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2012 Homicide Rates
Philadelphia - 517 murders - 6,012,363 pop. 8.6 per 100,000 homicide rate
Chicago - 679 murders - 9,511,421 pop. - 7.1 per 100,000 homicide rate
San Francisco - 288 murders - 4,431,755 pop. - 6.5 per 100,000 homicide rate
Miami - 364 murders - 5,747,489 pop. - 6.3 per 100,000 homicide rate
Houston - 349 murders - 6,150,496 pop. 5.7 per 100,000 homicide rate
Los Angeles - 651 murders - 13,064,838 pop. - 5.0 per 100,000 homicide rate
Dallas - 277 murders - 6,680,025 pop. - 4.1 per 100,000 homicide rate
New York - 749 murders - 19,791,750 pop. - 3.8 per 100,000 homicide rate
Washington DC - 210 murders - 5,826,080 pop. - 3.6 per 100,000 homicide rate
Boston - 95 murders - 4,629,025 pop. - 2.1 per 100,000 homicide rate
And that's fine, but these are 2012 numbers. I'd be interested in seeing 2013. Philly unfortunately has a few very dangerous small cities by it, like Camden and Chester.
I can never understand why people argue about whether or not DC is safe or not. Yes is it safer than the 80's and 90's of course it is, most cities are. But all you have to do is pick up the Washington Post and Stevie Wonder can see that it's not one of the safer cities in America. I'm a DC backer 150% but I'm not going to flat out lie just for the sake of making it sound like the city is safer than it really is. To be honest with you the Gentrification in DC is basically block to block. Most of the growth in the city is happening in Wards 1, 2 and 6, which basically border downtown DC. Many parts of SE and far NE (which geographically make up about 1/3 of the city) are still basically the same wastelands that they were in the 90's. Many of the Gentrified areas of the city are experiencing many of the high profile crimes, especially when you're talking about assaults and robberies. The Chief of Police has also been accused of reclassifying many serious crimes into lesser crimes to make the crime stats look better. As far as not appearing on the most dangerous cities list, I beg to differ. DC is definitely still on the most dangerous cities list, especially when it's compared to cities of similar size. It's in Black and White for God sake. We have this fight on the DC forum all of the time and it's becoming redundant. I think the real question is whether or not DC appears on the most safest cities list. The answer is hell no!!!!
We're not talking about DC 100 years from now. We're talking about DC in the PRESENT. Why do you always talk about some hypothetical future DC 30 to 50 to 100 years from now? Can you not see the DC of today? The DC of today is the first or second most dangerous city on that list by ACTUAL facts.
Again, we're not talking about DC if it had it's original boundaries. Funny that you talk about adding wealthy areas to DC to lower the crime rate, but take away wealthy areas from Philly to raise the crime rate. So typical of you haha. How about if you're going to add these areas to DC, we get to add wealthy areas to Philly.
Why can't you DC posters see the facts? Stop talking in hypotheticals when the facts are right there.
Do you know what per capita is? It's only bad based on how many good area's in a region are included in a city boundary. This really isn't hard to understand. This is the same argument people make when talking about L.A. having a higher density than Washington D.C. even though it doesn't based on city area. It is actually way denser though on a weighted scale. Is this concept really hard to understand?
If D.C. was 300 sq. mile's including all it's close in suburbs, what would the crime stats be? Washington D.C. is considered bad because it's 61 sq. mile's. Add in people from Arlington, VA and Bethesda, MD to see what I mean. I guess the point I'm making is people try to be very selective on what they want to use when trying to prove a point. They don't want to use boundaries when talking about density etc., yet, they want to use them when talking about crime.
I'm visiting DC now for the first time. The main tourist areas I've been to along the national mall and along the subway line out to College Park have felt very safe to me. I've only seen one person that in any way looked homeless. I think DC has very rough areas in the eastern part of the city away from the destinations though.
Trust me those areas that you're talking about are not as far away as you might think. DC has tough hoods in every Quadrant so I wouldn't get too comfortable.
Miami's stats aren't as readily available as the other three cities, but, as you can clearly see, you are more likely to get murdered in Washington and Philadelphia this year than you are Chicago.
DC's low murder rate in 2012 seems to be a fluke at this point, especially since the rate spiked in 2013, and it is going even higher this year.
Thanks, I'm not sure why this is still being discussed. The stats are easily available.
San Francisco, as a whole, has been getting nearer to complete gentrification than any other cities on this list. Most of SF's worst crime in concentrated in a handful of high crime city neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the tiny black population in SF tends to be extremely poor and living in the projects in the outskirts of the city as the middle class black population was largely priced out of the city or fled for greener pastures in the 70's, 80's and 90's. The tiny poor black population in the projects, whom happens to account for a large disproportionate amount of the city's violent crime, is being forced out of SF at an alarming rate do to gentrification with projects being torn down left and right. The black population in SF is set to drop even lower than it's current small 5% of the city's population in the next five years.
DC also is getting safer everyday. For a city with such a large black underclass,
But for a city with DC's given demographics to have its current level of violent crime is phenomenal. Just a few years ago, San Francisco had about 100 murders a year, every year. That might not seem like much at all for a city of 800K+. But if you take into account that 60%+ of SF homicides are consistently black-on-black killings almost every year, it puts things in perspective seeing as SF's black population is well below 100K compared to over 300K blacks in DC.
But SF fixed that problem by tearing down many of the worst project developments in the southern fringes of the city and instating strict gang injunctions in troubled inner city areas with turf/gang associated violence in the past five or so years. Things have also definitely simmered down in DC, as a whole, compared to 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
But for a city with DC's given demographics to have its current level of violent crime is phenomenal. Just a few years ago, San Francisco had about 100 murders a year. That might not seem like much at all for a city of 800K+. But if you take into account that 60%+ of SF homicides are consistently black-on-black killings every year, it puts things in perspective seeing as SF black population is well below 100K compared to over 300K blacks in DC.
Bruh, most killing in most major cities are black-on- black killings. San Francisco is not special in that regard. Hell.. I was just in San Fran in June for work and I barely saw any Black people to kill there. LMAO The street scene in DC and SF are not even comparable. DC's streets have way more grit than SF.
Things have also definitely simmered down in DC, as a whole, compared to 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
Most major cities aren't what they were 10, 15 ,20 years ago. Let's talk about from 2010 - 2014, the numbers speak for themselves. You do realize that violent crime is about more than just murders right?
Take a look at DC's overall crime numbers and compare them to San Francisco's. It's not even close my friend.
I'm surprised all of you are missing one HUGE fact about DC's homicide rate last year. It did spike but that was largely in part to the Navy Yard shooting. Twelve people died that day in DC and it was added to the homicide rate. That was an act of terrorism and had nothing to do with the normal crime.
Crime this year definitely has spiked a bit but for some of you to say its not much better than the 90s is insane. How is 100 homicides vs 500 not much better? NE and SE are nowhere near as bad. I work at a fire house east of the river and can tell you first hand that shootings, stabbings, fires, etc are all WAY down. It's definitely still very rough but nothing like it used to be.
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