Cook County Blows Past 1,000 Homicides This Year In First Since 1994

The greater Chicago-area Cook County has this week surpassed a grim record – for the first time in almost three decades seeing more than 1,000 homicides in one year. With still a month to go until the close of 2021 the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office put out figures on Tuesday showing 1,009 total homicides.

The last time the county – which is the most populous within the state of Illinois encompassing the Chicagoland area and Evanston city – saw 1,000 homicides in a one-year period was in 1994, when there were 1,141 killings.

According to local CBS-2, “Chicago alone has had 777 homicides so far this year, according to the medical examiner’s office. That’s more than the total number of homicides reported by Chicago Police all of last year, when CPD reported 769 homicides.”

Further, the medical examiner’s office records show that “the vast majority of homicide victims have been Black, with 81% of the victims identified as African American. Latinos accounted for about 15% of the county’s homicide victims.”

The vast majority of these deaths are by gun violence. But strangely enough, Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot who has lately been at war with her own police department over the vaccination status disclosure mandate, has tried to shift blame for the soaring violent crime gripping the city’s streets onto (what else?) the coronavirus pandemic…

“There’s no question that the COVID-related impact on the public safety system in Chicago, in New York, in L.A., D.C. and other cities across the country is real. And what we’ve got to continue to do is make sure that we’re demanding of our courts and our prosecutors that they hold violent people accountable and keep them off our streets,” the mayor told MSNBC last month.

Most recently, Thanksgiving weekend saw over 40 people shot, including five killed, which means Cook County could possibly be headed toward an all-time high of shootings before 2021 is out. 

One report after the bloody holiday weekend described Chicago as “a war zone” while featuring footage of someone firing a machine gun:

This it the terrifying moment machine gun shooting erupted on the streets of Chicago in a bloody Thanksgiving weekend of gun violence. 

…Footage posted online shows a man, who does not appear to have a gun, running through the streets of Chicago as machine gun fire erupts nearby.  

‘Chicago is a war zone’: Terrifying video shows MACHINE GUN fire erupting on the streets in bloody Thanksgiving weekend of violence as three are killed and another 40 are shot – pic.twitter.com/anUd9XR7Rd

— Blanche Victoria (@tammytabby) November 30, 2021

It’s certainly not the first time in recent months that fully automatic gunfire has erupted on Chicago streets.

As one previously widely viewed social media video from last summer showed, gunfights have on occasion broken out in broad daylight…

Chicago’s Gone Wild: Gang Member Machine Gun Shootout Called Worst Violence Since Al Capone Days!! pic.twitter.com/gqrRo5wuQT

— Willie D (@WillieDLIVE) June 26, 2021

Meanwhile, the city of Chicago and Mayor Lightfoot’s hugely controversial vaccine status disclosure mandate for police officers remains at a tense stalemate.

Just under a month ago an Illinois judge handed the police union a major victory, ruling that an arbitrator must examine the policy before the city can implement it based on prior union agreements and rules with the city. The vaccine mandate order remains blocked for the time being. Many observers and Chicagoans themselves have expressed alarm that if patrol officers were ever actually removed from the streets for failure to comply with the pandemic-related mandates, the chaotic violence would spiral out of control even beyond already existing levels.