Carjackings in Chicago surged to their highest number in at least 10 years, statistics show, a trend that has unnerved residents and visitors alike.
While much of the city’s attention was focused on the rise in shootings and homicides over the past two years, carjackings spiked in 2016, as numbers in other crime categories also rose.
This year, carjackings spiked even higher, hitting their largest tally in at least a decade, with 967 carjackings through Wednesday, according to Chicago Police Department statistics.
The city had 682 carjackings for all of 2016, more than double the tallies from each of the two previous years. The last year the city even approached 900 carjackings was in 2007, when 898 were recorded. Since then, the numbers dropped year over year until 2015.
While higher-profile violence such as shootings and homicides have been concentrated largely on the South and West sides, carjackers have struck throughout the city, including often in trendy neighborhoods and downtown. Victims included the son of former TV news anchor Robin Robinson and a Chicago Tribune reporter who was carjacked in a parking lot down the block from a South Side police station.
RELATED: Teens arrested after driving wrong way down street in car stolen from Tribune reporter
In these crimes, criminals use force to rob victims — often at gun or knifepoint — of their vehicles. Sometimes these vehicles are then used in drive-by shootings, smash-and-grab burglaries and other crimes. Other times the robbers might use the cars for joyriding before abandoning them.
One method that criminals have adopted to commit these crimes is known as the “bump-and-run” — when suspects driving in one car intentionally bump into another. When that motorist gets out and checks the damage, the suspects use force, often threatening the victim with a weapon, before jumping in and stealing the car.
The Police Department has formed a task force with the FBI to investigate the rise in carjackings, many of which are committed by juvenile gang members at the direction of adult gang members, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has said.
But what’s the reason for the sudden increase?
“We constantly look at it, but to just give you a simple answer is difficult,” Johnson said in a recent interview from his 5th floor office at police headquarters. “Sometimes you can’t predict what these (carjackers) are going to do and how they’re going to do it.”
RELATED: Both high-crime and trendy Chicago neighborhoods see surge in carjackings
Teena Christmas, 63, was carjacked on the evening of Nov. 4 while going to a home in the South Side’s Auburn Gresham community. She sensed trouble when she saw a suspicious vehicle down the block heading in her direction. She said she got into the back seat of her vehicle and as she tried to pull the door shut, someone approached her and pointed a gun at her head, she said in an interview Thursday.
The gunman asked her for money and keys, she said. But she told the gunman she had no money before throwing him a ring of keys and getting out of her car.
A second gunman also approached and pointed his gun at her head.
“That’s when I dropped down on my knees and I just said, ‘Take it! Take it! Whatever you want to take just take it’!” she said.
One of the gunmen got behind the wheel and drove away. She said the other gunman fled in another vehicle. She was not hurt and she eventually got her vehicle back, but all her personal belongings inside it, including her purse, were gone.
“When I got the car back it looked like they had taken it to a car wash. It was so clean inside,” Christmas said. “The only thing that was in there was candy paper and the smell of reefer.”
RELATED: Nearly 20 carjackings reported in one week in Chicago
She said the incident was “very traumatizing” and made her nervous.
“When you come out of the house now, you don’t just walk out the door,” said Christmas. “You’re looking (across) stairs and around banisters and in trees, I mean, you’re like looking everywhere.”
Later she said, “I don’t think there’s anything that can be (done) to keep anybody from doing the carjackings.”
Twitter @JeremyGorner
RELATED:
