Homicides are, in fact, down in Chicago, but they remain at some of the highest rates since the 1990s, and overall crime spiked by 41 percent between 2021 and 2022. Last weekend alone, mass hooliganism overwhelmed Chicago’s downtown while 11 people were killed and 26 wounded in shootings across the city.

Maybe there’s a lesson in this, simple and old-fashioned as it may seem. When bad guys walk free and brave cops have to fear for their jobs for doing their jobs, crime tends to go up. And when the national conversation about the Adam Toledo tragedy revolves around the officer’s split-second, life-or-death decision instead of the question “What is a 13-year-old child doing with a 21-year-old criminal firing a gun at 2:30 a.m.?” then we are deeply confused about the nature of our problems, to say nothing of the way to a solution.

A similar dynamic is playing out in other big cities, too. Police morale is abysmal. One way in which this fact registers is in high levels of voluntary resignations and early retirements, leading to critical staffing shortages. As of mid-March, New Orleans had 944 police officers — down from 1,200 just three years ago, despite increased recruitment efforts. Last year the city registered a 100 percent increase in shootings over 2019. “Criminals know there’s not enough officers on the street! They know this!” Delores Montgomery, a ride-share driver, recently told NPR. Fewer cops; more crime: Who would have thought?

New Orleans isn’t alone. A recent academic analysis found that 11 out of the 14 cities it studied suffered from higher-than-expected losses to their police after the George Floyd protests of 2020, with Seattle losing the highest proportion of its force. One possible unfortunate result, the study suggests, is that, as good cops depart, the quality of newer recruits also suffers. That may help explain the appalling police brutality in the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis in January.

Then there’s the other side: The growing sense of impunity among the criminally inclined.

In Chicago, the proportion of crimes reported that resulted in arrest, which stood at nearly 31 percent in 2005, fell to 12.3 percent in 2021, according to an analysis last year by The Chicago Sun-Times. Even that may be an undercount, since fewer crimes in the city are being reported both to and by the police.