City Murder Rates

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yeah, if the data in SIGSEGV's link is accurate, then milwaukee and KC are bucking the general downward homicide trend across the major midwest cities this year:


YOY homicide change (city proper):

milwaukee: +22.5%
kansas city: +11.7%
minneapolis: -4.6%
cleveland: -12.2%
cincinnati: -12.9%
detroit: -13.6%
chicago: -15.1%
st. louis: -17.9%
indianapolis: -19.1%
columbus: -37.6%

The data in the link is from the police compstats whenever each city releases them, so officially accurate depending on the date.


Some of the neighborhood data I’ve been seeing in Chicago is so strange. I’m seriously wondering if Tom in Chicago is right, and a lot of people on the West Side did go to Milwaukee.

…Because Austin is not at the top of the community area homicide list this year.

Austin

2022 P: 29

2021 T: 74
2020 T: 78
2019 T: 53

2014 T: 36

Garfield Park (East & West)

2022 P: 37

2021 T: 74
2020 T: 62
2019 T: 42

2014 T: 33

Humboldt Park

2022 P: 17

2021 T: 35
2020 T: 40
2019 T: 29

2014 T: 25

North Lawndale

2022 P: 17

2021 T: 45
2020 T: 38
2019 T: 26

2014 T: 11

South Lawndale

2022 P: 13

2021 T: 21
2020 T: 25
2019 T: 14

Near West

2022 P: 13

2021 T: 23
2020 T: 12
2019 T: 10

[BG918]

Through the first six months of 2022 these U.S. cities have the highest homicide rates (per 100,000 people):
1. New Orleans: 44.0
2. Birmingham: 37.5
3. Baltimore: 36.2
4. St Louis: 33.1
5. Flint: 25.0
6. Milwaukee: 25.0
7. Little Rock: 24.7
8. Cleveland: 23.5
9. Rochester, NY: 22.8
10. Philadelphia: 21.1
11. Kansas City, MO: 20.6
12. Detroit: 19.8
13. Atlanta: 19.1
14. Washington, DC: 19.1
15. Memphis: 18.6

https://247wallst.com/special-report...this-year/amp/

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by BG918

Through the first six months of 2022 these U.S. cities have the highest homicide rates (per 100,000 people):
1. New Orleans: 44.0
2. Birmingham: 37.5
3. Baltimore: 36.2
4. St Louis: 33.1
5. Flint: 25.0
6. Milwaukee: 25.0
7. Little Rock: 24.7
8. Cleveland: 23.5
9. Rochester, NY: 22.8
10. Philadelphia: 21.1
11. Kansas City, MO: 20.6
12. Detroit: 19.8
13. Atlanta: 19.1
14. Washington, DC: 19.1
15. Memphis: 18.6

https://247wallst.com/special-report...this-year/amp/

That's for the semester? New Orleans is at 88/100,000 annualized?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Yuri

That's for the semester? New Orleans is at 88/100,000 annualized?

I would expect it to be "annualized", i.e. if the rate of murders is the same over the rest of the year, this is what the annual rate will be.

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by Yuri

That's for the semester? New Orleans is at 88/100,000 annualized?

the numbers from the article line-up with the totals from around a month ago. So probably around when the article was published.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by BG918

Through the first six months of 2022 these U.S. cities have the highest homicide rates (per 100,000 people):
1. New Orleans: 44.0
2. Birmingham: 37.5
3. Baltimore: 36.2
4. St Louis: 33.1
5. Flint: 25.0
6. Milwaukee: 25.0
7. Little Rock: 24.7
8. Cleveland: 23.5
9. Rochester, NY: 22.8
10. Philadelphia: 21.1
11. Kansas City, MO: 20.6
12. Detroit: 19.8
13. Atlanta: 19.1
14. Washington, DC: 19.1
15. Memphis: 18.6

https://247wallst.com/special-report...this-year/amp/

Nice to see Detroit drop down the ranks from when it used to be near the top of these lists.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would expect it to be "annualized", i.e. if the rate of murders is the same over the rest of the year, this is what the annual rate will be.

Originally Posted by north 42

Nice to see Detroit drop down the ranks from when it used to be near the top of these lists.

In this case Detroit is doing quite well. In fact, it was Detroit numbers that made me think the list wasn't annualized.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would expect it to be "annualized", i.e. if the rate of murders is the same over the rest of the year, this is what the annual rate will be.

the rates are not annualized, and they're also not apples-to-apples.

they are YTD rates, but some of the dates are though June, and others are through august, and lots in between.

not a good list.

[Northern Light]

Toronto is at 47 homicides for the year.

This annualizes to a rate of 2.2 per 100,000

[mrnyc]

also the ‘per 100k people’ doesnt paint a fair picture about a city when the vast majority of killings are in select neighborhoods, so i dk how useful that is to know. for a general idea a ytd aggregate is enough.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the rates are not annualized, and they're also not apples-to-apples.

they are YTD rates, but some of the dates are though June, and others are through august, and lots in between.

not a good list.

For example, it seems New Orleans has had 195 murders through Sept 13 according to Jeff Asher's dashboard, which works out to almost exactly 50/100,000 YTD, implying an annualized rate of ~71/100,000.

Seems straightforward to automatically generate annualized rates from Jeff Asher's table, although there are a few complications related to jurisdictions (e.g. it's reporting the Miami-Dade police department statistics, but Miami City as well as many other cities are different jurisdictions, so that number is off. Las Vegas is also a county police department, etc.).

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

also the ‘per 100k people’ doesnt paint a fair picture about a city when the vast majority of killings are in select neighborhoods, so i dk how useful that is to know. for a general idea a ytd aggregate is enough.

this is why homicide rates would be far better compared between places at the MSA level.


violent crime is almost never evenly distributed across a city.

in fact, as you mentioned, it tends to be very highly concentrated in specific areas.

small land area cities that have a high proportion of those kinds of neighborhoods always end up looking especially bad on these kinds of rankings because their municipal limits don't include a ton of more stable outer-city type areas that can "dilute" the per 100K rates, as is often the case with large land area cities.

[edale]

Originally Posted by BG918

Through the first six months of 2022 these U.S. cities have the highest homicide rates (per 100,000 people):
1. New Orleans: 44.0
2. Birmingham: 37.5
3. Baltimore: 36.2
4. St Louis: 33.1
5. Flint: 25.0
6. Milwaukee: 25.0
7. Little Rock: 24.7
8. Cleveland: 23.5
9. Rochester, NY: 22.8
10. Philadelphia: 21.1
11. Kansas City, MO: 20.6
12. Detroit: 19.8
13. Atlanta: 19.1
14. Washington, DC: 19.1
15. Memphis: 18.6

https://247wallst.com/special-report...this-year/amp/

I'm surprised to see Rochester on this list. I don't know much about the place, but thought it had more of a white collar reputation, so assumed it was fairly affluent. The other cities on this list are about what I'd expect.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

also the ‘per 100k people’ doesnt paint a fair picture about a city when the vast majority of killings are in select neighborhoods, so i dk how useful that is to know. for a general idea a ytd aggregate is enough.

All of which means that the homicide rate per 100,000 in those select neighbourhoods is absolutely terrifying.

[Yuri]

I don’t think it’s productive this “murders concentrated in few pockets” excuse.

Even in a high homicide rate country like Brazil, homicides are also very concentrated in specific spots, and the large majority of the victims are people involved in crime (92% of victims are men). That doesn’t mean that the country doesn’t have a massive violence problem.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I don’t think it’s productive this “murders concentrated in few pockets” excuse.

It's not an excuse, it's the reality.

Nobody can deny that the US has an utterly atrocious and shameful homicide rate.

I mean, that's not even up for debate.

[SlidellWx]

As stated before, New Orleans has some very violent neighborhoods, and others that are very safe. This map produced by the local paper is very useful to zoom in at neighborhood level. New Orleans Murder Map

Here are the top 5 neighborhoods ranked by highest murder rate:

1. Viavant/Venetian Isles = 1,330 murders/100,000 residents (14 murders and 1,052 residents)
2. Iberville = 178 murders/100,000 residents (2 murders and 1,122 residents)
3. Seventh Ward = 165 murders/100,000 residents (18 murders and 10,909 residents)
4. West Lake Forest = 160 murders/100,000 residents (8 murders and 5,010 residents)
5. Central City = 142 murders/100,000 residents (20 murders and 14,077 residents)

Neighborhoods reporting no murders so far this year:

Lakeview = 0
West End = 0
Lakeshore-Lake Vista = 0
Navarre = 0
Lakewood = 0
Read Boulevard West = 0
Pontchartrain Park = 0
Milneburg = 0
St. Anthony = 0
Dillard = 0
Florida Development = 0
City Park = 0
BW Cooper = 0
St. Thomas = 0
Garden District = 0
Touro = 0
East Riverside = 0
Marlyville-Fontainebleau = 0
East Carrollton = 0
Black Pearl = 0
Audubon = 0
West Riverside = 0
Uptown = 0
Algiers Point = 0

2020 neighborhood population data from https://www.datacenterresearch.org/

The big issue in the city that is affecting all neighborhoods is carjackings. There have been over 200 carjackings so far this year. That's making more news locally than the higher murder total.

[SIGSEGV]

I took the YTD data from Jeff Asher's table (https://www.ahdatalytics.com/dashboa...er-comparison/) and annualized a selection of cities using the most recent date and 2020 census data. I left out smaller cities and cities where I know the reporting jurisdiction doesn't match the city population (i.e. Las Vegas, Miami), though I didn't systematically check all of jurisdiction overlaps (feel free to correct!).

I also quote statistical errors (under the assumption that murder follows Poisson statistics, using the square root approximation) for each annualized rate (which is per 100,000). Of course these errors discount annual variations (so, particularly for Northern cities, this probably systematically overestimates the annualized rate). Of course all the caveats about small geographic areas / neighborhood variation etc. apply.

NORTHEAST
Baltimore		61.55 +/- 2.66
Boston		        5.34 +/- 0.74
Buffalo		        29.14 +/- 2.27
New York                4.90 +/- 0.20
Newark		        18.52 +/- 2.03
Philadelphia		32.92 +/- 1.19
Pittsburgh		24.76 +/- 2.01
Providence		4.53 +/- 1.28
Rochester		38.91 +/- 3.57
Syracuse		12.93 +/- 2.43
Washington		31.02 +/- 1.78


MIDWEST
Akron		        25.34 +/- 2.97
Chicago		        25.16 +/- 0.80
Cincinnati		26.55 +/- 2.38
Cleveland		37.58 +/- 2.60
Columbus		14.10 +/- 0.88
Detroit		        42.20 +/- 1.80
Fort Wayne		8.52 +/- 1.37
Indianapolis		23.86 +/- 1.25
Kansas City		32.55 +/- 2.12
Lincoln		        2.07 +/- 0.69
Madison		        1.52 +/- 0.37
Milwaukee		40.49 +/- 2.21
Minneapolis		21.64 +/- 1.88
Omaha	                4.63 +/- 0.74
St. Louis               66.52 +/- 3.82
Toledo		        22.46 +/- 2.39
Wichita		        12.24 +/- 1.23

SOUTH
Atlanta		        33.16 +/- 2.11
Birmingham		73.02 +/- 5.03
Charleston 		7.68 +/- 1.88
Charlotte               11.82 +/- 0.82
Dallas		        17.67 +/- 0.97
Durham		        14.31 +/- 1.87
Fort Worth		11.92 +/- 0.80
Greensboro		13.99 +/- 1.80
Houston		        19.22 +/- 0.69
Jacksonville		11.85 +/- 0.93
Lexington		15.30 +/- 1.78
Little Rock	        39.01 +/- 3.66
Louisville              42.71 +/- 2.71
Memphis		        38.76 +/- 1.74
Nashville               18.49 +/- 1.36
New Orleans		72.69 +/- 3.64
Oklahoma City           10.12 +/- 0.86
Orlando		        11.21 +/- 1.34
Raleigh		        8.24 +/- 0.93
Richmond		26.10 +/- 2.83
Savannah		23.52 +/- 3.32
Shreveport		32.43 +/- 2.67
Tampa		        13.70 +/- 1.32
Tulsa		        20.13 +/- 1.55
Virginia Beach          5.10 +/- 0.87
Winston-Salem           12.09 +/- 1.79

WEST 
Albuquerque		23.18 +/- 1.68
Austin		        7.68 +/- 0.73
Colorado Springs	9.26 +/- 1.16
Denver		        15.02 +/- 1.02
El Paso		        3.58 +/- 0.51
Fresno		        10.10 +/- 0.96
Honolulu                8.67 +/- 1.10
Long Beach		9.64 +/- 1.09
Los Angeles		10.44 +/- 0.43
Oakland                 28.48 +/- 2.12
Phoenix		        14.25 +/- 0.66
Portland                13.79 +/- 1.11
Sacramento		11.20 +/- 1.03
Salt Lake City		7.22 +/- 1.58
San Antonio		11.15 +/- 0.44
San Diego		4.39 +/- 0.39
San Francisco           5.94 +/- 0.69
San Jose		4.27 +/- 0.49
Seattle		        6.34 +/- 0.71
Spokane		        6.96 +/- 1.45
Stockton                16.18 +/- 1.71
Tucson		        11.61 +/- 1.22

Some observations:

- Breaking Bad might be based on a true story
- The Madison-Milwaukee divergence is... insane.
- Chicago is about average for a city in the midwest (which... I think most of us knew already but...)
- El Paso must outsource all of its murders to Juarez
- In the interest of future automation, I didn't include any cities not listed by Jeff Asher. However, out of curiosity, I checked Jackson, MS (which had the highest homicide rate of any city I looked at last year), and its annualized rate is... 79.2 +/- 8.3, which is worse than any other city on this list.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

It's not an excuse, it's the reality.

Nobody can deny that the US has an utterly atrocious and shameful homicide rate.

I mean, that's not even up for debate.

But we’re all pretty aware of it. My point is people keep bringing it as it was an exception for their own cities whereas in reality it’s the rule everywhere (except in very low homicide rates places where violence is more random).

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

All of which means that the homicide rate per 100,000 in those select neighbourhoods is absolutely terrifying.

If there ever is a murder in one of Detroit’s empty “urban prairie” census tracts (could happen), the resulting homicide rate per 100,000 residents would be even more terrifying that if it were a number

(i.e. division by zero / NaN)