Since the beginning of the year, the city of Chicago has experienced 135 homicides, a 71% increase over the same period last year.  This puts the city on pace for more than 500 homicides for the year – a figure topped only once since 2008. Chicago Tribune: As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, homicides totaled 135, a 71 percent jump over the 79 killings in the same year-earlier period, official Police Department statistics show. That represented the worst first quarter of a year since 136 homicides in 1999, according to the data. Shootings have jumped by comparable numbers as well. As of Wednesday, at least 727 people had been shot in Chicago so far this year, a 73 percent rise from 422 a year earlier, according to a Tribune analysis of department data. Worse yet, that jump follows two consecutive years in which shootings rose by double digits, the analysis found. Homicides also rose by about 12.5 percent last year over 2014. If there was any hopeful sign in the...(Read Full Post)