CHICAGO — For the first time in over a decade, Chicago is on pace to close the first half of a calendar year with fewer than 200 homicides, as 2025 marks the city’s steepest drop in violent crime in recent memory.
City data and law enforcement statistics show a 34% reduction in killings and a 40% drop in shootings compared to the same period in 2024, a shift that’s now being felt across many of Chicago’s most violence-stricken neighborhoods.
Targeted Policing and Community Funding Paying Off
Superintendent Larry Snelling credited the success to targeted enforcement in historic hot spots, explaining that the Chicago Police Department has focused its resources on areas with consistent trends of violence.
“If we’re going to be serious about saving people’s lives, then we need to look where people’s lives are being taken,” Snelling told the Chicago Tribune…