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Hey, Jackass!

Hey, Jackass!, subtitled "Illustrating Chicago Values," is one of my favorite websites.

Twice a day, every day, Chicago's murder and gun shot statistics are updated by an editor "powered by sarcasm, stats, and booze" for all to see.  And states you see.  There are running totals for murders and shootings for the year, month, and week.  There are pie charts of victims and bar charts of violence.  They are informative, they are quirky, and they are fun.

That's right, Hey, Jackass! makes murder fun again.

Just look at the 30 day stupidity trend for today.  Not only do you get the daily totals of murder, gun murder, and non-fatal shootings over the last thirty days.  Not only do you get a pie chart comparing the number of homicides to the number of non-fatal shootings.  You get fireworks for the Fourth of July.

Other awesome charts include: Shot Placement, the Murder Matrix, and the Shot-in-the-Ass-o-Meter.  And some of these go back to 2012.

The commentary is irregular, except for the weekend totals.  But, when its there, the editor gives us the essence of crime prevention in Cook County.  Today's discusses probation for infanticide (again "illustrating Chicago values"), which is just as repulsive as New Orleans' usual penalty for murder, the sixty-day homicide (I'm sorry but I can't find the best article I read about them, however many years ago).  But I shouldn't discount the weekend totals.  In addition to the editor's snarky comments, every weekend he presents another show: Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday Morning Overtime are presented shooting-by-shooting, location-by-location twice a day.

It's fascinating.

The only problem with this site is that (as far as I know) there aren't copycat sites for New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Baltimore.  And so on.  Every city should have someone dedicated enough to track things like this.

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p.s., if you know of any sites like this for different cities, especially non-official, entertaining ones like this (but others are welcome): that's what the comments are for!

I want to know about them, and I want everyone to know about them.

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