Shooters, who have fired almost 11,000 gunshots in 30 Black Chicago neighborhoods since 2018, have rarely been arrested, according to a report that examined clearance rates statistics in non-fatal shootings recorded by the Chicago Police Department.
The report, published in the Chicago Sun-Times, said the overall clearance rate for shootings in Chicago is 6 percent. The report said last year alone, there were about 2,300 non-fatal shootings, but only 141 people in those cases were arrested.
The report said more than 19,000 people were wounded in shootings in Chicago since 2018. The Chicago Police Department has made arrests in 1,200 of those cases.
According to data in the report, the majority of those shootings occurred in Chicago’s 30 Black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides, where there have been 10,758 shootings since 2018. Only 663 people have been arrested, which is a 6.2 percent clearance rate.
Overall, 17 neighborhoods had clearance rates lower than the city average of 6 percent, according to figures in the report.
They include Ashburn, Auburn Gresham, Avalon Park, Douglas, East Garfield Park, Englewood, Grand Boulevard, Hyde Park, New City, Morgan Park, Pullman, South Lawndale, South Chicago, Roseland, South Chicago, South Shore and West Pullman.
The lowest clearance rate among that group is in Pullman, where no one has been arrested, though 64 shootings have occurred in the far south side neighborhood since 2018, according to the report.
East Side (3.23 percent) and Grand Boulevard (3.72 percent) also had extremely low clearance rates, followed by South Chicago (4.8 percent), Douglas (4.8 percent), and Morgan Park (4.9 percent).
According to the data in the report, Beverly, on the far south side, has a clearance rate of 33.3 percent, the highest among the 30 neighborhoods.
The diverse Kenwood neighborhood had 8.77 percent, followed by Austin (8.27 percent) on the West Side, Washington Park (7.56 percent), Chatham (7.22 percent) and North Lawndale (7.13 percent).
The report said CPD assigns 8.4 percent of its officers to detective work, similar to Philadelphia, which utilizes 8.7 percent. However, the percentage is well below New York (11.4 percent) and Los Angeles (15.4 percent).
One-quarter of the detectives investigating shootings in Chicago in 2024 were assigned more than 10 cases over the course of the year, while 10 percent of them had more than 20 cases — on top of the cases they had from past years and general assignments.
According to the report, Chicago’s carjacking rates soared during the pandemic but declined after Chicago police brass dedicated more resources to a vehicular hijacking team. As arrests increased, the number of carjackings dropped, according to the report, which cited Kevin Bruno, deputy chief of the detective bureau.
The report said about 1,500 nonfatal shootings since 2018 have been dropped because the victims of those shootings didn’t want to help with the investigation, according to department records. In Black neighborhoods, witnesses in many cases have declined to report shootings out of fear of retribution.
The report also cited a CPD survey that showed a “low level” of public trust in Chicago police in the communities where most shootings happen. And Black Chicagoans’ confidence in the police is 10 points lower than that of white Chicagoans, according to the survey.
The report said Chicago’s murder clearance rate is 56 percent, which includes “exceptional clearances” where no arrest was made because the suspect was killed or because prosecutors declined to bring charges.
The percentage of murders cleared by an arrest in Chicago is only 25 percent. In New York City, it’s more than 50 percent, according to the report.