By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
It’s becoming another defining feature of Chicago’s fall from greatness. Adults murdering kids. Kids murdering kids. “Random” bullets killing kids.
The Cook County Medical Examiner has what should be the final count of youth homicides for 2024.
91 kids aged 19-and-under were killed in Chicago in 2024. Including a five-year-old girl and two seven-year-old boys.
For some context, Jacksonville, Florida, population 1 million, had 82 murders total last year – including youth and all adults.
San Diego, with 1.4 million people, suffered 46 murders in total – including youth and all adults.
Chicago lost more youth to homicide than those cities lose across all ages.
Of Chicago’s 91 youth lost to homicide, twenty weren’t even old enough to drive yet.
As we continue to point out over and over, the city’s soft-on-crime approach – its “equity-based,” anti-police, decarcerationist approach – is destructive to Chicago’s minority communities.
98% of young homicide victims in Chicago were minorities.
In all, 16% of the city’s 573 homicide victims in 2024 were ages 19 and under, according to the Mayor’s Office Violence Reduction Dashboard.
One day, hopefully one day soon, competent leadership will return to Chicago. And deterrence. And an obsession about kids and their education. For now, those things are all missing in action.
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