‘No, No, No, These Are Murders’: Bret Baier Cuts Off JB Pritzker’s Deflection With Laborious Knowledge About Chicago

Bret Baier questioned Illinois Governor JB Pritzker about Chicago’s homicide fee throughout a tense interview on Wednesday. The 2 had a heated backwards and forwards about how to have a look at town’s crime numbers.

Based on Fox Information, Baier requested why Chicago has the best homicide fee amongst America’s large cities. Pritzker disagreed with this, saying Chicago just isn’t even within the high 30 cities for homicide charges. The governor stated town’s homicide fee has dropped by half over the past 4 years and that violent crime has gone down by double digits annually.

When Pritzker tried to speak about violent crime usually as an alternative of murders, Baier stopped him. “No, no, no, these are murders,” the anchor stated, bringing the discuss again to killings particularly. “Nicely, right here’s a map — most populous U.S. cities: 17.47 per 100,000 inhabitants. Chicago is primary over Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York and San Diego,” Baier stated in response.

The Numbers Don’t Inform A Easy Story

The argument between Baier and Pritzker actually comes right down to the way you depend the numbers. Analysis from Wirepoints, an Illinois nonprofit group, discovered that Chicago had 573 murders in 2024. That was the best complete quantity amongst all main U.S. cities. New York Metropolis got here in second with 377 murders, and Houston had 322.

However whenever you take a look at homicide charges per 100,000 folks as an alternative of simply complete numbers, Chicago’s spot on the listing modifications. Town’s fee of 21.5 killings per 100,000 folks put it in sixth place amongst all main cities. St. Louis was first on that listing with 52.9 murders per 100,000, regardless that it solely had 149 complete murders as a result of it’s a a lot smaller metropolis.

The principle level that backs up what Baier stated is that Chicago did have the best homicide fee when wanting solely on the high 20 largest U.S. cities in 2024. This appears to be the quantity Baier was speaking about throughout the interview. Politicians arguing over crime stats has turn out to be fairly widespread, very similar to latest claims about vitality coverage that don’t match up with what actually occurred.

When Pritzker tried to defend himself by saying each of them might discover totally different numbers to show their factors, Baier didn’t again down from his knowledge. 

“Our homicide fee has been minimize in half over the past 4 years, and yearly, it’s gone down by double digits. And should you take a look at all the violent crime over the past 4 years, they’ve all gone down,” Pritzker stated.

The governor stored saying that Chicago has executed what it wanted to do to decrease crime. Chicago Police early knowledge exhibits that murders from January to August 2025 had been one third decrease than the identical time interval in 2024, which does again up what Pritzker stated about issues getting higher. Native leaders hold getting questioned about how they deal with issues of their areas, very similar to how politicians cope with points on the state degree.