Stats to munch on while eating leftover Turkey
While perusing the internet, I ran across this article in the New York Daily News.
As of Sunday, the NYPD counted 428 homicides throughout the city, down 16.2% from 511 at the same time in 2006.
At the current rate, the city should expect to register about 485 homicides, or 1.3 per day.
“Back around 1990, our murder rate was 30 per 100,000 people,” explained Thomas Reppetto, a criminologist and coauthor of “NYPD: A City and Its Police.” “Now it’s running around six per 100,000. That is truly a phenomenal accomplishment by the NYPD.”
Here in the River City, we have a population of just over 113,000 and recorded 15 homicides so far in 2007 after having 18 in 2006
As CJ Summers recently pointed out, Illinois does not report crime in a manner compatible with other states for comparison, but they do report murders, and those can be easily compared.
Here are the top 20 of 285 cities with populations between 100,000 and 250,000 ranked by their 2006 homicide rate as compiled on Wikipedia. Worth noting in this list is our ranking is based on only 15 murders, not 18. I guess a few of them weren’t heinous enough.
- 45.7 – 118,256 – Flint, MI
- 44.5 – 233,577 – Birmingham, AL
- 40.7 – 103,106 – Richmond, CA
- 38.8 – 195,708 – Richmond, VA
- 31.2 – 115,498 – Inglewood, CA
- 31.1 – 186,670 – Little Rock, AR
- 31.0 – 145,229 – Kansas City, KS
- 27.1 – 210,486 – Baton Rouge, LA
- 23.3 – 159,067 – Dayton, OH
- 23.2 – 211,656 – Rochester, NY
- 23.0 – 200,338 – San Bernadino, CA
- 22.6 – 216,819 – Orlando, FL
- 22.6 – 177,334 – Jackson, MS
- 21.2 – 108,371 – Charleston, SC
- 20.2 – 138,791 – Bridgeport, CT
- 19.3 – 124,203 – Hartfort, CT
- 17.8 – 101,167 – Portsmouth, VA
- 17.8 – 101,115 – Miami Gardens, FL
- 15.0 – 113,291 – Peoria, IL
- (tie) 14.9 – 107,087 – Allentown, PA / 188,505 – Shreveport, LA
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:44 pm
PI … I think they’re listing the murder rate per 100,000. Still … I did the math, and 15 per 100,000 would be based on 17 murders. So they’re still one off … not that it would change the rate significantly. Based on 18 murders, the rate would be 15.9 per 100,000.
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Yes, it is the murder rate per 100,000. I didn’t do the math (probably should’ve), but if you download the excel spreadsheet it lists the murder count at 15, as well as the rate per 100,000 at 15, which as you point out isn’t far off, which is why I didn’t question it too much but thought if ours was a bit off, the rest were a bit off too. I think the point is still clear though.
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Pretty embarrassing to see our fair city on the top 20. What is worse is that Rockford is better off. WTF is that ?!?
November 24th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Yay us. We’ve cracked the top 20.
So, do we ban guns or give everyone guns? Lets have us a good old fashioned argument here!!
November 27th, 2007 at 6:18 am
We just had the 16th homicide. On pace to be @20 by the end of the year. So sad.