I'd imagine they were trying to say it wasn't disproportionately bad. Given that they picked half complete info from the current year instead of more solidified stats from years past, limited the response to murders, chose to gloss over all other violent crimes, astronomically high unreported crime rates compared to most cities, and higher rates of random acts of violence than many cities with higher populations, you can tell there isn't a whole lot for them to work with on that side of the argument.

I completely agree that a huge amount of this can be attributed to corruption in the city/state government. Chicago has had corruption problems going back to the Al Capone days in the 20s. I also think there is an equal amount of responsibility at the feet of the culture there and lack of solid family foundation setting a better moral compass for a large chunk of their population.