The headlines keep coming. More murders in Chicago. A weekend of shootings. A summer of killings. But as the excellent Alex Kotlowitz explains, “one issue is rarely raised: year after year, the vast majority of murders and non-fatal shootings in Chicago go unsolved. Last year, the police charged individuals in just twenty-six per cent of all murders. Of the nearly three thousand non-fatal shootings, only ten per cent of the assailants were charged, which means that you have a pretty good chance of shooting someone in Chicago and getting away with it.” From The New Yorker: Solving Chicago’s Murders Could Prevent More.

+ Jill Leovy’s book Ghettoside is focused on exactly this point (and is a must-read): “This is a book about a very simple idea: where the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously to violent injury and death, homicide becomes endemic.”

+ And in Tulsa, another police shooting of an unarmed black male has a police chief promising an investigation and the DOJ coming to town.