CHICAGO – Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling rebuked a Northwest Side alderman who expressed skepticism this week about Chicago’s year-over-year crime declines as the city girds itself ahead of a possible deployment of National Guard troops.
Alderman Anthony Napolitano, 41st, said in a social media post Wednesday that criminal incident “reclassification” may be a reason for the city’s double-digit declines in violent crime.
“A reported drop in homicides could just as easily mean an increase in death investigations,” Napolitano wrote in a Facebook post. “It’s easy to show a decline in burglaries and robberies if those crimes are just being relabeled as theft. Fewer shooting incidents on the books may correspond with more property damage reports.”…