From the NYT:

Violence Surges in Chicago Even as Policing Debate Rages On

By MONICA DAVEY MARCH 28, 2016

The word “even” in that headline is pretty funny. “Predictably” would be more logical than “even.”

… Chicago has long been troubled by violence, but murders and shootings have risen sharply this year. Violent crime remains below the levels of two decades ago, and criminologists caution against finding trends in only a few months of data. But City Hall, the police and community leaders are alarmed by the surge: As of Friday, 131 people had been murdered here in the first months of 2016, an 84 percent rise in homicides from the same period in 2015. There had been 605 shootings, nearly twice as many than this point last year.

The increase could hardly have come at a more difficult time. The city is at a pivotal moment for law enforcement, mired in a crisis over police conduct and discipline and over distrust of officers, particularly by African-American residents, who make up about one-third of Chicago’s population.

You know, this outburst of black on black killings isn’t some random fluke like the weather, it’s a direct result of last fall’s BlackLivesMatter agitation in Chicago and Obama Administration anti-police interventions, just like the pattern in St. Louis and Baltimore.

I’m sure we’ll soon see more learned articles about how there is no Ferguson Effect because, while homicides were up almost 17% overall in the fifty biggest cities from 2014 to 2015, crime wasn’t up in El Paso. So that proves there’s no general Ferguson Effect. Instead, the only thing that’s up significantly is black-on-black homicides in heavily black cities where there has been Soros-funded anti-law & order agitations. Science!

Doing a text search, I find no hits for “Ferguson” or “Black Lives Matter” or “Soros” in this article, but “Justice Department” does come up:

The Justice Department is scrutinizing the patterns and practices of the city’s police force; the mayor on Monday named an interim police superintendent to replace the department’s fired leader; and voters have rejected Cook County’s top prosecutor, defeating her in a primary on March 15. The release in November of a police video that showed a white officer shooting a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, 16 times caused longstanding anger about police conduct to boil over. …

Since January, officers have recorded 20,908 times that they stopped, patted down and questioned people for suspicious behavior, compared with 157,346 in the same period last year. Gun seizures are also down: 1,316 guns have been taken off the streets this year compared with 1,413 at this time last year.

In an unusual video address meant to reassure Chicago officers, John J. Escalante, who has been the interim superintendent, told the police, “We are aware that there’s a concern among the rank and file about not wanting to be the next YouTube video that goes viral.”

Dean Angelo, Sr., the president of the local police union, said public scrutiny had an effect on officers. “They’re being videotaped at every traffic stop,” he said.

But the drop in street stops by the police could be tied to a departmental change that took effect in January, requiring officers to fill out a far more detailed form for each one. The change was imposed after the American Civil Liberties Union raised questions about whether officers were targeting minorities in their stops. The department recently simplified the required paperwork, and the number of stops has since been on the rise, officials say.

Speaking of halcyon Oak Park v. homicidal Austin right across Austin Blvd.:

“I’m really tired of it, and tired of worrying,” said Gloria Johnson, 37, who serves food at a restaurant in Austin, a neighborhood where the authorities say violence has been particularly harsh. Like other parts of the West Side, Austin has long wrestled with economic distress, gangs and crime, and Ms. Johnson bears a long scar on her elbow from a bullet fired about a decade ago. “But it seems like this year is just the worst of the worst,” she said.

In summary: #BlackLiesSlaughter