Is Cincinnati really dangerous? No. (Avon: college, live, price)

[hillside]

a few comments and questions...

first off, the title of the blog is straight from the fox news braintrust. the title doesn't encourage forum dialogue, but attempts to make up your mind, for you.

sharing an opinion other than glowing reports of cincinnati's safety and economy draws unfair criticism of one's moral motives. criticizing cincinnati or even speaking the truth makes you an enemy of the state. very soviet-like.

one year of decreasing crime is not a trend.

what are those cities close to cincy's size? how do you define it? city proper? metro? 300-600k? approx 2-3.5 mil?

would they be kansas city, cleveland, st. louis, pittsburgh, milwaukee, and minneapolis based on metro size? all of the same plus miami, washington, boston, oakland, seattle, atlanta, and denver?

most recent fbi homicide rates-2006. i added philly for good measure, and it did not have the most murder cases in 2006 or 2007. new york did, as usual.

1.stl-37.9
2.washington-35.4
3.cincinnati-28.7
4.kansas city-28.1
*philadelphia-25.6 with 406 murders
5.cleveland-23.8
6.oakland-23.2
7.atlanta-20.9
8.milawukee-20.6
9.pittsburgh-19.0
10.miami-13.9
11.boston-12.9
12.minneapolis-12.5
13.denver-10.5
14.seattle-4.3

rates for cities with comparable metros and city pop.

1.stl-37.9
2.cincinnati-28.7
3.kansas city- 28.1
4.cleveland-23.8
5.milwaukee-20.6
6.pittsburgh-19.0
7.minneapolis-12.5
8.denver-10.5

nothing lightweight about cincinnati. looks convincing to me, but i'm sure somebody will disupte it...

private investment does not change the state of the people overnight, if ever. 54% of cincy is still cycling in and briefly out of the federal poverty line. still only 25% of all black males in cincinnati have a diploma. the economy for the uneducated and non-alumnus is a notch above detroit, buffalo and cleveland, but below everybody else. too much emphasis has been put on a skyscraper and the banks somehow making cincinnati into boston.

[Cincy-Rise]

most recent fbi homicide rates-2006.

Wrong, it's 2008 now, 2007 numbers are out. Post above is automatically inconsequential. Everyone just ignore it.

[QueenCty]

Anecdotal evidence is interesting, and I found this account on another thread, which occurred in Austin in 2007. I am not picking on Austin, just using this as an example:

Does anyone know if Austin has been affected by the nationwide uptick in violent crime? This past Sunday, a man was shot to death in broad daylight in front of a gas station in North Austin-- it was a few blocks from where my friend lives and she is pretty shaken up by it.

Yesterday evening, a man was beaten to death by a crowd of people in a parking lot in East Austin during the Juneteenth celebration. He was the passenger in a vehicle whose driver accidentally injured a girl by hitting her with his car. When the passenger tried to stop the crowd from attacking the driver after the accident, the driver fled and the crowd beat the passenger to death. There were thousands of people attending the celebration but no witnesses have surfaced.

This all comes on the heels of an event in East Austin where an police officer killed a fleeing suspect by shooting him twice in the back. I know Austin has a much lower crime rate than many cities, but this all really concerns me. Is anyone else concerned by this?

Austin is a pretty safe city, but this sounds a little scary. I lived in Columbus while at school and had 3 good friends have guns pointed at their heads in 3 separate incidents near campus (they were roughed up, but not shot). I got jumped twice. I do not want to go on too long, but every time I am in another city I hear on the news about murders in that city. Should I judge a city by specific occurences and continually point to those as whether a city is safe or not? The only numbers we have are the statistics (although the FBI continually says to not use their data as they are an oversimplification) and as I mentioned before Cincinnati is and has not been at the top of these lists, even with the shortcomings of how they are calculated. And with murders specifically, the majority of these are not random. I have been to OTR hundreds of times and have never had a problem, although I have not been there to deal drugs. There is obviously crime in the city, but I am having trouble grasping what seems like a somewhat hysterical response from some. I think some of it has to do with the fact that there has been an upward trend in crime - the good news, and I am stealing from Mayor Mallory's information, is that murders were down 22%, violent crime was down 12%, and overall crime was down 8% in 2007. Hopefully with his leadership, we can continue in this direction in 2008.

[hillside]

Originally Posted by hillside

...but attempts to make up your mind, for you..

one year of decreasing crime is not a trend.
.

Wrong, it's 2008 now, 2007 numbers are out. Post above is automatically inconsequential. Everyone just ignore it

you just told on yourself, cincy-rise . 2006 didn't happen? you magically erased it that quick? man, you're good. and i thought they didn't release the official report til august. all conjecture, no real validity on your behalf, rather typical and getting, gotten, gone old. don't seem so threatened sometimes.

[QueenCty]

Just for trending purposes I found the homicide totals back to 2002 - I think 2001 was close to 2002. I think I was previously off on 2007, which I thought was 65. While locating this, I read the police estimated 90% were drug related - deals gone bad or turf battles.

2002: 66
2003: 75
2004: 68
2005: 79
2006: 89
2007: 68

This is an average of 74 a year - not great, but statistically speaking 2007 is much closer to the average than 2006, which would be considered an outlier. Also, the trend was up one year, down one year, up two years, and down one year. Hopefully the statistics folks also update the population to match what the census has as that will improve numbers as well for their apples to oranges comparisons.

[Cincy-Rise]

Originally Posted by QueenCty

Hopefully the statistics folks also update the population to match what the census has as that will improve numbers as well for their apples to oranges comparisons.

... Bingo.

[BelieveInCleve]

Hillside, you seem to be doing the same thing again. You say that 1 year of decreasing crime is not a trend, thats true. But then are you saying that 1 year of increased crime is a trend? Cincinnatis numbers for 2006 (especially murder) are well above the average for the city and the murder number is the highest ever recorded for the city (at 89). You picked out the stats for 1 year and I wouldnt call that the average for the city at all. (also Clevelands number for 2006 was 27.0 with 119 murders).

If you put 2007s numbers on your charts with the same for all the other cities, Cincinnati would move way down the list. Actually I wouldnt call it a decrease, its more like back to average (It might be higher though.) Take Cincinnatis murder rate for 2007 (20 per 100k) and put it on that list. It would be 8th for the first chart and 5th for the second chart, instead of 3rd and 2nd. Im just saying that 2006 was one year of increased crime, and that year is above average for Cincinnati, you just seemed like you were basing everything on 2006 numbers.

Also, is the city-data crime for Cincinnati right? It probably cant be since it says Cincinnati only had 15 murders in 2000 and 29 in 1999.

[hillside]

Originally Posted by Cle440

Hillside, you seem to be doing the same thing again. You say that 1 year of decreasing crime is not a trend, thats true. But then are you saying that 1 year of increased crime is a trend? Cincinnatis numbers for 2006 (especially murder) are well above the average for the city and the murder number is the highest ever recorded for the city (at 89). You picked out the stats for 1 year and I wouldnt call that the average for the city at all. (also Clevelands number for 2006 was 27.0 with 119 murders).

If you put 2007s numbers on your charts with the same for all the other cities, Cincinnati would move way down the list. Actually I wouldnt call it a decrease, its more like back to average (It might be higher though.) Take Cincinnatis murder rate for 2007 (20 per 100k) and put it on that list. It would be 8th for the first chart and 5th for the second chart, instead of 3rd and 2nd. Im just saying that 2006 was one year of increased crime, and that year is above average for Cincinnati, you just seemed like you were basing everything on 2006 numbers.

Also, is the city-data crime for Cincinnati right? It probably cant be since it says Cincinnati only had 15 murders in 2000 and 29 in 1999.

ebb and flow, folks. there is no war on drugs because wars end. ask yourself how a city that had 15 or 29 murders jumped so high so fast, and if it could jump again. 15 to 66? that's about 340% in 2 years.

[QueenCty]

The number of murders in 2000 was actually 40 and in 2001 it was 63 - I was able to find it pretty quickly. What is the topic now? Are we analyzing the jump from 40 to the 60's in 2001 or are we looking at a more recent timeframe. I thought that we were talking about this year and more recent history based on the orginal post, and the fact remains in it's worst year on record the city was ranked 16th most dangerous. And that is based on stats that favor cities that have annexed more suburban areas with a population that was not updated with the census number. 2007 will obviously be better and for the past 5 years the city would probably rank in the low 20's on average. So in 2000 and in the 90's the city was even safer.

I go back to my view that like any city, there is crime, but the city is not especially dangerous for the average, law-abiding citizen.

[Cincy-Rise]

I'm working on a line-graph to end this madness ... I'll be using 1995-2007.

BTW ... Cincinnati had less than 20 murders per 100K for 2007.