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Also, as we’ve noted here before, according to figures crunched by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data gathering and distribution organization at Syracuse University, Chicago has long been at or near the bottom for prosecuting gun crimes at the federal level. In 2014, Chicago ranked 82nd out of 90 federal districts, even as its homicide rate continued to make Chicago the murder capital of the United States. In fact, TRAC’s Dr. Harold Pease wrote last November, “Leniency everywhere is typical of the Obama administration. In 2011, ‘federal gun prosecutions dropped by roughly 40 percent.’” And he wrote: “‘Only about 1 percent of the guns seized by Chicago police led to federal prosecutions.’ Moreover, those prosecuted rarely get more than one year of a possible three-year sentence.”
When asked why the prosecution rate for gun crimes in Chicago is so low, Fitzpatricksaid TRAC’s research “isn’t conclusive.” He said that in 2014, Chicago’s DOJ office started a Violent Crimes Section as part of a restructuring of its Criminal Division. “The Violent Crimes Section has one mission: to help the city and our district tamp down on violent crime. We have 15 attorneys in this section dedicated fulltime to prosecuting violent crimes.”
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