As Chicago murder rates spike, many fear violence has become normalized

More than 750 people have been murdered in Chicago in 2016, the police said, a 58 percent increase over last year and the highest total since 1997. There have been more than 3,500 shootings in the city this year.

Over Christmas weekend, at least 60 people were shot, 11 fatally, according to The Chicago Tribune. Two teenage girls were among those shot.

As the year draws to a close, residents and community leaders say they are despairing over the ceaseless violence, which city officials are trying to confront with more police officers and new law enforcement strategies. But many people here also worry that the shootings, primarily in African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods on the South and West Sides, have become normalized, a routine part of life.

“We should be embarrassed as a city, every single one of us, that we’ve allowed this city to become the poster boy of violence in America,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, an activist and pastor of a Catholic church on the South Side. “Are we just going to shake our heads and say, ‘What a terrible year in Chicago?’”