"...depending on where you look"

Porkulous (and Fox News) are arguing over homicide numbers, and both are conflating homicide totals with homicide rates:

• Fox News anchor Bret Baier confronted Gov. JB Pritzker, D-Ill., over Chicago’s murder rate on Wednesday.

  During an exclusive Fox News Channel interview, Baier and Pritzker clashed over the murder rate in his city. The anchor brought out research data to contest the governor’s on-air claim that Chicago isn’t even in the 30 American cities with the highest murder rates.

TOTAL homicides are lower this year, but Chicago still leads the nation in the total number of dead bodies. Homicide RATES fluctuate, where it's more dangerous in certain cities compared to Chicago based on killings per 100,000 people. 

Amusingly, if you do it by neighborhood, Chicago runs away with both categories.

It's all a numbers game exploited by both sides, but as we reported for years, those numbers are untrustworthy in the extreme. Check out this from a week ago:

• D.C. police officers are feeding information to the Justice Department as it probes accusations of manipulated crime data, according to the D.C. Police Union and five other people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an investigation in progress. The voluntary cooperation of about three dozen from the police force, according to three of the people, reflects long-standing frustrations about how violent crime is categorized by supervisors — and surfaces as public safety in D.C. continues to capture the president’s attention.

  Some rank-and-file officers and detectives have complained for months — in some cases, years — that managers were recording serious crimes as more minor ones to make their police districts appear safer or avoid the ire of top department brass. Some kept lists, documenting cases where they believed a higher-up improperly classified a crime as a lesser offense. One such tally, obtained by The Washington Post, lists more than 150 instances since March 2024 where staff in a Southeast D.C. police district believed offenses were, at least initially, inappropriately classified.

Or this one, closer to home:

• Officials in President Trump’s Justice Department have been scrutinizing crime data in recent months — they’ve found evidence that Democratic politicians have been skewing crime stats for their own benefit ahead of the midterm elections, The Post has learned.

  Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker — a vocal opponent of Trump’s use of federal troops for both immigration enforcement and fighting big-blue-city crime — has lately touted double-digit declines in Chicago crime rates where “shootings and homicides on our highways are down 60, 70, 80% depending on where you look.”

Gee, if you only count "highway homicides," then yeah, you're numbers are going to be massively skewed, and Fata$$ is undoubtedly looking at statewide numbers. The "depending on where you look" is what he's using for cover, because if you look at I-190 (the O'Hare circle) those rates are going to be lower than the Dan Ryan or the Stevenson. 

We could quote stats from Jefferson Park, compare it to North Lawndale and claim crime was down hundreds of percents, too. It wouldn't mean a damn thing, but it makes for great soundbites. 

CompStat was built on this bullshit, too, and we wrote dozens of pieces pointing out that the only persons who benefited from any of it were the politicians.