The third largest US city saw 292 people wounded in 242 shootings in January, nearly double the number recorded a year earlier. (Representational Image)
Chicago has seen an "unacceptable" spike in murders and shootings largely as a result of "petty disagreements" and gang conflict, the police department said on Monday.
The street violence comes as the embattled department is struggling to rebuild trust in the community in the wake of a series of incidents in which police were accused of being quick to pull the trigger on their service weapons.
The third largest US city saw 292 people wounded in 242 shootings in January, nearly double the number recorded a year earlier. Murders also nearly doubled to 51 from 29 in January 2014.
"The vast majority of incidents originated from petty disagreements that escalated into gun violence that tore apart families," police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
"We will continue to work tirelessly on ways to stop violence, and restore accountability and trust in communities throughout the city."
The department responded to the recent spike in violence by conducting a series of raids that led to the arrest of 40 "documented gang members" and the series of 19 weapons, including an AK-47.
It also shut down businesses deemed to pose a "public safety threat" and moved nearly 400 officers off foot patrol and into vehicles so they can respond more quickly.
The city of 2.7 million saw a 12 percent increase in the number of shootings in 2014 to a whopping 2,084, police statistics show.
However, the number of people murdered actually fell slightly to 407 in 2014 from 419 a year earlier.
That's significantly higher than the 352 people killed in New York, a city of 8.5 million.
Yet Chicago streets remain significantly safer than they were during the crack epidemic of the 1990s, when over 900 people were murdered in a year.
Chicago has recorded around 450 to 500 murders a year since 2004, according to police statistics.
Preliminary statistics for the nation as a whole showed a 6.2 per cent increase in murders and a 1.7 per cent increase in overall violent crime in the first half of 2015, the FBI said.