Justin Fenton writes in the Sun.
This is great news. But one thing is very curious:
The city’s Western District, for example, where nearly 90 people were killed in 1992, recorded 23 homicides in 2008. It has not recorded fewer than 32 homicides in a year since at least 1970.
But the Western District is also emblematic of the past year’s uneven results: While it recorded the largest drop in homicides of any district, shootings rose and robberies increased by 37 percent.
That just don’t make sense. I can’t figure it out. I hope it doesn’t end up like in The Wire, with all the bodies found in vacants.
But in the meantime, kudos to the BPD.
“That just don’t make sense. I can’t figure it out. I hope it doesn’t end up like in The Wire, with all the bodies found in vacants.”
Yeah, that would be pretty demoralizing. One of the standard theories when shootings go up and murders go down is that there is better access to advanced trauma medicine, but I don’t think that’s the case in Baltimore City. Oh well, whatever the reason, that’s great for citizens in the western and BPD. Happy New Year, Peter.
Dr Moskos,
Can you point out some academic articles on the relationship between Murder rates and Lesser crime rates? I would like to read how this is theorized in Sociology.
Dr Moskos,
How is this possible?
stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/37EF7CC768842C388625753A0012C233?OpenDocument
Additionally, the new police chief replaced the outgoing one who resigned after his daughter was caught using impounded vehicles for private transportation. I figure that he couldn’t control the crime and the mayor didn’t want to fire him for out of control crime/cooking the books, so they found this excuse instead.
Murders up 21% and violent crime down 3.5%? Not likely.
Why isn’t drug regulation ever on the table? Now there’s a way to really cut violence.