As the year has worn on, the grim milestones have added up: the deadliest month in 23 years, the deadliest day in 13 years, 4,300 people shot...the list goes on and on.  With five days left in 2016, official police records indicate that homicides in Chicago surged 57% YoY and shootings spiked 46%.  To put those numbers into perspective, Chicago recorded over 20% more murders in 2016 than New York and Los Angeles combined, despite having a fraction of the population.  Per the Chicago Tribune:

Through Dec. 26, 754 people were slain in Chicago compared with 480 during the same period last year, an increase of 57 percent, according to official Police Department statistics. The last time Chicago tallied a similar number of killings was in 1997, when 761 people were slain. Shooting incidents also jumped by 46 percent this year to 3,512 from 2,398, the statistics show.