In Chicago, nearly 700 children were hit by gunfire last year — an average of almost two a day — and 66 died, reports NPR. That number increased from 2009, while homicides in the city fell to a 45-year low. NPR is examining an epidemic of youth violence in Chicago and the city’s new efforts to reduce it.
“We did a good analysis of 2009,” says just-departed police superintendent Jody Weis says, which found that “8.5 percent of the city contained all of the shootings and all of the homicides. That’s not bad. Unfortunately, if you happen to live in that 8.5 percent of the real estate of Chicago, life is a very, very different world than that other nearly 90 percent of the city.”