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Cook County Morgue Calls Latinos White, Making Data On Gun Violence Flawed

By Joe Ward | August 26, 2015 6:48am
 When trying to find data on the number and race of every person killed by guns in the city, Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin ran into a problem.
When trying to find data on the number and race of every person killed by guns in the city, Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin ran into a problem.
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Cook County

CHICAGO — When trying to find data on the number and race of every person killed by guns in the city, Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin ran into a problem.

After asking the Cook County Medical Examiner's office for every gun-related homicide since 2013 broken down by race, their data showed that 80 percent of victims were black, and 20 percent were white.

To Boykin, that didn't seem right.

"When I got the data, I was kind of alarmed," Boykin said.

For one, there was no inclusion for certain ethnicities. That's because the Medical Examiner's Office classifies Latinos as "white."

In order to properly address the crisis of gun-related homicides in Chicago — and gun violence's impact on minority communities — Boykin said he is asking the medical examiner to modernize its race classification process.

Latinos make up about a quarter of Chicago's population, Boykin said. Not including a specific race classification for the population makes using data to find solutions impossible.

"If we ever want to get the issue of gun violence solved, we have to have the proper data," Boykin said. "Because of the way the data is kept, we can't find the problem areas."

Frank Shuftan, spokesman for the Medical Examiner's office, said the office is always looking to make sure data-recording practices contain necessary public information.

"We regularly review our operational processes and procedures and will evaluate whether the current practices on how we capture data from cases handled by the Medical Examiner’s office allow us to search the full range of information needed for reporting purposes," Shuftan said in a statement.

Boykin has authored a resolution calling on the medical examiner to overhaul its classification system, which also generally categorizes the deaths of Asians and Middle Easterners as "other" in public documents.

The resolution will be introduced at the county board's Sept. 9 meeting.

Boykin will be joined by leaders of the Latino community at a news conference Wednesday calling on a change in the medical examiner's practice. The news conference will be held 10 a.m. Wednesday at Casa Michoacan Community Center, 1638 S. Blue Island Ave. in Chicago.

Boykin said having more specific data on shooting victims will help the anti-violence effort reach problem areas and help to pinpoint where precious resources should go.

"It's about resource allocation," he said. "We need to know where the problem areas are."

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