Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence:

More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence

Gwen Ifill interviews Chicago Tonight's Paris Shutz on the PBS News Hourabout the city's killing fields, after the horrible July 4th weekend when 82 people were shot, 14 fatally. Nobody seems to have a handle on the actual numbers from that weekend and PBS strangely offers three different weekend shooting totals ("up to 80", "58 people were injured in 50 shootings", "at least 14 dead, more than 80 wounded") in this same story. Ifill thinks it's because news organizations are using different times for the start of the weekend. Even if that's the case, there's still a huge unexplained spread -- 50 to 82 people shot -- because the media can't agree on when a 3-day weekend begins and ends. I think there's a lot more to it than that. Shooting numbers have turned into a political game being played by the mayor and Supt. McCarthy.

GWEN IFILL: How do you keep track of these numbers? We know that there are some discussions about a couple of police-involved shootings. We know there are some questions about what counts as a domestic shooting, what counts as an accidental shooting, what counts as a gang shooting.

PARIS SCHUTZ: Right. Sure.

Well, over the long term, over decades, homicides are down in Chicago, as they are in New York or L.A. They’re less than half of what they were in the ’90s. But year to year, they may be down 10, they may be down 20 from the year before. And by law, the police department and the coroner’s office has to report every homicide, but there are ways that some say they fudge those numbers.

For instance, if there’s a murder that happens or a homicide that Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence: