Given Chicago's violent and gunshot riddled summer, and as callous as it may seem, violent news coming out of the city just isn't surprising anymore--in fact it's become depressingly commonplace. But last night's news grabbed our attention, if just for this mind-numbing statistic: 13 of the 19 people shot throughout the city's South and West sides last night came in a 30-minute period. "The overnight shootings peaked between 9:15 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. That's when eight people, many of them teens, were shot at 79th Street and Essex Avenue about 9:30 p.m," reports The Chicago Tribune's Peter Nickeas. And if you do the math, about five more people were shot within the next 15 minutes or so. Ugh. The Tribune has been doing an excellent job of documenting violence in the city: Back on the weekend of June 8, they reported on how 40 people had been shot in a two-day period, and on Memorial Day weekend they documented the 40 shootings and 10 murders that occurred--as well as Mayor Rahm Emmanuel's failing effort to curb the violence. Nickeas wrote in a separate post today:
The work matters: Families appreciate when outsiders take an interest in their loss. And working overnight shifts on weekends at the Chicago Tribune offers a prime vantage point on the violence everyone agrees is a problem -- but nobody can seem to solve.
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