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New York City crime fell to historic low in 2016

By David Ingram

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Crime in New York City fell to a historic low last year, the police said on Wednesday in a report showing that the largest U.S. city avoided the spike in murders that has battered other major American cities, including Chicago.

Overall, there were 101,606 crimes that police said they knew about during 2016, down 4 percent from 2015, police said.

There were 335 murders reported last year, down 5 percent from the 352 murders a year earlier, police said. The record for the fewest since the city started keeping reliable numbers in 1963 was 328 murders in 2014.

By way of comparison, Chicago, which has about one-third as many residents as New York’s 8.6 million people, recorded 762 murders last year, more than twice as many killings as in New York.

That spike prompted President-elect Donald Trump to suggest on Monday that the city needed federal help.

The trendlines in New York pointed downward in nearly all categories of reported crime, as shootings fell 12 percent, rapes fell 1 percent, robberies fell 9 percent and burglaries fell 15 percent.

Reports of felony-level assaults were up 2 percent, while reports of grand larcenies were flat, according to police numbers.

Police, politicians and criminologists have hotly debated the reasons behind the sharp drop in U.S. crime since the early 1990s, when New York City had more than 2,000 murders a year.

They have put forward explanations such as changing tactics, better data collection or even a reduction in lead poisoning.

New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill credited last year’s reductions to a “laser-like precision” on gangs and to the department’s neighborhood policing program, which is aimed at improving relations between officers and the communities they patrol.

In a statement, O’Neil said, “2016 was the safest year ever in the history of New York City.”

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)

Midwest snow storm grounds hundreds of Chicago flights

(Reuters) – Hundreds of flights into and out of Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports were canceled on Sunday as a winter storm system dumped moderate to heavy snow on the Upper Midwest and Lower Great Lakes regions before heading toward the U.S. Northeast.

A winter storm warning was in effect in the Chicago area on Sunday afternoon, with total accumulations of up to 10 inches (25 cm) expected by midnight CST, the National Weather Service said.

It warned of difficult driving conditions in and around the country’s third-biggest metropolitan area, where snow began falling on Saturday afternoon.

As much as 13 inches of snow fell in parts of Michigan and up to 9 inches in parts of Minnesota by 8 a.m. CST on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.

At O’Hare International Airport, the world’s fourth-busiest airport, United Air Lines and American Airlines have scratched most regional flights and some mainline service, while Southwest Air has canceled most flights out of Midway International on Sunday evening and Monday morning, the airports said.

Passengers took to Twitter to vent their frustrations over one of the first winter storms to snarl air traffic in the region this season.

“To all our fans in Vegas – we are stuck in Chicago from the snow storm, we are so so sorry. Winter weather is (sic) wrecked our plans. This sucks,” wrote the rock band One Republic in a Twitter post. The group had a show scheduled on Sunday night at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

All told, more than 1,200 flights into and out of O’Hare were canceled as of Sunday afternoon, according to the Flightaware tracking service, while nearly 200 Midway flights were scratched.

At Detroit’s Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, a Delta flight arriving from Buffalo, New York, skidded off the runway and came to a stop on a grassy verge around midday on Sunday, but there were no injuries, local media reported.

Representatives of the airport and the airline could not be reached immediately to confirm the reports.

(Reporting By Frank McGurty; Editing by Alan Crosby)

Activist Chicago priest reflects on city’s ‘shameful’ violent year

Father Michael Pfleger comforts Lutrice Boyd and her granddaughter Faith Davis during a news conference by "Purpose over Pain", a group of mothers who lost children to gun violence, calling for a stop to shootings in Chicago, Illinois,

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A longtime activist Chicago priest who has marched in protests, attended vigils and delivered sermons decrying violence in the city’s most deadly year in nearly two decades, fears the surge in murders could continue into 2017.

Father Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church on Chicago’s predominantly black South Side where many of the more than 700 murders occurred, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that police were struggling to rebuild trust with people as guns were also flowing onto the streets.

“This year is through the roof,” Pfleger, 67, said. “The numbers are shameful,” he added. “They should be embarrassing to us and they should make us outraged.”

There have been 711 murders in the third largest city in the United States so far in 2016, the Chicago Police Department said, a number not seen since 1997 when 761 were murdered, and more than Los Angeles and New York combined reported this year. Both cities have considerably higher populations than Chicago’s 2.7 million residents.

Father Michael Pfleger (3rd R) marches through the streets of a South Side neighborhood during a weekly night-time peace demonstration in Chicago, Illinois, September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

Chicago’s police department has undertaken a series of reforms following the shooting death of a black teenager by a white officer and is under federal investigation to determine whether the department has systematically violated constitutional rights.

Pfleger said the number of guns in the city had increased dramatically over the past 20 years, contributing to the large death toll.

“You have more guns now than we have ever had. America, whether we want to admit it or not, has made them part of our wardrobe,” the priest said.

The number of guns recovered for the year through November was nearly 8,000, up 20 percent from a year ago, while gun-related arrests were up 8 percent, police said.

Father Michael Pfleger (2nd L) prays at Saint Sabina Church before taking part in a weekly night-time peace march through the streets of a South Side neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

“The levels of violence we have seen this year in some of our communities is absolutely unacceptable,” police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a statement at the beginning of December.

Much of Chicago’s violence occurs on its poverty stricken west and south sides.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin; editing by Grant McCool)

Thousands take to streets of U.S. cities to protest Trump victory

By Timothy Mclaughlin and Alexander Besant

CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Throngs of demonstrators marched in cities across the United States on Wednesday to protest Republican Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the U.S. presidential election, blasting his controversial campaign rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims and other groups.

In New York, thousands of protesters filled streets in midtown Manhattan as they made their way to Trump Tower, Trump’s gilded home on Fifth Avenue, while hundreds of others gathered at a Manhattan park and shouted “Not my president.”

In downtown Chicago, an estimated 1,800 people gathered outside the Trump International Hotel and Tower, chanting phrases like “No Trump! No KKK! No racist USA.”

Chicago police closed roads in the area, impeding the demonstrators’ path. There were no immediate reports of arrests or violence.

“I’m just really terrified about what is happening in this country,” said 22-year-old Adriana Rizzo in Chicago, who was holding a sign that read: “Enjoy your rights while you can.”

Protesters railed against Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the border with Mexico to keep immigrants from entering the country illegally.

Hundreds also gathered in Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday evening, and organizers planned rallies in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland, California.

In Austin, the Texas capital, about 400 people marched through the streets, police said.

A representative of the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the protests. In his victory speech, Trump said he would be president for all Americans, saying: “It is time for us to come together as one united people.”

Earlier this month, his campaign rejected the support of a Ku Klux Klan newspaper and said that “Mr. Trump and his campaign denounces hate in any form.”

“DREAMERS” FEAR DEPORTATION

Earlier on Wednesday, some 1,500 students and teachers rallied in the courtyard of Berkeley High School, in Berkeley, a San Francisco Bay Area city known for its liberal politics, before marching toward the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.

Hundreds of high school and college students also walked out in protest in Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles and three other Bay Area cities, Oakland, Richmond and El Cerrito.

A predominantly Latino group of about 300 high school students walked out of classes on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles and marched to the steps of City Hall, where they held a brief but boisterous rally.

Chanting in Spanish: “The people united will never be defeated,” the group held signs with slogans such as “Not Supporting Racism, Not My President” and “Immigrants Make America Great.”

Many of those students were members of the “Dreamers” generation, children whose parents entered the United States with them illegally, school officials said, and who fear deportation under a Trump administration.

“A child should not live in fear that they will be deported,” said Stephanie Hipolito, one of the student organizers of the walkout. She said her parents were U.S. citizens.

There were no immediate reports of arrests or violence.

Wednesday’s demonstrations followed a night of protests in the San Francisco area and elsewhere in the country in response to Trump’s victory against heavily favored Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Demonstrators smashed storefront windows and set garbage and tires ablaze late on Tuesday in downtown Oakland. A few miles away, students at the University of California, Berkeley protested on campus.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago, Alexander Besant in New York, Curtis Skinner in Berkeley, California, and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler and Peter Cooney)

FBI report expected to show violent crime rise in some U.S. cities

By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Violent crime in certain big U.S. cities in 2015 likely increased over 2014, although the overall crime rate has remained far below peak levels of the early 1990s, experts said, in advance of the FBI’s annual crime report to be released later on Monday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s report was expected to show a one-year increase in homicides and other violent crimes in cities including Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., based on already published crime statistics.

Coming on the day of the first presidential campaign debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the report could “be turned into political football,” said Robert Smith, a research fellow at Harvard Law School, in a teleconference on Friday with other crime experts.

A rise in violent crime in U.S. cities since 2014 has already been revealed in preliminary 2015 figures released by the FBI in January.

A recent U.S. Justice Department-funded study examined the nation’s 56 largest cities and found 16.8 percent more murders last year over 2014.

Trump last week praised aggressive policing tactics, including the “stop-and-frisk” approach.

Clinton has pushed for stricter gun control to help curb violence and has called for the development of national guidelines on the use of force by police officers.

FBI Director James Comey warned last year that violent crime in the United States might rise because increased scrutiny of policing tactics had created a “chill wind” that discouraged police officers from aggressively fighting crime.

Increased crime has been concentrated in segregated and impoverished neighborhoods of big cities. Experts said in such areas crime can best be fought through better community policing and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crime.

“We’re just beginning to see a shift in mentality in law enforcement from a warrior mentality … to a guardian mentality,” said Carter Stewart, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of Ohio, on the teleconference. “I don’t want us as a country to go backwards.”

In Chicago, 54 more people were murdered in 2015 than the year before, a 13 percent jump in the city’s murder rate, according to an April study by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Matthew Lewis)

Crime plagued Chicago to add nearly 1000 police officers

Chicago Police officers attend a news conference held by Superintendent Eddie Johnson announcing the department's plan to hire nearly 1,000 new police officers in Chicago

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Chicago’s police department plans to hire nearly 1,000 officers over the next two years in a bid to combat a surge of violence in the third-largest U.S. city that has included more than 500 murders this year, the city’s police chief said on Wednesday.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the emphasis would be on bolstering a depleted detective division, increasing leadership and focusing on policing on the city’s most violent areas.

“This will make us a bigger department, a better department and more effective department,” Johnson told dozens of officers and reporters on Wednesday.

The department will add 516 patrol officers, 92 field-training officers, 112 sergeants, 50 lieutenants and 200 detectives, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a post on social media.

Johnson said that these new officers would result in an overall increase of sworn officer positions from around 12,500 to around 13,500. He said this increased level would be reached by the end of 2018.

Chicago is struggling with a wave of violence that has included 509 murders in the city already this year, according to Chicago Police Department statistics, a 46 percent increase from last year.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had been reluctant to hire more officers, relying instead on existing officers to work overtime. He is scheduled to give a speech on the city’s crime problem on Thursday night.

Johnson said on Wednesday that he wanted to rebuild the detective unit. Figures show that this unit has dwindled to 922 from 1,252 in 2008.

Over the past 10 years Chicago has consistently had one of the lowest murder clearance rates of unsolved cases of any of the country’s 10 biggest cities, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chicago Police Department.

Johnson said that the decision to increase the police force came following discussions with the mayor but said that he had no information on how Chicago planned to pay for the addition of new officers.

The city of 2.7 million is struggling with chronic budget deficits, a big unfunded pension liability and falling credit ratings.

The mayor said on Wednesday that he would not raise taxes to pay for the new officers and that the city would have the resources to meet the cost but offered no details.

“It will be in black and white in the budget,” he said.

(Editing by Will Dunham and Diane Craft)

Chicago’s detective force dwindles as murder rates soar

Cynthia Lewis, who is looking to get the case involving the murder of her brother Tyjuan Lewis solved, poses for a portrait in Homewood

By Fiona Ortiz and Justin Madden

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Every two weeks, Cynthia Lewis contacts the detectives investigating the homicide of her brother on Chicago’s south side almost a year ago.

They have had no success finding who shot Tyjuan Lewis, a 43-year-old father of 15, near his home in the quiet Roseland neighborhood of single-family houses.

The death of Lewis, who delivered the U.S. mail for 20 years, is one of hundreds of slayings in 2015 that have gone unsolved as the number of homicides soared in Chicago, piling pressure on a shrinking detective force.

In a city with as many as 90 shootings a week, homicides this year are on track to hit their highest level since 1997.

Chicago’s murder clearance rate, a measurement of solved and closed cases, is one of the country’s lowest, another sign of problems besetting police in the third biggest city in the United States.

Over the past 10 years Chicago has consistently had one of the lowest clearance rates of any of the country’s 10 biggest cities, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chicago Police Department.

Last year, Chicago police had 480 murder cases and solved 223 murders that had been committed in 2015 or before, for a clearance rate of 46 percent, according to Chicago police figures.

That is well below the average national rate of 63 percent, and the average rate of 68 percent for cities with populations of more than 1 million in the past decade, according to FBI figures.

Chicago, with a population of 2.7 million, has more shootings and homicides than any other U.S. city, according to FBI and Chicago police data, and more shootings by law enforcement than other major cities, according to police department figures on officer-involved shootings compiled by Reuters. Its police department is under federal investigation for the use of lethal force by its officers.

Detectives and policing experts interviewed this week said Chicago struggles to solve murders because of declining numbers of detectives, the high number of cases per detective and because witnesses mistrust the police and fear retaliation from gangs.

DETECTIVES OVERWHELMED

The number of detectives on the Chicago police force has dropped to 922 from 1,252 in 2008. One detective who retired two months ago said investigators are overwhelmed. Not all of the detectives are assigned exclusively to homicide cases.

“You get so many cases you could not do an honest investigation on three-quarters of them,” he said in an interview. “The guys … are trying to investigate one homicide and they are sent out the next day on a brand new homicide or a double.”

A tight budget and focus on putting more police on street patrol has contributed to the shrinking detective force. Because police departments are not all structured the same, it can be difficult to compare numbers. But Chicago has proportionally fewer detectives than other U.S. cities, according to data on some of the country’s biggest police forces.

About 8 percent of Chicago’s roughly 12,000 police are detectives. In New York City, which has a police department of 34,450, 15 percent are detectives. In Los Angeles, which has a police department of 9,800 sworn officers, 15 percent are detectives.

John DeCarlo, professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, said better salaries also attract police talent from around the country and may be one of the factors that has helped drive higher clearance rates in cities like Los Angeles and San Diego.

FRAYED RELATIONS

Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy, who is due to retire soon, said to solve more murders the department was working with other law enforcement agencies, better using technology such as portable gunshot residue testing kits and increasing training for detectives on the use of surveillance video.

“The Chicago Police Department is taking the steps necessary to increase the number of detectives while also making available greater resources for existing detectives to do their jobs more effectively,” Roy said in an emailed response to questions from Reuters.

Roy said the department was also working to restore public trust in the police. A task force set up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel found earlier this year that the police department was not doing enough to combat racial bias among officers or to protect the rights of residents.

Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said frayed relations between police and minority communities were not unique to Chicago. “But it’s of a different grade here,” Futterman said. “It’s incredibly difficult to solve violent crime if people won’t talk to you.”

Another detective who retired this year said an even bigger problem was the fear of gangs.

“People see homicides but they are afraid to get involved,” he said. “Detectives are out on an island. No one wants to help them.”

According to Chicago police data, 61 percent of homicides last year were gang related, the highest proportion for at least 10 years. Intelligence-gathering can be difficult because the city’s gangs tend to be fragmented.

Lewis, the mailman, was not in a gang and lived in a neighborhood where residents complain more about abandoned houses than gangs. “I hate to try and make his (case) sound different, but it is,” said Cynthia Lewis, 41.

His family is convinced he was killed by someone he knew and frustrated that police have not found even a suspect.

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Trott)

Teen shot by Chicago police suffered gunshot wound to his back

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A teenager who was shot and killed by Chicago police officers last month suffered a single gunshot wound to his back, according to an autopsy by the Cook County medical examiner’s office made public on Wednesday.

Toxicology reports also found 18-year-old Paul O’Neal did not have drugs in his system. His death has been ruled a homicide, the autopsy report said.

“We knew he (O’Neal) didn’t have any drugs in his system,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a lawyer for O’Neal’s family. “We’re pleased for that.”

O’Neal, who was not armed, was fatally wounded by police officers on July 28 after he crashed a stolen Jaguar into a police car and then fled into a backyard where he was shot.

During the foot chase shots were fired by unidentified officers at the scene. An officer “believing the shots being fired were coming from O’Neal fired his Glock 9mm handgun five times in an attempt to stop the threat,” the autopsy said.

The shooting death of O’Neal adds to list of fatal encounters between police and black men and women in U.S. cities that have fueled protests over the past two years and stoked a national debate on race and police tactics.

The Chicago Police Department is currently facing a federal probe of allegations of racism and abuse against minorities. Protests rocked the city last year after dashboard video showed another black 17-year-old teenager being shot by a white cop as he jogged away from police officers during an October 2014 encounter.

Authorities released videos that captured the moments before and after police shot O’Neal, but not the shooting itself because a police officer’s body camera was not recording. No firearms were found on O’Neal.

Three Chicago police officers have been stripped of their law enforcement authority, a more severe step than a mere suspension, for their roles in the shooting.

(Reporting by Justin Madden; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Illinois says five more people with bacterial infection have died

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The Illinois Department of Public Health said on Wednesday that five more people had died after being infected with Elizabethkingia, a disease linked to the deaths of 15 people in neighboring Wisconsin.

The cause of death was not identified as Elizabethkingia because many of those people had underlying health conditions, the department said. Ten Illinois residents have been diagnosed with Elizabethkingia, and six have died.

Symptoms of Elizabethkingia can include fever, shortness of breath and chills or cellulitis, but officials have said that the bacteria are rarely reported to cause illness in humans.

Officials said the Illinois strain of Elizabethkingia differed from the Wisconsin one. The department has asked hospitals to report all cases of Elizabethkingia and save any specimens for possible laboratory testing.

The patients who died in Wisconsin had serious underlying conditions, health officials have said, and it remains unclear whether the bacteria caused all the fatalities.

Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois investigators are working with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine the source of the bacteria.

(Reporting by Mark Weinraub; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Legionnaires’ Disease Closes Three Chicago-Area Schools

Students were sent home and three schools were closed when higher than normal amounts of Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, were found in cooling towers.

The schools were located in the U-46 school district, located 45 miles northeast of Chicago. Officials found the high level of bacteria during an annual air quality check.

The district stated in an alert on their website: “While risk of exposure to the bacteria was low, we decided, in consultation with the Kane County Health Department, to evacuate staff and students to safe locations as a precaution.”

Reuters reported that the district was properly cleaning and sanitizing all 19 water cooling towers. So far, there have been no reports of anyone within the schools contracting Legionnaires’ disease.

Illinois has been concerned with the disease after 12 residents of a western Illinois veteran home died of Legionnaires’ last month. USA Today reports that dozens of home residents have contracted the disease. Legionnaires’ also infected 119 people and killed 12 in the New York City Outbreak earlier this year.

Legionnaires’ disease is a pneumonia-like disease that is caused by inhaling bacteria infected vapor. The vapor can come from air conditioners, showers, or hot tubs. The disease can lead to kidney failure, respiratory failure, and septic shock. Most people recover, but the CDC reports that 5% to 30% who contract the disease will die. It cannot be transmitted between people.

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