Have you spent much time in Chicago? I've lived here in Lincoln Park and the loop (downtown) and haven't had any issues with crime, unless you count people smoking on the CTA train. Obviously it's not perfect, but conservative media's portrayal of Chicago as a crime-ridden city doesn't match my experience at all.
> "conservative media's portrayal of Chicago as a crime-ridden city"
Maybe check police crime reports [1] of your city before going after the conservative media. There's gun related violence every week in Chicago and often there are multiple homicides on a single weekend. I understand it's a big city, but it's still a big problem. Lincoln Park is indeed nice and safe and parts of the loop are safe cause they are very touristy with heavy police presence. But there are many neighborhoods that are not that lucky. Also, the public school system in the city has major problems. In one year when I lived there there were 21 kids from the public school system around the city who got murdered in gang related shootings.
* I just picked the city wide report for the last week. 7 murders. last year same period 14 murders. 2023 numbers seem better than 2022 but still. For comparison, my city of about 110K people has 1-2 murders on average per year.
> But there are many neighborhoods that are not that lucky
I think this is probably the most important point. Much of the crime is concentrated in the city's far west and far south sides, where I generally don't go. These stats are old, but the map is roughly correct and shows the disparity I'm talking about:
The effect is that most of the city is safe, but people on the far south side are impacted by crime. Not to defend the situation—I of course wish that all of Chicago was safe and want to see our city make progress on that. Just trying to provide nuance.
