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My city of Gatineau, Quebec which is right across the river from Ottawa, Ontario, has 1 murder so far this year. Our population is 285,000. (Our lone murder was committed by guys from Ottawa. )
Some years we have none. Others we might have as many as 5. Usually we average 2-3.
Plenty of larger, suburban 200,000 pop. cities in America are the same, and they're far more prosperous and diverse than Gatineau. See my recent post on Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia.
You have to consider the system in place that supports the crime.
Fine. But no one - right, left, center of the political spectrum - has ever given a solid explain as to why Arlington and Alexandria have such remarkably low homicide rates.
Plenty of larger, suburban 200,000 pop. cities in America are the same, and they're far more prosperous and diverse than Gatineau. See my recent post on Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia.
We have lots of suburban areas, but Gatineau isn't a suburban city per se. We're not really like places like Irvine, California or Scottsdale, Arizona. And even so, most of these large boomburbs in the U.S. have higher homicide rates than we do.
We're more like Jersey City or Oakland in fact. And we're not nearly as predominantly upper crust like Arlington and Alexandria are.
Arlington, VA - 2 this year, 237,000 people
Alexandria, VA - also at 2, 160,000 people
Both are dense, diverse, have income disparity, and are right across the river from downtown Washington. Why on earth are their homicide rates so low compared to DC?
I'd guess the light Virginia gun laws might actually help, but that wouldn't explain why Richmond is so high.
Both Arlington and Alexandria have median incomes in the $100k+ threshold and median house or condo values at $700k+ and $500k+, respectively. There is your answer. There is not a whole lot of wiggle room for a violent criminal element to arise in those places, I imagine.
It's similar to Naperville, IL. Population is nearly 150k and can go four years at a time without a single murder; in fact, last year it had zero. Impressive for a city of its size, but when you consider the median income is around $126k with less than 5% are below the poverty line, it makes sense.
This has been a very light homicide year for Omaha this far-
However there have been 3 homicides in the past 4 days. All shootings and all in different parts of the city. That brings the total to 16 for the city of Omaha thus far in 2019. Obviously, I hope for zero violence the rest of this month and..the city ends with a near record low 16 slayings for all of 2019..
Hartford, CT 23
Springfield, MA 18
Bridgeport, CT 15
Providence, RI 12
Worchester, MA 10
New Haven, CT 10
Brocton, MA 4
Lowell, MA 3 4
Stamford, CT 4
Manchester, NH 4
Lynn, MA 3
Fall River, MA 3
Waterbury, CT 3
New Britain, 3
Pitssfield, MA 2
Meriden, CT 2
Pawtucket, RI 1
Norwalk, CT 1
Isn't that the highest in the whole country at the moment? What's going on in Harvey, criminals from South Chicago moving in?
That's much higher than Flint, MI even, which according to Flint police, has 42 homicides so far this year which is a rate of 43.8 per 100k.
The violet crime spike comes at the expense of lay offs in the police department, since 18 months ago. Harvey had 10 or 11 homicides last year, and has reached a low of 5 in 2015 and I believe in 2016 as well. For a brief moment, it seemed as though things were turning around for the better, even though the economy is in complete shambles. This year, however, is like a resurgence of how it was in some years in the 1990s, which is statistically the worst period of crime in the suburb. The difference, maybe, is that there is no apparent motivation for the killings and near weekly shootings, unlike the drug and gang turf wars of the past. For one murder earlier this year, retaliation for a stolen car was a motivation, but most of the others are difficult to pinpoint, considering among them five of the victims were children under 13 and middle aged to elderly men and women - the latest was a 53 year old man coming from Chicago's north side who was shot and killed while visiting a gun violence memorial for a previous slaying.
Hopefully like with Chicago's 2016 spike, things will calm down sooner than later. I yearn the day when there is not a single homicide reported for a year in Harvey. I don't think there's been a year it hadn't gone without a homicide since probably the 1970s, which makes it an outlier among even other sketchy to bad suburbs in Illinois around Chicago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicago60614
It's a garbage suburb of 24,000 people. I believe the police have pulled back a lot on cracking down on things, morale is terrible, layoffs in the department and a few officers fired for corruption. The criminals all know these things and they assume rightfully so that they're able to get away with much more than they would have.
Also when you get down to 24,000 people the per 100,000 rates we all use can fluctuate much more with relatively fewer sheer numbers of murders.
I think most of the time when doing comparisons people tend to look at larger cities of over 100,000 people. There might be other towns in the usa with 24,000 people who have seen 19 murders, not sure.
East St Louis has a similar population and had 24 murders last year which would be a rate close to 100 per 100,000.
Maywood, IL once reached 20 murders in 2003. I think East Chicago IN also reached about 20 around the same time, though it's population was over 30,000 at the time.
Though at a population of 34,000, Chester PA sees 20+ murders in a typical year. It also seems to be Philly's worst suburb.
Last edited by Chicagoland60426; 12-06-2019 at 02:08 AM..
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