In a single three-month summer period in Chicago, 1,606 people were shot. That’s the population equivalent to many American small towns. They are numbers — and more significantly, lives — that have become part of a grimly familiar dynamic in the city.

In a bellwether federal trial starting Monday in Cleveland, two Ohio counties will try to convince a jury that retail pharmacy companies played an outsized role in creating a public nuisance in the way they dispensed pain medication into their communities.

The number of shootings and homicides in 2021 continues to outpace 2020’s rates, as Chicago has now seen 2,726 shootings and 616 homicides through the first nine months of the year.

A judge on Wednesday finalized an out-of-court settlement between former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and a man who alleged that Hastert sexually abused him decades ago.

For the second time in less than a month, customs officials working at O’Hare International Airport have seized packages containing several counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards shipped from overseas.

Speaking out against sexual assault and violence is fraught for anyone who attempts it. Those who work in the field say the hurdles facing Black women and girls are raised even higher by a society that hypersexualizes them from a young age.

More than two years after a state law legalizing recreational marijuana was passed, an estimated 34,000 Illinoisans are still waiting to have their cannabis records expunged, according to the Sentencing Policy Advisory Council. 

Monday marked the first day of Wyndham Lathem’s trial, which began more than four years after he and another man allegedly stabbed 26-year-old Trenton Cornell-Duranleau dozens of times.

R. Kelly, the R&B superstar known for his anthem “I Believe I Can Fly,” was convicted Monday in a sex trafficking trial after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for numerous allegations of misconduct with young women and children.

The FBI released its annual Uniform Crime Report for 2020 on Monday, showing that the number of homicides increased nearly 30% from 2019, the largest single-year increase the agency has recorded since it began tracking these crimes in the 1960s.

Sixty people were shot, eight fatally, in 46 separate shooting incidents across Chicago over the weekend, according to the Chicago Police Department. Among the victims was a CPD officer who was wounded in a triple shooting late Friday.

The former 22nd Ward alderman pleaded guilty to two charges stemming from allegations that he drained more than $38,000 from the bank account of the City Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus and used those funds to pay for trips, jewelry, iPhones and tickets to sporting events.

A former Northwestern University professor is set to stand trial in the stabbing death of his boyfriend as part of what prosecutors said was a sexual fantasy he shared with another man who was charged in the case.

The disappearance of Gabby Petito, a white 22-year-old woman who went missing in Wyoming last month, has drawn a frenzy of coverage on traditional and social media, bringing new attention to a phenomenon known as “missing white woman syndrome.”

Prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their closing arguments this week. The 54-year-old singer is accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that recruited his accusers for unwanted sex and mental torment.

A prosecutor in closing arguments at the sex-trafficking trial of R. Kelly urged jurors on Thursday to make the R&B superstar “pay” for his alleged crimes, while a defense lawyer told them they’ve been misled by opportunistic accusers about consensual relationships.