Spaniard, when did you grow up there? I lived in Chicago from 1987 to 1991 while doing my undergrad at U of Chicago, then lived in Hyde Park again in 1995-1998 while working on my PhD thesis. Just after graduating in June 1991, I took the wrong bus back from taking my friend to the airport, got off in a bad neighborhood, and I was mugged soon after that. One guy grabbed me from behind, the other shouted "Where's your wallet?" before realizing that I was wearing shorts in June and just took it out of my pocket. That was hardly a rare occurrence -- most people I knew had some sort of crime story while I lived there.
That's backed up from what I see of crime statistics. In the years that I was there, crime was terrible. It improved in the 2000s but then got worse again in recent years. The high crime rate sucks, but it's not a new thing.
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(The graph shows the murder trend, but the broader violent crime trend is similar. I didn't find a graph of that by quick search.) Nationwide, though, Chicago isn't in the top ten most violent cities. The current top ten for violent crime are:
1) St. Louis, Missouri : 2082 / 100K
2) Detroit, Michigan : 2057 / 100K
3) Baltimore, Maryland : 2027 / 100K
4) Memphis, Tennessee : 2003 / 100K
5) Kansas City, Missouri : 1724 / 100K
6) Milwaukee, Wisconsin : 1597 / 100K
7) Cleveland, Ohio : 1557 / 100K
Stockton, California : 1415 / 100K
9) Albuquerque, New Mexico : 1369 / 100K
10) Indianapolis, Indiana : 1334 / 100K
...
17) Chicago, Illinois : 1099 / 100K
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rateI'd love to see Chicago get better, but we also need to look at the even worse situations in those other cities.