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Irvine, California, which has 280,000 people, has had 1.
As others have pointed out, to ignore demographics makes the whole argument here absurd.
Here is something to ask. If 90% of St. Louis' Black population was middle class, of the professional class, college educated and/or skilled, do you really think St. Louis would have as many murders as there are now? Last I checked, this is mostly an underclass problem. How many Black construction workers, teachers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, postal workers, factory workers, etc committing murder in high numbers?
Here is something to ask. If 90% of St. Louis' Black population was middle class, of the professional class, college educated and/or skilled, do you really think St. Louis would have as many murders as there are now? Last I checked, this is mostly an underclass problem. How many Black construction workers, teachers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, postal workers, factory workers, etc committing murder in high numbers?
Agree, blacks in Alexandria, VA, a city that's approx 20% A-A, have very low homicide rates. Moreover, the worst cases - Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, etc - are all cities that are past their economic peaks and are being depopulated, with all races leaving. But the lack of policing makes it much worse. Baltimore's homicide rate was dropping until 2015, even when its economy wasn't improving much, but then Freddy Gray happened. Since then it's spiked and has stayed high as police have backed off. A similar dynamic is now occurring elsewhere because of BLM/Defund and last year's protests.
There are social ways to address this, including fewer out of wedlock births and allowing kids in poor neighborhoods the same school choices as kids in wealthy neighborhoods. But police have to be able to act without the treatment they're getting now.
St. Louis has been dealing with high murder rates as far back as the 1960s.
Murder rate in St. Louis, 1963-1969:
1963: 19.4 per 100,000
1964: 22.9 per 100,000
1965: 26.5 per 100,000
1966: 22.7 per 100,000
1967: 32.9 per 100,000
1968: 37.7 per 100,000
1969: 46.8 per 100,000
Agree, blacks in Alexandria, VA, a city that's approx 20% A-A, have very low homicide rates. Moreover, the worst cases - Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, etc - are all cities that are past their economic peaks and are being depopulated, with all races leaving. But the lack of policing makes it much worse. Baltimore's homicide rate was dropping until 2015, even when its economy wasn't improving much, but then Freddy Gray happened. Since then it's spiked and has stayed high as police have backed off. A similar dynamic is now occurring elsewhere because of BLM/Defund and last year's protests.
There are social ways to address this, including fewer out of wedlock births and allowing kids in poor neighborhoods the same school choices as kids in wealthy neighborhoods. But police have to be able to act without the treatment they're getting now.
Virginia is nearly 20% Black. Missouri is 11% Black. Missouri's murder rate is much higher than that of Virginia. And so is Missouri's Black murder rate. If one takes every place on a case by case basis, there are different things that will stand out. I'm guessing Virginia has a stronger Black middle class than Missouri does.
Baltimore's homicide rate might have been dropping, but it was still quite high. As for St. Louis, it has hit some very high levels for decades. It would drop for a few years and then go back up. St. Louis' murder rate peaking in 1993, at 69.9 per 100,000 (and St. Louis wasn't even the worst for that year. New Orleans was). It started to drop and kept dropping until 2003. It started to rise again. Police in Baltimore backing off might have played a role. However, I decided to look up with St. Louis has been doing. The St. Louis Police tried a tactic called "hotspotting". The police go to the most violent places in the city and concentrate there. Some sources say it isn't working based on the murder rates.
Only certain areas. There is plenty of areas in America that are not plagued with these issues.
Madison, WI has never recorded more than 11 murders in any year. And in most years, it has between 5-7 murders in a year. Population around 260,000. Many people want to live in Madison, despite its fierce winters. Madison isn't the warzone that St. Louis is. Austin, the capital of Texas, recorded 48 murders last year. Its population is about 1 million. Memphis recorded 98 murders within the first 5 months of 2020. This year in Memphis, 110 murders occurred within the first 5 months of this year. Jackson, MS, despite a population of 160,000, had nearly 3 times as many murders as Austin last year.
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