Crime statistics in Chicago are down for the eighth consecutive year, including drops in the number of homicides, sexual assaults and robberies, Chicago Police Department Superintendent Terry Hillard said this morning. The numbers were released today as part of a special crime report on gangs, guns and drugs. Lawmakers have been unable to agree on whether illegal possession of a firearm should be a felony, a key tenet of the now-defunct act. Both Hillard and Mayor Richard Daley credit, in part, the felony provision of the act with aiding the decrease in the number of guns on Chicago's streets over the past several. That law is needed.
Crime is mobile.
This is not just about the city of Chicago or the county of Cook. This is about the state of Illinois. Gang bangers and drug dealers have better cars and better vehicles than most citizens in this state. The number of violent crimes committed with a firearm in the city of Chicago is down by 13 percent in the first 11 months of 1999 compared with the same period last year, from 16,790 to 14,632. Drug seizures also are on the rise, though the department has confiscated nearly 7,000 pounds less of marijuana so far this year than last year.