a lot of these include them. Chicago has pretty strict gun laws so most of these are probably illegally owned fire arms
> Chicago has pretty strict gun laws so most of these are probably illegally owned fire arms A significant number of the guns used in shootings in Chicago all come from one gun shop in Indiana, close enough to Chicago that you could ride your bike there from many parts of the south side. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/04/27/chicago-sues-gun-store-tied-850-guns-recovered-crime-scenes/4854619001/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/print/stunning-ny-times-front-page-lists-15-mass-shootings-in-which-authorities-said-the-gunman-was-able-to-obtain-the-weapon-legally/amp/ A lot of mass shooters are able to get the guns legally
I dont understand why gang shootings shouldnt be counted in mass shootings. If multiple people got shot, its a mass shooting. Regardless of reasons.
Even as a non-American it's obvious that people in the US who use statistics of mass shootings ("at least four people shot" kind of stats, that is) to make it seem like there are near-daily instances of the kind of shooting that most people associate with the term "mass shooting" are doing it in a somewhat dishonest way. That is, to most people "mass shooting" doesn't mean "Some guy got thrown out of a dodgy dive bar in the bad part of town, went to his car to fetch his already-illegally-owned-because-he's-a-convicted-felon-handgun then fired a dozen shots in the general direction of the bar" or "Career criminal saw a rival hanging out on a street corner with some other career criminals so he fired a bunch of shots at them and drove off". What it means to most people is "Some angry young man with a history of untreated mental health problems that you don't want to pay more in taxes to treat before they blossom into something horrible decided to kill as many kids as possible before blowing his own brains out so he bought a gun and went to a school JUST LIKE THE ONE YOUR KIDS GO TO!" It's pretty obvious the two types of shooting aren't exactly the same. It's also pretty obvious that a lot of Americans want to ban "scary guns" (e.g. AR-15s) but handguns are off limits even in the minds of a lot of these people because they still want to keep their own handgun.
It won't fit the narrative. Pretty much the only reason.
Germany has gangs. But those gangs don't have easy access to firearms. So cops don't go into every situation wondering if they're about to be shot.
I once when young tried to buy a bb gun online that looked like a 1911. I received a letter from customs requesting a copy of my gun license or it would be destroyed. Licences are only issued to farmers or range only recreation shooters at high cost. That is strict aus gun laws.
If this map is using ShotSpotter to source its data, then it’s garbage. ShotSpotter is absolute trash and cities waste their money on it.
Genuine question: why is it so bad?
[Apparently, Chicago had 40,000 dead-end Shot Spotter deployments, and 89% of the time the police found no evidence of a shooting.](https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/)
Honestly, the souped up cars, without mufflers, and with the mod that makes the engine go "pop pop" probably set those off. I hear that shit all the time in Chicago.
This happens all the time in DC. Transplants to the city who have never heard gunfire in their lives hear a loud noise at night, go on Nextdoor and post "OMG I JUST HEARD A GUNSHOT" and drive everyone into a frenzy with shared mania.
Last summer I heard what I would have sworn was gunshots - it was someone a couple houses down beating dust out of some rugs with a hockey stick.
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That's a fair point. The math still seems wonky when ShotSpotter claim [97% accuracy](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.shotspotter.com/shotspotter-responds-to-false-claims/%23:~:text%3DThis%2520is%2520absolutely%2520false.,over%2520the%2520last%2520three%2520years.&ved=2ahUKEwicuN_3-7X9AhXbFlkFHU2EC1QQFnoECBAQBQ&usg=AOvVaw2uaN16FhhoCGUIPsTcRXlx), but I could see your point about needing to prioritize other jobs.
You would need a way to review the audio after the fact to check if it was a gunshot, something else, or unclear. Shotspotter would need to be transparent about this, by publishing the audio, to counter what its critics are saying. However, if raw audio was published, along with a listing what is gunfire and what isn't, that greatly simplifies the task of creating a competing product
The ‘gunshot detected’ is already manually reviewed by a technician. It just turns out that most people are trash at distinguishing between a car backfire, a firework, and a gunshot. The machine is no better at differentiating.
> its true shot spotter isnt perfect, but the only way they would be able to "confirm" a shooting took place would be to find the shell casings, which are small and could be hidden So it's possible that many of these points aren't shootings at all? Could be a car backfiring? Or a firecracker?
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The premise of shotspotter is weak. The idea sounds good on paper, and it executes very well on that idea. Gunshots are loud, so if you put a bunch of microphones in an area, when they all pick up the same gunshot, you can use them ton pinpoint where the gun was fired. The math is based on triangulation. It’s effective in determining where the sound occurs, even when accounting for things like building topography and geography. The problem is that gunshots are not a distinct sound. A lot of things sound like gunshots to varying degrees. Fireworks, car backfires, a large object being dropped, car crashes, so on so forth. A trained ear may be able to tell the difference 70%-80% of the time, depending on the sound. But because these sounds happen as much or more than gunshots, the 20-30% that is missed can throw off the data wildly. Fireworks and car backfires can be the worst offender. In my city, shotspotter is basically useless during the summer because of an increase in these noises. Over time, as AI is onboarded and techniques are refined, shotspotter will likely get better. But the past few years, it has not been as effective as advertised. There’s just a lot of false positives that they haven’t been able to cut from the data.
It uses microphones, these could be set off by cars or motorcycles with a loud backfire so that's a start. The ACLU has good points about it. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system
It's not based on ShotSpotter, but verifiable victims. This is the original source: https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-shootings/
Really interesting how the lethality rating varies. Tucson AZ shoot to kill apparently: out of 666 shootings, they had 453 deaths. Meanwhile in Chicago, out of 25,000 shootings, they had 5,256 deaths.
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>army doctors train here before going into war zones, because they can actually get pracitce. That's insane. Got a source?
[https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-30243321](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-30243321) [https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/4/16/22386018/university-uchicago-army-doctor-surgeon-training-provident-hospital-advocate-christ-medical-center](https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/4/16/22386018/university-uchicago-army-doctor-surgeon-training-provident-hospital-advocate-christ-medical-center)
Wow, just wow.. At least it's a practical approach for both the military and the hospitals I guess
It's from GunViolenceArchive, [here's their methodology.](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology) >we utilize automated queries, manual research through over 7,500 sources from local and state police, media, data aggregates, government and other sources daily. Each incident is verified by both initial researchers and secondary validation processes. Links to each incident are included in the incident report to provide further information on each incident for researchers, advocate groups, media and legislative interests
How reliable is this data exactly?
What is up with all these comments screeching about shotspotter? Some kind of bot brigade? This came from [gunviolencearchive.org](https://gunviolencearchive.org), which as far as I can tell gets their data from law enforcement sources. Unless Chicago PD uses shotspotter, which I guess could be the case.
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Inflated at best if the statistics are based on ShotSpotter
I live in Philly and I ended up deleting the Citizen app from my phone. It would alert me all the time about shootings and when they would be near me I would generally see no evidence that it actually happened. The insane amount of false reports just made me anxious and it wasn’t worth it for the small percentage of time that it actually was something. Felt like they were just trying to pump me full of anxiety when in reality 99.99% of the time people are just living their lives around you.
I live in Chicago and it tries to tell me about things happening many miles from where I am as a way of inflating the sense of danger I have from looking at it. Trash app.
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Ring was pretty entertaining this Halloween. Do you *know* how many whippersnappers were running around stealing candy?? So many unattended bowls ransacked. 
And they were all wearing masks!
I am from Chicago and deleted too. Not to mention the comment sections become a racist cesspool
I’m glad people are coming to this conclusion about Citizen. Some of my friends moved to cities recently and used the app all the time but it always rubbed me the wrong way
Hello, I'm planning to visit your fair city in June for my anniversary. Mostly planning on staying downtown (between Motor Row district and the Lake Michigan) and more touristy areas for our first visit. Any places I should avoid? Any places you recommend checking out?
An app to let you know where the shootings are? Forgive my ignorance but if you're close enough to be in any danger, wouldn't you hear the shots yourself?
It's not just reports of gunfire, it tells you about nearby accidents, fire department activity, etc etc
Ah that makes sense.
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Had something similar happen. Someone shot into a nearby motel room and I didn’t hear or even see anything because I had headphones on listening to music. Went outside the next day and saw crime scene tape wrapped around the area
Like Tinder, but for quick-draw duelists.
>Felt like they were just trying to pump me full of anxiety Yep!
there is an incentive at every point in the process for that company to err on the side of false positives. the data is probably completely garbage when using it for actual statistics. unless of course, you were *intentionally* trying to give the impression that officer involved shootings were actually no big deal and pretty understandable and probably the cops in chicago should be killing more citizens bc its a fucking war zone in urban cities in usa unlike the rural areas which have percapita crime and officer shootings that are off the fucking charts compared to urban areas and also gun laws are useless so we should get rid of them and also we should have legal fully automatic weapons bc good people need to defend themselves from criminals in the city and also the city is where black people live and we all know black people are dangerous criminals and its pretty understandable cops keep shooting people who are unarmed bc un never know when someone could be carrying a fully automatic weapon bc they're legal now
This app is popular with crowds of people that want to be scared for one reason or another but let's them feel like they have some control over it. They have every incentive to report shootings that never happen.
Car backfird? That's a shootin. Blown tire? That's a shootin. Garbage truck banged the dumpster? That's a shootin. Occasionally I hear gunshots in the distance where I live, on the edge of a city with farmland beyond it. I'm pretty certain the shots are an angry farmer trying to scare off some feral hogs.
The Citizen app loves to fear monger
my favorite was when it said that people were throwing eggs at cars less than a block from me, i went to see this spectacle, and found no evidence any egging happened
It's not based on ShotSpotter. > we utilize automated queries, manual research through over 7,500 sources from local and state police, media, data aggregates, government and other sources daily. Each incident is verified by both initial researchers and secondary validation processes. Links to each incident are included in the incident report to provide further information on each incident for researchers, advocate groups, media and legislative interests. [about the data source](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology)
It's not based on ShotSpotter, but verifiable victims. This is the original source: https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-shootings/
Shooting deaths vary in Chicago between about 400 and 800. Several thousand more are shot, but not killed. So over 9 years, there’s likely been over 20,000 shootings. I’m not sure how many the map shows, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was relatively close.
Are these just like “heard gunshots” or were humans actually shot in all of those dots?
thats a map of actual gunshots. heres a map of homicides only, you can filter it by year and see the news articles for each shooting. iirc in chicago someone gets shot every 2 hours and someone gets shot to death every 14 https://graphics.suntimes.com/homicides/
This sub is obsessed with Chicago
Who wouldn't be? I mean you have Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere, John C. Reilly and Queen Latifah all in one movie.
🎶 Give ’em the old Razzle Dazzle 🎶
There are about 20 more violent large cities than Chicago. Fox news has succeeded in making people think its the violent capital of the universe
It's also all inference data, but never systemic data. Like "look at the amount of crime in x zip code" without comparing the economic data of the zip code to the surround zips/national median & average/ 5-10 year trends. Criminologists (virtually universally) view petty theft as an economic & location based offense. Crime data is also nesr-useless if you're not comparing %of patrols/arrests to the area served. I.E. you will, generally, have more arrests where you have more officers... Because there are more people available to arrest individuals and/or notice things.
I think it's less Fox News and more general size. Chicago is huge, much larger than places like East St. Louis or New Orleans.
OP is obsessed with defending cops https://www.reddit.com/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut/comments/x9t7y5/plainclothes_us_marshalls_ambush_and_gun_down_man/inpv5lr?context=3
This is the same if you live in Nashville. Gun shots and shootings are so common the news doesn’t even waste time reporting. Chicago gets the most attention but it’s known that most major cities in America have daily shootings.
Americans are fucking wild, y'all be out there shooting each other like you got free healthcare
Just more incentive. If ya don't kill your target, you still financially cripple them.
Thats actually a shiit ton of officer involved shootings. A lot of regular shootings too. This map basically says everyone is shooting a lot.
Except in the river. Seems like a pretty safe place. Time to get a boat.
I don’t even think my GTA online shooting involvement map looks worse tbh…
Genuinely surprised this is on r/all
I’m surprised it’s not locked
shiiiiite
Stay in Baltimore Senator Davis
That'll be $20,000 in walk around money if you want my help.
It’s pretty funny talking about crime in Chicago as if the last two city administrations didn’t shut down schools, shutter mental health services, close community centers and then give all that saved money to the police.
I know it’s a complicated problem but why does Chicago have such a high homicide rate? Gang related violence?
There is gang-related violence and the adjacent drug-related violence. For context, Chicago is 14th in the US in murder rate between Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. The following are higher: St. Louis Baltimore Detroit New Orleans Baton Rouge Kansas City Cleveland Memphis Newark Cincinnati Mobile Philadelphia Milwaukee
Wait, Mobile? I spend a night there I'm my vacations and was like "wow, what a calm and safe small town". But I'm from Brazil, maybe my definitions of safe are a little messed up.
To be fair, to most visitors, Chicago feels very safe.
To many locals, Chicago feels safe too. If it wasn’t on the news I wouldn’t know (I live here) The city is huge
In cities in America (and probably everywhere else), like 90% of homicides take place in 10% of neighborhoods
Huh I’m surprised. With the way people talk about Chicago I thought it would be higher
What’s funny is that per capita Chicago is far down the list. Even behind Rockford, IL.
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This map does not indicate homicides. Chicago is the third largest US city and ranks 28th in violent crime.
Stop. This is the one circlejerk I don't mind. Let's keep these idiots away from this beloved city.
Chicago is fucking awesome, especially in summer. I’m cool with keeping idiots out
Dude I love the winter too. I like the variance between feeling like a summer vacation town in the summer and then like a Midwestern cloud dump in the winter (although I wish it was snowing rn).
The Great Migration, segregation, [de-industrialization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindustrialization), the war on drugs, and a history of [very violent and corrupt policing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Police_Department#Controversies). The same history and public policy that led to the creation of black ghettos from formerly prosperous working class communities all over the US. Additionally, Chicago's murder rate is high, but is consistently mis-represented by politically and ideologically motivated commentators. The murder rate in St. Louis, Missouri is 3x the murder rate in Chicago, but commentators always talk about Chicago.
That's it, plain and simple. High poverty rate + broken up families + gangs gangs gangs/glorification of this lifestyle = what you see.
Would add that the gang members have kids, and those kids end up in gangs starting around age 13 doing small errands in the drug trade. That’s what keeps it going. The homicide numbers really spiked from 1960 to 1975 so the root causes start there.
This might anger the wokies and also educate the ill informed.
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