In a exceptional sequence of errors, the Chicago Solar-Instances has revealed knowledge claiming Chicago law enforcement officials have shot and killed 11 individuals already this 12 months — and felled one other in “a police-related stabbing.”
However in accordance with Chicago Police Division data, town’s officers haven’t shot (or stabbed) anybody this 12 months, though one particular person was lower by flying glass when an officer discharged their gun throughout an investigatory cease.
The paper’s error seems in its on-line “Violence Tracker,” the place the outlet claims to listing each murder sufferer within the metropolis with a abstract of how every was killed. However for causes unclear, most of the summaries blame police for murders that the cops didn’t commit. The CPD-focused weblog Second Metropolis Cop was the primary to report on the Solar-Instances errors.
The false reporting of police-involved shootings — and “police-related stabbings” — isn’t restricted to 2026. Earlier years within the paper’s murder tracker present the outlet blaming CPD for murders that its contemporaneous reporting signifies didn’t contain the police.
The misreporting might be an information manipulation error. On-line data present the person credited with the “design and improvement” of the Solar-Instances tracker left the paper two years in the past. However the errors are troubling as a result of info clearinghouses scoop up native reporting and datasets to create “police taking pictures” databases that purport to trace police-involved shootings nationwide.
The truth is, shootings by CPD officers are down sharply in comparison with the not-too-distant previous. The town’s officers shot 22 individuals, killing eight final 12 months, in accordance with the impartial crime monitoring web site HeyJackass. Chicago law enforcement officials shot simply 9 individuals in 2024, solely 10 in 2023, and 23 in 2022.
As compared, CPD officers shot 61 individuals in 2009, 56 in 2010, and 70 individuals in 2011, HeyJackass knowledge reveals. The outlet has not recorded any “police-related stabbings.”
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