JD Vance called Chicago the US murder capital. Is he right?

During the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance took a page from running mate Donald Trump’s book and verbally flogged Chicago.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about 40 miles south of where Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were holding a campaign rally, he called Chicago the country’s murder capital and compared it to a “third world country.”

“It's almost a joke to me that they held it in Chicago, which has become the murder capital of the United States of America thanks to very failed Democrat leadership,” Vance said. He then shared a “little theory” that Democrats held the Democratic National Convention here so that Walz could then accurately claim to have served in a combat zone.

Former mayor Lori Lightfoot decided to tell Vance how she feels on X (formerly Twitter): “A nice thing about not being mayor anymore is I don't care who hears me tell this clown to STFU.”

Chicagoans are accustomed to hearing overblown descriptions of crime in their city, which has been plagued by the nickname “Chiraq” since Chicago rapper King Louie’s 2011 mixtape “Chiraq, Drillinois.”

Perhaps more than any other big city in America, Chicago is often associated with crime and violence.

For sure, crime has long been a problem here. And it is arguably the city’s greatest challenge.

For years, Chicago has consistently led the nation in total homicides. In some years, like in 2018, Chicago witnessed more murders than both New York City and Los Angeles combined.But when it comes to the murder rate, Chicago ranks 15th, based on 2023 statistics from the FBI and the Chicago Police Department. Murder rates, or the number of homicides per capita, are more useful than absolute numbers for understanding residents’ chances of being murdered.

Maybe Vance should take a closer look at his own state when discussing cities struggling with violence. Two Ohio cities – Cleveland and Dayton – had higher murder rates than Chicago in 2023.

Among the 100 cities with the highest murder rates in the nation, six are in Ohio (compared to three in Illinois). Only California (12) and Texas (11), much larger states than Ohio, had more.

Chicago also might be getting a bad rap when it’s portrayed as the nation’s leader in crime. When it comes to overall crime rates beyond homicides, several other cities ranked higher than Chicago.

In fact, the city ranked eighth for its robbery rate and didn't crack the top 20 in any other crime category in 2022, according to FBI crime data for America’s largest cities.

Meanwhile, smaller cities like Memphis, St. Louis, Tacoma, Detroit and Cleveland recorded top-10 rates in at least five categories. San Francisco, Milwaukee, Oakland and New Orleans all cracked the top 10 for their crime rates in three categories. And there were 10 other cities who recorded rates in the top 10 for two categories.

Crime data also show how different the picture looks depending on what part of the city you’re in. Crime occurs far more often in some Chicago neighborhoods than it does in others.

For instance, from Jan. 1, 2020 to May, 26, 2024, there were 268 homicides in the Austin community area, the most in the city, according to crime data on the city’s online data portal. However, there were zero homicides recorded in the Mount Greenwood and O’Hare community areas during that span. And the Forest Glen, Hegewisch, Jefferson Park and Norwood Park community areas each posted just one homicide during that stretch.