Chicago shootings tick up

Chicago just had its first early-year reversal after four straight years of falling gun violence. Through the first week of April 2026, the city had recorded 105 homicides, up from 98 over the same stretch in 2025, with 266 nonfatal gunshot injuries also recorded this year. (chicagotribune.com) The shift did not show up all at once in January. Through the first two months of 2026, Chicago still had fewer homicides and shootings than at the same point in 2025, with 54 homicides and 182 shootings versus 62 homicides and 187 shootings a year earlier. (news.wttw.com) March is where the line bent. Chicago recorded 41 killings in March 2026, up from 35 in March 2025, while shootings reached 124 and shooting victims reached 137 for the month. (news.wttw.com) That is why the headline is about shootings more than murders. Through the first three months of 2026, homicides were flat at 97, but shootings were up 4% and shooting victims were up 5% compared with the same period in 2025. (news.wttw.com) The city is not seeing one uniform spike spread evenly across 77 community areas. The Mayor’s Violence Reduction Dashboard says Chicago tracks a “safety gap” between neighborhoods with the highest and lowest shooting and homicide rates because violence stays concentrated in a smaller set of places. (chicago.gov) That concentration also falls heavily on a specific group of residents. The same city dashboard says 79% of homicide or nonfatal shooting victimizations in 2020 were Black, 84% of victims were male, and 68% were between ages 20 and 39. (chicago.gov) The backdrop to all this is that 2025 was not a normal comparison year. WTTW reported that 2025 ended with the fewest homicides Chicago had seen in 60 years, so even a modest increase in 2026 stands out faster in weekly and monthly data. (news.wttw.com) City Hall is not treating the answer as police-only. Chicago’s current violence strategy, “Our City, Our Safety,” describes a trauma-informed and community-centered plan, and the Mayor’s Office says its Violence Reduction Dashboard is meant to support community-based violence reduction partners as well as city agencies. (chicago.gov 1) (chicago.gov 2) Police leaders are also pointing to a mixed picture rather than a citywide collapse. Chicago police said that as shootings rose in early 2026, robberies were down 26%, armed robberies were down 35%, burglaries were down 20%, carjackings were down 13%, and violent crime on Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses was down 4%. (news.wttw.com) What happens next will probably be decided block by block, not by one citywide number. Chicago’s own dashboard says the data updates daily with about a 48-hour lag, which means officials and residents will be watching spring and early summer counts almost in real time to see whether March was a blip or the start of a harder year. (chicago.gov)