Eleven people were shot in Chicagoearly New Year’s Day.
Nine were shot New Year’s morning in New York City.
Happy New Year.
Meanwhile, best I can tell, nobody was shot in Baltimore! The Baltimore Sun gives a crude but useful breakdown of basic homicide demographics for the 217 killings in Charm City in 2012. Of note:
A low Baltimore clearance rate of 47%. Yes, this does mean that more than half of murderers get away with murder (at least for a while). The real clearance rate for the year — if you remove the cases from prior years closed this year — is even lower, 35 percent. The actually odds of getting convicted for homicide in Baltimore? I don’t know. But it’s low.
As for the victims and killers, the numbers are typical. More than 4 in 5 killed with a handgun. 90% are men. 94% are black and 5% white (Baltimore is about 65% African American). A promising sign is that Baltimore is now about 5% hispanic, and yet only 1 homicide victim was hispanic.
One-third of victims (more than I would have suspected) were over 35 years old.
83% of victims had criminal records. 24% were on parole or probation at time of death (this is why some people actually do live longer in prison). 38% of victims had been previously arrested for a gun crime. Of known suspects, 45% had gun-related priors for gun crimes.
Boston also had a clearance rate of less than half (43%), with 58 murders for the year.
A low clearance rate is even worse when you have 1/4 the murders to investigate.
I know it's nothing new, but I still have a tough time believing that the homicide rate in Boston in almost twice as high as NYC.