Chicago is not always the Second City, it would seem. Instead, the city’s historic rivalry with New York City has taken a less-than-desirable turn.
In a head-to-head crime data comparison with the nation’s largest metropolis, New York City can’t touch Chicago.
New police stats from both departments, obtained by NBC 5 Investigates, reveal that Chicago outguns New York City in shootings and murders, not only this summer, but so far this year- and by a wide margin – despite New York’s population being three times the size.
The worst mass shooting of the year in Chicago was last weekend in Washington Park. Fifteen people were hit by gunfire with one left dead.
It was a violent end to a bloody summer, and a year that so far in Chicago has produced several more murders than last year.
Even as overall violent crime here is down 9% year-to-year, according to Chicago police, the disparity between gun violence here and in New York City is sizable.
This summer alone Chicago has more than double the number of shootings and shooting victims as New York; and almost double the number of murders.
“I’m really astounded to see the huge difference that’s totally out of proportion between these two cities,” said retired Chicago police chief of detectives Gene Roy.
The official data so far for all of 2026 is even more astounding, according to Roy: 442 shootings in New York versus 982 in Chicago, with more than twice as many Chicago shooting victims and 100 more murders in the city.
“The fact there’s 8 million people in New York City, there’s only 2.7 million in Chicago. The numbers should be consistent, but they’re not,” Roy observed. “They’re just way out of kilter.”
Roy points to an NYPD hiring binge in recent years, putting thousands of new officers on patrol…while Chicago has been losing street strength.
“We have to get back up to a decent strength in our manpower levels. That’s, that’s critical,” Roy told NBC Chicago’s investigative team. “Even if you say that we’ve only lost a thousand officers over the past two years, that is the equivalent of closing two entire police districts.”
The loss of manpower on the streets saps not just the numbers, but the experience, according to Roy.
“You’re losing talent. You’re losing drive. You can’t replace a 30-year veteran with somebody straight out of the academy.”
Even as CPD has removed more than 7,300 guns from the streets this year, automatic weapon use by Chicago gangs is a significant part of the violence, according to Roy. A crime scene in Roseland last June had more than 100 shell casings from machine gun fire.
“Now you’re seeing weapons of war they can shoot 20, 30 rounds of the time before they have to reload,” Roy told NBC. “These people that are caught with these high capacity, illegally modified weapons need to be federally prosecuted. Where they don’t get the benefit of the SAFE-T Act, where they go home 24 hours after they’ve been arrested, they’re detained pending trial.”
A former longtime CPD official, Roy said there has to be more federal law enforcement involvement in Chicago, setting aside the political spat between a blue city and state and a red White House.
And Chicago isn’t just outpacing New York. Our team checked the other top five biggest cities-with Los Angeles and Houston especially closer in population…all of them have far fewer shootings and murders than Chicago.
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