What goes 'down' while it's going up?... Chicago Murder Rate Increases 48%: Rahm Can't Cover up Crime and Chaos in 2014 by playing with the statistics.
[Editor's Note: The following article was originally published at Daily Kos while Subtance was down, as Chicago Murder Rate Increases 48%: Rahm Can't Cover up Crime and Chaos in 2014 by playing with the statistics. ]
Chicago police chief Garry McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. According to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's top cop, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, the crime situation has improved. McCarthy is comparing murder rates for 2015 to 1965 (when many of his officers weren't born yet).
But the per capita murder rate in Chicago is now 48% higher than it was in 1965. How did we get here you ask?
Chicago closed 2014 with what police said were “historic lows” in crime and murder numbers. The year saw a drop of 3 percent in murders, marking the lowest murder rate since 1965, when there were 397, according to Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. [Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/...]
Well it wasn't me mixing apples and oranges. McCarthy used two-week-old statistics and an incomplete data set for 2014. Then he added to the mix, 40 year-old statistics. All that effort was to get corporate media outlets to report, on January 1st, that the Chicago murder rate for year ending 2014 was "down." Rahm was in Chile on a family vacation at the time, so reporters didn't have the chance to ask him any direct questioins.
Apparently, Rahm Emanuel, who sees himself as the master of media manipulation, achieved his "messaging" goal for the first day of New Year. But a closer looke shows is is just more of the same old "data" game.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/02/1355110/-Chicago-Murder-Rate-Increases-48-Rahm-Can-t-Coverup-Crime-and-Chaos-in-2014
