And yet that specific metric for Detroit -- "lowest number of criminal homicides in 40 years" -- is virtually useless as it doesn't account for Detroit's massive population decline.

Via the FBI's UCR tool which has data from 1985-2014: https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeJuris...

Unfortunately I can't deeplink to pages so here are screenshots:

https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh

- Detroit having ~300 homicides is very good compared to the ~400 homicides it had in 2000. However, that doesn't quite match up to its population decline. The homicide rate in 2000 was ~41.6 per 100K, compared to 43+ in 2014 (and 2015 and 2016 I think).

- Meanwhile, Chicago's 2014 homicide rate was 15.2. In 2015, it was 17.5. And in 2016, it jumped to 27.8 [0]

That jump is a huge jump compared to historic trends. But still a relative low for Chicago when considering 1990-forward. According to the Tribune's homicide tracker, the number of homicides in 2016 was 792 [1]. In 2017, it's tracking to be 664 homicides, which would be a rate of ~23/100K. Still not great but seems too early to say that Chicago is on an unchanging course of increasing crime. And it doesn't make much sense to argue but what about Detroit? when comparing Chicago to NYC.

https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh

[0] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-homicide-spikes-c...

[1] http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/homicides

It is a two year trend. Sure, it needs to be explained, but it isn't like some Chicago is some hellhole as it is often portrayed by certain media outlets and politicians. If you look at the 2014 crime statistics, Chicago has a lower crime rate than Minneapolis. Chicago was like #20 in crime rate.