It's the Crime Stupid

As we've said so many times, it isn't the crime stats per se - it's the perception of crime:

• Violent crime in Chicago has been on the decline for two decades, yet as Mayor Rahm Emanuel looks to re-election next year, the scourge of shootings and gang murders still defines the conversation in many neighborhoods across the South and West sides.
  
  Part ugly reality, part perception, the rate of violence in impoverished, mostly black areas of the city has helped shape negative impressions of the first-term mayor as ineffective when it comes to problems afflicting the urban poor, a new Chicago Tribune poll has found.
  
  Voters disapprove of Emanuel's job performance on crime by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio — 30 percent approve, while 57 percent disapprove. That's a drop in support of 15 percentage points from a year ago, when 45 percent approved of the mayor's efforts and 47 percent disapproved.

Crime might be down according to McNumberFudger's bullshit reclassification schemes, and homicides are trending down (2012 being the outlier). But the appearance of crime in formerly "safe" areas of the city and the deliberate media blackout on crimes of opportunity (wildings) downtown lends itself to a perception of "unsafe." Combine that with the more brazen child murders this year and Rahm isn't looking like a law-and-order mayor by any stretch of the imagination.