Provided
It was one of the searing images of the rioting in downtown Chicago last summer: a man wearing a Joker mask standing in front of a police sport-utility vehicle engulfed in flames.
The graffiti-strewn SUV was one of seven Chicago Police Department vehicles and one CTA vehicle torched in the Loop last May 30. More than 60 other arson fires were reported across the city over the next few days of anti-police rioting sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis after a white police officer kept his knee on the neck of Floyd, who was Black.
The fires set downtown by rioters after Floyd’s death were only one element, though, in a year that saw a major increase in arson. Over the course of 2020, hundreds of other arson fires were reported in Chicago. The number of fires authorities deemed suspicious was up nearly 65% last year over 2019, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of city crime data shows.