Teens drive brutal spike in carjackings with covid limiting school and supervisi

[tolbs17]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/juvenile-carjackings-increase-coronavirus/2021/02/24/903e8fda-6c81-11eb-ba56-d7e2c8defa31_story.html

A year of the coronavirus has given rise to what police leaders nationwide call an alarming trend: bored, wayward teenagers pointing guns in peoples' faces and carjacking them.

In Chicago, the frequency of the crime more than doubled in 2020 to a rate of about four per day. Three teenagers are charged with murder after a 65-year-old retired firefighter was shot in December during a noontime holdup in a busy shopping district.

This is very scary.

I'm sure chicago has a very high crime rate with this stuff happening. It's a big city but I hate to say it but they need to work on their infrastructure and laws more.

[kphoger]

Yeah, they should make it illegal to carjack someone at gunpoint.  What is this, the 90s?

[Max Rockatansky]

Never seen or read "A Clockwork Orange?"

[tolbs17]

Yeah, they should make it illegal to carjack someone at gunpoint.  What is this, the 90s?

I found and read this article yesterday. And I was terrified

[Max Rockatansky]

Yeah, they should make it illegal to carjack someone at gunpoint.  What is this, the 90s?

I found and read this article yesterday. And I was terrified

Uhhh...then you might not want to look very deeply into the UCR over the years pertaining to Crime Rates in Chicago. 

[kphoger]

People tend to be bad at evaluating crime statistics critically.  Is a number high or low?  Well, you have to compare it to something else–many somethings else, really–in order to have a good answer.

As for Chicago, people often overstate the crime there.  Compare it to Atlanta, for example:



You'd probably be even more surprised by the charts if I'd done this for Chicago and Saint Louis.

[Max Rockatansky]

People tend to focus on things like the total number of murders on the UCR.  They should be looking at the rate per 100,000 to get a more accurate picture of what the actual level of crime.  Chicago is a very large City so it will have a larger overall number of murders and other violent crimes compared to cities which easily exceed it per 100,000. 

[jemacedo9]

People tend to be bad at evaluating crime statistics critically.  Is a number high or low?  Well, you have to compare it to something else–many somethings else, really–in order to have a good answer.

As for Chicago, people often overstate the crime there.  Compare it to Atlanta, for example:



You'd probably be even more surprised by the charts if I'd done this for Chicago and Saint Louis.

It'll be interesting to see what this would look like with 2019 and 2020 added.
The "alarming trend" would imply a large spike upward...whatever the definition of "large" is...

[Brandon]

Living and working in the Chicago area, there has been a noticeable uptick in carjackings over the last year.  Even 2019 was nowhere near as bad.  There's also been a noticeable uptick in freeway shootings as well over the past year.  I have no idea what the cause is, but the freeway shootings have been occurring during the day, including rush hour.

[jeffandnicole]

People tend to be bad at evaluating crime statistics critically.  Is a number high or low?  Well, you have to compare it to something else–many somethings else, really–in order to have a good answer.

As for Chicago, people often overstate the crime there.  Compare it to Atlanta, for example:



You'd probably be even more surprised by the charts if I'd done this for Chicago and Saint Louis.

They're rates, not actual numbers.

Chicago has 2.7 million people.  Atlanta has about 500,000.

If the lines on the chart were the same, Chicago would have over 5 times the number of crime for those categories.

[kphoger]

If the lines on the chart were the same, Chicago would have over 5 times the number of crime for those categories.

Yes, obviously.  But "safety" is dependent on population size.

If a town of 1000 has ten homicides every year, you wouldn't call that "safer" than a city of 1,000,000 with twenty homicides every year, would you?

[Scott5114]

I think it would be interesting to extend those charts back to 1950 or so. In the nation as a whole, due to a number of societal changes, violent crime was a lot worse back in the 60s and 70s than it is today.

[kphoger]

I think it would be interesting to extend those charts back to 1950 or so. In the nation as a whole, due to a number of societal changes, violent crime was a lot worse back in the 60s and 70s than it is today.

I keep telling the old folks in my church that, and none of them believes me.  I've seen charts, but it was a while ago and I don't have the time to hunt for them again.

[SectorZ]

I think it would be interesting to extend those charts back to 1950 or so. In the nation as a whole, due to a number of societal changes, violent crime was a lot worse back in the 60s and 70s than it is today.

I keep telling the old folks in my church that, and none of them believes me.  I've seen charts, but it was a while ago and I don't have the time to hunt for them again.

You would think the older people would know better as they lived thru it.

[kphoger]

You would think the older people would know better as they lived thru it.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

[tolbs17]

Not enough supervision seems VERY hilarious to me.

[tolbs17]

The south region has one of the worst areas to be in regarding crime.

[Max Rockatansky]

You would think the older people would know better as they lived thru it.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

Having been doing what I do for the past 20 years the downward shift in even properly crime has been dramatic.  I used to have cases all the time and nowadays it's only a handful every month now.  My first boss used to tell me in the 1970s and 1980s that he would have something absurd like 500-800 shoplift cases a year, that's hard to fathom now. 

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Minneapolis has had a serious issue with carjackings over the last year, which has slowly started to worm its way into the suburbs. Eden Prairie, considered by many to be a cake-eating suburb (next to the "official" cake eater land of Edina), recently had a carjacking and an unattended vehicle theft within a week of each other.
.

[GaryV]

I think it would be interesting to extend those charts back to 1950 or so. In the nation as a whole, due to a number of societal changes, violent crime was a lot worse back in the 60s and 70s than it is today.

I keep telling the old folks in my church that, and none of them believes me.  I've seen charts, but it was a while ago and I don't have the time to hunt for them again.

You would think the older people would know better as they lived thru it.

Except you didn't have someone tweeting and retweeting it, so you never heard about it.  You only knew about a violent crime committed against a friend of your brother-in-law's coworker when your BIL personally told you.

[Max Rockatansky]

I think it would be interesting to extend those charts back to 1950 or so. In the nation as a whole, due to a number of societal changes, violent crime was a lot worse back in the 60s and 70s than it is today.

I keep telling the old folks in my church that, and none of them believes me.  I've seen charts, but it was a while ago and I don't have the time to hunt for them again.

You would think the older people would know better as they lived thru it.

Except you didn't have someone tweeting and retweeting it, so you never heard about it.  You only knew about a violent crime committed against a friend of your brother-in-law's coworker when your BIL personally told you.

The news didn't even like reporting on crime and most people didn't want to talk about it in day to day conversation.  It was weird in retrospect, it was like everyone was in denial or something.   I think that's why people remember times like that as being more "simple"  or "better"  since they only saw what they wanted to. 

[JoePCool14]

Not enough supervision seems VERY hilarious to me.

That's because it's a scapegoat excuse. They're also blaming GTA for normalizing that behavior.

I could say more, but this will probably get highly political and I'm not here for that.

[tolbs17]

Not enough supervision seems VERY hilarious to me.

That's because it's a scapegoat excuse. They're also blaming GTA for normalizing that behavior.

I could say more, but this will probably get highly political and I'm not here for that.

See Ryan Stone.