Chicago Alderman: ‘Chicagoans Don’t Feel Like Crime Is Down; This Is a Scary Place to Live Now’

TURNER: “What about the stat that shows us, Illinois not even on the top 10 list of states in terms of homicide rates, and then also not in the list of top 10 cities in terms of overall crime. Meaning, even if you don’t dispute the fact that Chicago was crime-ridden, is it — should it be the top priority for the president?”

NAPOLITANO: “Yeah, I think it should be absolutely the top priority for the president. Actually, we just — we just initiated a little bit of a report that we sent to our superintendent of the police, asking to see the crime stats. Because, unfortunately, what happens throughout the country and Chicago as well, is you might have homicide rates up, but when you reclassify those as death investigations, on paper, that number doesn’t show a sign anymore. When you’ve got shootings where no, there’s no victims, but there’s actually rounds that have been shot and there’s damage to property, they label those things now, sometimes damage to property, not an overall shooting. When they find those shells on the ground, sometimes they label those things in the report as found property, not rounds found, that would be claimed as a shooting. So, numbers, even when I was on job, my father was on the job, my uncle, my brother and my cousin, the whole family, this goes on. For anyone to say it doesn’t happen, it’s ridiculous. Our numbers aren’t down. And people in your last segment have said that. Chicagoans don’t feel like crime is down. It actually feels more like it’s up. It’s a scary place to live now.”