As the homicide rate continues to climb in Chicago, Northwest Indiana municipalities with a history of violence are on target for a decline in murders for the second year in a row.
Of the 775 deaths in Lake County through July 30, 41 people have died in homicides, according to the Lake County coroner’s office.
Of those 41, 24 were in Gary.
Earlier in July, it appeared homicides in Gary had slowed even further.
The coroner’s office had logged 21 homicides for the city as of July 6. A bad weekend July 23-24, however, brought a shooting death and two stabbing deaths into the count.
But if the city continues on at its current rate, Gary is on course to see a 19.6 percent decrease in homicides over 2015 – which ended with 51 for the year – and a 25.5 percent decrease compared with 2014, which saw 55 homicides.
Chicago has logged 384 homicides through July, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Gary’s Police Chief, Larry McKinley, has been at the helm in Gary since July 2014, when he replaced Wade Ingram. Ingram resigned that month after a sharp increase in homicides, including the shooting death of Gary Patrolman Jeffrey Westerfield on July 6.
But for all the attention Chicago has been getting for its homicide numbers, Gary is still more dangerous as a whole, according to Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Loyola University in Chicago.
Chicago, with its 2.7 million people, doesn’t even rank among the most dangerous cities at all, even if the two cities have parallel issues, he said.
“Homicides in distressed areas are symptomatic of three things: the number of young men (ages 18 to 25) in the area, the number of gangs and the level of conflict among them,” Lurigio said.
“Gary has crime problems for the same reason any other city does, and that’s intergenerational hopelessness. But if crimes have gone down, is it because gangs have called a truce, or has the population changed? Or could it be police activity by locking up young men involved in violence?
“If there is an upturn or downturn in homicides, we tend to look to young men and gang activity. If there’s conflict, shootings go up.”
When asked how the city has accomplished the decrease, McKinley said through a spokesman that it’s “strategy,” but declined to elaborate.
Other municipalities in Lake County have seen jumps in homicides in the first seven months of this year.
Merrillville has logged five homicides, according to the coroner statistics, where it logged two in both 2014 and 2015. Hammond, on the other hand, has logged six so far, where it had seven in 2015, but 12 in 2014.
“According to UCR data, Hammond has averaged eight homicides per calendar year from 2011 to 2015. As someone once said, ‘everything is relative,’ so I do not believe that this year is an anomaly in terms of the reported number of homicides,” said Hammond police spokesman Lt. Richard Hoyda via email. “Our reports show six so far this year; other numbers regarding homicide in Hammond according to the data are 17 in 2007, 13 in 2008, 11 in 2009, and 10 in 2010.”
As to whether gangs have played a major role in those homicides, Hoyda was reluctant to make generalizations. Those that are tied to gang activity, however, are met with “no tolerance” from the department and the U.S. attorney’s office, he said.
“Even if a reputed gang member is involved, that, by itself, does not always explain motive for a particular incident,” Hoyda said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
