STEVE SAILER: “A dead body with a hole in it demands attention,” but not necessarily in Chicago. “One of the verities of crime statistics analysis is that homicide stats are more trustworthy than other kinds of statistics. But if the cops are under a lot of political pressure, as Chicago cops were after [Chicago’s] recent murder spree, well, a bunch of homicides can turn into just plain dead bodies.”

The Chicago Magazine article to which he links is revealing:

Current and former veteran detectives who reviewed the Groves case at Chicago’s request were just as incredulous. Says a retired high-level detective, “How can you be tied to a chair and gagged, with no clothes on, and that’s a [noncriminal] death investigation?” (He, like most of the nearly 40 police sources interviewed for this story, declined to be identified by name, citing fears of disciplinary action or other retribution.)

Was it just a coincidence, some wondered, that the reclassification occurred less than two weeks before the end of the year, when the city of Chicago’s final homicide numbers for 2013 would be tallied? . . .

This troubling practice goes far beyond murders, documents and interviews reveal. Chicago found dozens of other crimes, including serious felonies such as robberies, burglaries, and assaults, that were misclassified, downgraded to wrist-slap offenses, or made to vanish altogether.