Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| June 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Chicago \u2013 another city I actually like \u2013 has been cursed with a long parade of youth-haters: Mayor Daley, Rahm Emannuel, John Wayne Gacy, Michelle Obama, the press, the entire Chicago Police Department.<\/p>\n Even given a dismal history, today\u2019s official cabal is setting records for deranged.<\/p>\n Hard to believe these days, but prior to 1990, Chicago was just your average metropolis with murder and violence rates similar to other big cities\u2019, not the national punching bag it is today. (Yeah, there was that Valentine\u2019s Day thing, but other cities had their gangsters, too.)<\/p>\n Now, after other large cities showed stunning\u00a0violence and homicide declines<\/a>\u00a0especially among young people, \u201cChicago, Chicago\u201d indeed does \u201cthings they don\u2019t do on Broadway\u201d (apologies to\u00a0Sinatra<\/a>), like tiddlywinks tournaments or Doris Day sing-alongs where someone gets shot.<\/p>\n I exaggerate, but not much, as 40 to 50\u00a0bullet-perforated Chicago bodies<\/a>\u00a0a week testify.<\/p>\n Chicago\u2019s craven officialdom and press have long given up on any solutions beyond venting cliches and corrupt finger-pointing blaming their youth.<\/p>\n My\u00a0substack last week<\/a>\u00a0complained that too many parents keep their kids at home too much. In Chicago, they got no choice. The city harshly (though unsuccessfully, as it turns out) enforces house arrest for young people.<\/p>\n Chicago Police Department reports<\/a>\u00a0(are you sitting down?) show cops for decades cited, arrested, and threatened parents over an incredible 100,000 youths every year\u00a0NOT for real crimes<\/em>, but simply for\u00a0being in public<\/em>.<\/p>\n With officers hell bent to curfew 275 youths per day, Chicago police don\u2019t get around to solving two-thirds of violent crimes (including nearly half of murders) and 90% of property crimes.<\/p>\n Why bother with mere felonies and killings? The CPD\u2019s big mission for decades has been to harass law abiding dark kids off the street.<\/p>\n Did Chicago\u2019s strategy work?<\/strong><\/p>\n Forty years past the halcyon day when Chicago was a normal big city for crime, Chicago\u2019s homicide rate now is consistently double the average for the other 12 big cities with 1 million or more population. After decades of worse trends, Chicago\u2019s teenage murder rate is now a shocking 2.5 times higher than the averages for other big cities.<\/p>\n Do Chicago leaders care? Not unless their hobby of talking loud and tough while repeating more and more of what has failed translates to caring.<\/p>\n Everything\u2019s more violent in Chicago<\/strong><\/p>\n Last weekend\u2019s\u00a0headline<\/a>\u00a0blared: \u201c5 officers struck by car after \u2018teen takeover\u2019 hits Chicago\u2019s West Side\u2014as 19 people hurt in shootings.\u201d Five officers were injured when an\u00a018-year-old driver<\/a>, now charged with attempted murder, plowed into them. If found guilty by the evidence, sure, he deserves the appropriately long sentence.<\/p>\n Because of that one driver, the\u00a0press story<\/a>\u00a0labeled the entire gathering of hundreds of young people \u201ca wild teen takeover\u201d in which \u201cfights, robberies and gunfire\u2026 erupted as the massive crowds of minors terrorized public spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n Except that they didn\u2019t and they didn\u2019t. Just about no other arrests resulted from that \u201cteen takeover.\u201d You have to read further down to learn the \u201c19 people hurt in shootings\u201d that same day were\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0part of the \u201cteen takeover.\u201d They were shot at various other locales on a typical Chicago May 24.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s another\u00a0Chicago news<\/a>\u00a0headline on another \u201cteen takeover\u201d from last weekend: \u201cDozens of teens arrested, 9 weapons recovered during large gathering in Hyde Park.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the subheading: \u201cChicago police say at least 13 teens, ages ranging from 14 to 28, received felony charges for possessing a weapon and battery.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDozens of teens\u201d became \u201c13,\u201d and \u201cteens\u201d became 28 years old.<\/p>\n CPD stats are maddeningly out of date, unreliable, and not reported to the FBI, so we don\u2019t know the ages of all arrestees. But I\u2019m betting that when finally issued, they\u2019ll show what police stats on\u00a0\u201cteen takeovers\u201d in other cities<\/a>\u00a0show: the large majorities of the city\u2019s criminal offenders are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and even 50s.<\/p>\n For decades, Chicago powers have labeled all teens as a problem. Now they\u2019ve gone one better: anyone causing problem, regardless of age, is a \u201cteen.\u201d<\/p>\n Cops are just part of rotten Chicago leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n Naturally, officials local, state, and federal are champing to punish all youths and a few parents of a few miscreants, such as parents of the 18-year-old police-assaulting driver.<\/p>\n If parents beat their kids daily and fed them crack for breakfast, fine, prosecute the parents \u2013 though it\u2019s a tough legal road, especially since this \u201ckid\u201d is an adult. But no one today cares about abusive adults or even mentions them. Officialdom just wants parents to help them blame, ban, and punish mostly-Black youths. Of all persons arrested in Chicago, 92% are Black or Hispanic, which means virtually 100% of youth arrestees are Nonwhite.<\/p>\n The CPD\u2019s statistical lag makes it impossible to evaluate individual incidents. Still, the CPD\u2019s\u00a0annual reports<\/a>\u00a0show youths are not some special crime scourge \u2013 far from it. Chicagoans arrested for criminal offenses by age (using CPD\u2019s awkward age groupings) in the most recent year:<\/p>\nages under 18: 7%<\/h4>\n
ages 18-21: 9%<\/h4>\n
ages 21-30: 30%<\/h4>\n
ages 31-40: 27%<\/h4>\n
ages 41-50: 14%<\/h4>\n
ages 51-older: 13%<\/h4>\n