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I am curious about sites or blogs that tally latest homicide statistics by city (focus on medium and large cities only). Often, you only find homicide totals for a city for the prior year, and even that statistic is in news articles rather than in any official government site.
Some examples:
Chicago has two sites, the second of which is maintained by a private person, and which is actually much better than the official looking one.
There's a blog that tallies Detroit and Baltimore's numbers as well as the dates, locations, and names of the victims of when each homicide took place. Detroit's list is actually more up to date than the police totals
There's also a map and tally for homicides in Los Angeles County. Not sure if I've come across one for the City of LA specifically, but this is about the closest measure.
Year to date, cities with most homicides. Not exactly comparable, as some cities stats are end at somewhat different times in September.
1. Chicago | 309
2. Detroit | 228
2. New York | 228
4. Los Angeles | 192
5. Philadelphia | 171
6. Baltimore | 167
7. Houston | 162
8. Dallas | 111
9. Indianapolis | 103
10. New Orleans | 99
Meaningless. Homicides statistics in all cities are variable by a ratio of at least 2:1 from year to year, and what they happen to be this year or this month is a worse, not better, indicator than the average over a period of years.
For example, the last five reported years, Houston homicides have ranged from 198 to 377. It was 212 last year. This year, it is almost certain to be within but near the low end of that range, and it will be next year, too.
You might have reasons for want to track this particular statistic, but for general analysis of criminality and city comprisons, it means nothing. I have no problem with the reasons for your interest in gathering this data, but users of this forum are extremely gullible and analytical and illogical, and should not be misled into thinking that these statistics have any relevance.
Furthermore, this is a totally stupid piece of completely irresponsible journalism: "Chicago now murder capital of U.S., FBI says", and is never quoted as saying that by the hack intern at the news site who stumbled across the data. It's no wonder so many peo0ple are so misinformed and disseminate so much fallacy online.
The FBI would never say anything that moronic. New Orleans, in the same year, had three times as many murders per capita. That would be like saying "New York is the Corn Flakes capital of the USA", just because more bowls of corn flakes are eaten every morning in New York than any other city.
Meaningless. Homicides statistics in all cities are variable by a ratio of at least 2:1 from year to year, and what they happen to be this year or this month is a worse, not better, indicator than the average over a period of years.
No, they don't. They vary maybe 30% year to year at most. For example:
Ignoring 2012, within about 20% for the last decade.
It's not hard to find examples bigger than that. St. Louis went 146-111-73 from '01 to '03. Pittsburgh went 78-39 from '08-'09. Variations of 20-30% are typical, and statistically significant enough to cast any single year into doubt..
Further complicating the reality is organized homicide. Boston police say 3/4 of all known homicides in the city are gang-related, which means a city's homicide statistics can rise or fall by as much as 50% simply on the basis of how hot the city's gang war happens to be at the moment. http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=26784
By the way, in Chicago, the "new murder capital", the number of murders has dropped significantly since the pre-2004 numbers, which were annually in the mid-600s, and according to your 2013 partials, likely to settle this year in the low 400s, which is average for the decade.
Last edited by jtur88; 09-19-2013 at 12:12 PM..
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