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Health & Fitness

In Dajae's Memory: Let's Talk About Crime in Evanston

Dajae's tragic death means we should talk about in : it is worse than you might think.

The murder of young Dajae Coleman makes it hard to be whimsical and upbeat this morning. My heart goes out to the family - I lost my own son to a tragedy and I know how overwhelmed and in shock his survivors feel. I strongly urge them to join a bereaved parents' group. It helped me.

I was going to blog about something else today, but, when I rolled my cursor over the article about Dajae's memorial fund, a pop-up advertisement appeared. It told me: "Check out Local Crime Rates at Local.com."

So, I did. (I couldn't find rates on Local.com, but I did find local stats at www.areavibes.com

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Evanston is more dangerous to live in than 80% of the other cities in Illinois. It is in the top one-third of the most dangerous cities to live in in the United States.

Yes, Evanston is one-half as dangerous as Chicago (about 5,300 s per 100,000 Chicago reisidents vs. about 3,000 s per 100,000 in Evanston). However,compared to other northshore cities, Evanston is 136% more dangerous to live in than Winnetka and 85% more dangerous than Kenilworth.

Find out what's happening in Evanstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

While neither of those other suburbs registered any murders,  Evanston has a murder rate per 100,000 of nearly 8. (Chicago's is a frightening 15.2 per 100,000.)

This is something we need to talk about. Let Dajae be our inspiration.

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