Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling rebuked a Northwest Side alderman who expressed skepticism this week about Chicago’s year-over-year crime declines as the city girds itself ahead of a possible deployment of National Guard troops.
Ald. Anthony Napolitano, 41st, said in a social media post Wednesday that criminal incident “reclassification” may be a reason for the city’s double-digit declines in violent crime.
“A reported drop in homicides could just as easily mean an increase in death investigations,” Napolitano wrote in a Facebook post. “It’s easy to show a decline in burglaries and robberies if those crimes are just being relabeled as theft. Fewer shooting incidents on the books may correspond with more property damage reports.”
Speaking with the Tribune, Snelling said Napolitano’s social media statement was “the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard” and “a slap in the face” to members of the police department. The superintendent also pointed to the years of crime data the city already makes public.
“If I were lying and I had the ability to hide 125 homicides, why wouldn’t I do 250 homicides?” Snelling said Thursday. “Why wouldn’t I do more? Why wouldn’t I hide them all?”
“These men and women are working their asses off,” Snelling said. “To be accused of lying, to be accused of doctoring the numbers is an insult.”
A member of a multi-generation CPD family, Napolitano, himself a former CPD officer and Chicago firefighter, stressed that he wholly supports Snelling and the department’s officers.
Through late August, the city had recorded 266 homicides, a 32% decline in killings from the same time period in 2024, according to CPD data. The Cook County medical examiner’s office, meanwhile, had recorded 276 homicides on the year in Chicago. The city remains on pace to record fewer than 500 killings this year, a goal set last year by Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Total shooting incidents are also reported down 36% citywide. Reports of robberies, batteries, burglaries and car thefts — “index crimes” used by CPD and the FBI to gauge criminal trends — are all down by double-digit percentages as well.
In an interview with the Tribune, Napolitano said during his time as a CPD officer he witnessed criminal incidents being reclassified to less severe offenses.
“In a lot of cases, you know, you have to go to a supervisor to get permission or the approval to charge or to classify a crime as that UCR code,” Napolitano said. “If not, they’ll tell you what to identify it as.”
“I’ve seen it happen, and I hope that’s not what’s happening here,” he added.
Napolitano represents about 3,000 city workers who call the 41st Ward home. In the 2024 general election, President Donald Trump captured 51% of the votes in the ward, according to records from the Office of Inspector General and Chicago Board of Elections.
Napolitano emphasized that he wasn’t accusing the department of engaging in a conspiracy, but said, “It’s just weird that, all of a sudden, our numbers have come down drastically and it’s not what people are witnessing on the street right now.”
CPD officers are making more arrests this year, records show. The average daily population of detainees in the Cook County Jail has returned to pre-pandemic levels, even as the SAFE-T Act was passed and implemented, eliminating the cash bail system.