MISSING IN CHICAGO
In partnership with City Bureau, we released our Missing in Chicago investigation in the fall of 2023. Our investigation found troubling patterns of Chicago Police officers denying, delaying, or mishandling Chicago missing person cases — a crisis that disproportionately affects Black Chicagoans. Read the complete investigation now at chicagomissingpersons.com.
This investigation is the first reporting to come out of our Beneath the Surface project: a data science project that investigates the intersections of gender-based violence and policing.
For more than two years, reporters Sarah Conway (City Bureau) and trina reynolds-tyler (Invisible Institute) investigated how the Chicago Police Department (CPD) handles missing person cases and found a pattern of neglect and discrepancies in the police response.
Black people make up about two-thirds of missing persons cases in Chicago, according to the last two decades of police data, and the vast majority of these cases are for Black children under the age of 21. In particular, Black girls and women between the ages of 10 and 20 make up nearly one-third of all Chicago missing persons cases despite comprising only two percent of the city population as of 2020.
From 2000 to 2021, Chicago Police categorized 99.8 percent of missing person cases as “not criminal in nature.” Our seven-part investigation calls this number into question. City Bureau and the Invisible Institute identified 11 cases that were miscategorized as “closed non-criminal” in the missing persons data despite being likely homicides — more than doubling the number of official homicides in missing persons police data. These 11 cases were part of a much larger pattern of neglect.
Our reporting has been nationally recognized by outlets such as The New York Times and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. However its impact extends beyond awards - in 2024, Mayor Brandon Johnson called for the creation of a city task force on the issue and trina and Sarah have spoken several times to the Illinois Task Force on Missing and Murdered Women about their findings.
In the spring we hosted a series of virtual and in-person reading groups designed to dig deeper into our Missing in Chicago reporting with a small group of engaged readers. Meeting biweekly, these groups discussed main themes in the reporting and worked together on possible solutions and ideas to combat the crisis of missingness in Chicago. Nearly thirty people participated in these reading groups across Chicago and digitally, culminating in a large event and exhibition at the Chicago Art Department. Attendees were encouraged to read missing persons reports we received via FOIA requests, to partake in an altar space of remembrance for those missing and/or murdered, and to provide their own ideas on how Chicago police could better serve communities and families of missing loved ones. These reading groups released their recommendations and takeaways in April of 2024.
Our reporting is available as a physical zine which we distributed across the city through independent bookstores and local coffeeshops as well as at events and with collaborators. The reporting is also available in audio form, recorded by Sarah and trina themselves.