President Donald Trump called out Chicago violence Wednesday morning for the second day in a row and the fifth time in his three weeks in office, asking, “What is going on in Chicago?”
“In Chicago, more than 4,000 people were shot last year alone,” he said in a speech to a law enforcement group in Washington. “And the rate so far this year has been even higher.”
According to the Tribune’s database, shooting are up about 8 percent this year so far but homicides are down about 20 percent.
“Whether a child lives in Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore or anywhere in our country, he or she has the right to grow up in safety and in peace,” he said. “No one in America should be punished because of the city where he or she is born.”
Trump was addressing the Major Cities Chiefs Association’s winter conference.
On Monday, during a White House meeting with sheriff’s, Trump also singled out Chicago violence and repeated a debunked claim that the U.S. murder rate is the highest it’s been in 45 years.
The most recent annual FBI statistics available show the national rate for murder and non-negligent manslaughter in 2015 was 4.9 per 100,000 people. That was lower than every year between 1996 and 2009, when the rate fell from 7.4 killings per 100,000 people to five for the same population.
Source: Chicago Tribune
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