"Just last year, Chicago had over 600 caskets." — Kanye West
On 2007's "Everything I Am," Kanye alluded to the violence in his hometown, and sadly little has changed five years later. Chicago is expected to surpass 500 murders by the end of 2012. What's perhaps more startling is that murders are actually down in the Chi since the 1990s.
While accounting for only one third of Chicago's population, blacks represent roughly three-fourths of the city's murders in 2012. An alarming number of victims have been young men killed by gun violence. It's frightening to know that many of the guns seized in Chicago come from the suburbs, and over half of the guns are from outside the state of Illinois. This makes tracking the weapons a struggle for local law enforcement.
This summer has been a brutal one. Between the first of June and the 31st of August, 152 people were killed. Of those, 38 were teenagers. The deaths of Emonie Beasley-Brown, 3 weeks; Iyonna Davis, 1; and Heaven Sutton, 7, must be mentioned as well. We look at their lives now.
Know these names. Remember these names.
Written by Julian Kimble (@JRK316) and Ross Scarano (@RossScarano).