4,098 Chicagoans killed in gang crime in 20 years

Chicago gang crime declined to its lowest level in the past two decades in 2023, but the numbers may be more about gangs fracturing and police losing their gang database. Still, more than 1-in-5 homicides were suspected of being gang related.

More than 1-in-5 Chicago homicides were suspected of being motivated by gang activity in 2023, but that is the lowest ratio in the past two decades, Chicago Police Department data shows.

But the decline may be more about gangs splitting up and how well police can track gang members since their gang database was shut down in 2023. The problem is likely worse than the data shows, the city’s former top cop said.

Chicago gangs were suspected to be behind 1,808 crimes reported across the city last year, the fewest in any year since before 2004, according to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The total share of crimes attributed to gangs also declined steadily during the past two decades, dropping from 2.9% of all crimes in 2004 to 0.7%.

A 30-year veteran of Chicago gun violence prevention efforts believes the drop is about gang decentralization and the police’s ability to connect gangs to the violence. And a former police superintendent agrees the data is not a good reflection of gang activity, especially since police had to shut down their gang database in 2023.

“About 20 years ago, the gangs in Chicago had a strong governmental hierarchy and a lot more structure,” said Joel Hamernick, founder of The Coach House Solutions Group and executive director of Strides for Peace, a Chicago non-profit that empowers community groups to combat gun violence. “But today, almost none of that structure remains.”

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who served under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel until he was forced out during the Laquan McDonald police shooting case, said the apparent decline in overall gang crime could be overstated because Chicago police ended operation of the Chicago gang database. It was shut down in September 2023 after nearly two decades of the system tracking suspected gang members.

McCarthy said losing the database has likely made it more difficult for the police to track gang-related crimes. The shutdown was ordered by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability after an inspector general report found it contained outdated and incomplete data with few controls to ensure accuracy of gang designations.

Despite the issues with the database, McCarthy said a data-driven policing approach in general has proven the most effective way to tackle and prevent gang crime.

“The CPD had five consecutive years of reducing police-related shootings and five consecutive years of reducing the number of arrests because we weren’t just grabbing anybody,” McCarthy said. “What we were doing was interrupting and preventing retaliation by grabbing guns from the gangs who just became the victim.”

Certain crimes remain heavily influenced by gang activity. Analysis shows 22% of homicides reported in Chicago in 2023 were suspected of being gang-related, a far greater share than any other crime.

The number of homicides reported in Chicago has been disproportionately impacted by gangs during the past two decades, with gang-related cases accounting for 37% of all homicides since 2004.

This gang influence peaked in 2015, when nearly 6 out of every 10 homicides reported citywide were suspected of being tied to gangs. In total, city data shows 4,098 people have been killed in Chicago since 2004 in gang-related homicides.

“It goes back to understanding what a gang is,” Hamernick said. “When my friend was growing up, his dad was a member of the Black P. Stone Nation and his dad saw it as a path to feeding his children. It might have had a vigilante aspect to it, but it wasn’t fundamentally about killing people.”

“When the drug trade shifted and the Black P. Stone Nation became very involved in it, his dad left. He removed himself from it, but his sons and my friend became deeply entrenched in the Cabrini Green drug markets,” Hamernick said. “That’s when we started seeing more gangs selling drugs, taking control of territory and shootings – activities we traditionally associate with gangs today.”

“Crack use was prevalent back then, too, but the next generation moved away from it and so the use of cocaine went off a cliff. That meant the market for crack disappeared and the gangs weren’t profitable like they had been for decades before, leading to these smaller identity groups forming.”

While crimes linked to gangs declined overall during the past two decades, a handful of crimes saw an increase in the share of gang activity. Theft saw the largest percentage growth.

The share of gang-related thefts and deceptive practice cases reported in Chicago more than doubled between 2004 and 2023, with incidents of burglary, stalking and offenses involving children also rising. Nearly every other crime category saw a decline in the share of gang involvement during this time.

Among Chicago’s neighborhoods, the Little Village community on the city’s West Side reported the most gang-related crimes last year. Chicago police suspected gang involvement in 146 crimes, nearly double the number of the neighborhood reporting the second-most gang-related crimes.

The Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side led the city in gang-related homicides in 2023, with nine deaths being attributed to gang activity.

“It is well documented that a large shift in the nature of the violence occurred when Chicago tore down public housing like Cabrini and uprooted people who had gang associations, spreading them over the city,” Hamernick said. “Many of the most senior leaders of Chicago’s gang system were arrested in the early 2000s as well.”

“Now a lot of the violence we’re seeing is the result of young people with guns making autonomous decisions, as opposed to representing a group or being ordered,” Hamernick said. “And in most cases, its retaliatory in nature.”

Hamernick said he believes the way public housing was demolished and families relocated created significant issues of distrust between law enforcement and Black communities. Long-standing issues of segregation and disinvestment continue to contribute to violence in the city.

“If you don’t have trust between the community and police, you can’t solve crimes, and we have an unacceptably low rate of clearance in shootings and homicides already,” Hamernick said. “We’ve got to change the nature of how we police and faithful implementation of the consent decree has got to be the top priority.”

The consent decree went into effect in 2019 after the department and federal law enforcement agreed on reforms to address civil rights and other violations by Chicago Police. Training, hiring, monitoring and community involvement are all covered and Mayor Brandon Johnson in 2025 is expecting to fund 162 jobs related to the decree with $11.4  million from additional speed cameras.

Overall, the share of gang-related crimes fell to its lowest level in Chicago in the past two decades in 2023, with police reporting 13,071 fewer gang-related crimes in than during the peak in 2006.

The number of non-gang related homicides reported in Chicago notably increased during this time, hitting its fourth-highest level in the past two decades in 2023 after peaking during the pandemic.

McCarthy said the lack of data on gang activities could be overstating the decline in reported cases and masking the true depth of the problem.

“We were getting the right person at the right place at the right time. But you can’t practice data-driven policing without data,” McCarthy said. “Now they don’t have the data to react and prevent the next shooting. So not only are some cases not being recorded as gang shootings, but the police aren’t prepared to respond.”

McCarthy said if city leaders want to keep up with the changing nature of gang crime, they need to understand the full scope of the issue. That’s starts with finding the political will for more data-driven policing.

“We need to return the way that we’re doing police work from being reactive to being proactive. We need to understand where, when and who is committing a crime so we can prevent the next crime from happening,” McCarthy said. “We know how to do it. The first step is to have the political will to do it.”