The recent increase in racial disparity in violence victims in NYC is getting worse. The disparity was always large. Nut now it’s worse. This year, through September, 1,430 New Yorkers have been shot. Five months between January and May, 366. Four months between June–September, 1,064. 1,064 is 2.6X compared to June–September last year.
Over these past four months, a black New Yorker has been 63 times (!) more likely to be shot than a white New Yorker. It seems to be the only racial disparity people refuse to address. In 2019, the black-to-white disparity (June–September) was 38 : 1. In 2020, it increased to 63 : 1.
Up through the end of September 2020, there have been 1,430 shooting victims this year. Of those 27 have been white, 304 Hispanic, 1,069 Black, & 21 Asian. These groups represent 32%, 29%, 24%, and 14% of the NYC population, respectively.
I don’t where else you find a disparity like that. And in what other situation such a disparity would it be ignored. But if we can’t speak of this disparity, how can we address it, much less fix it? Far smaller disparities in policing and health car get far more attention. But when it comes to victims of violence, as long as it’s not a cop who does it, there’s silence. Immoral silence.
Back in 1988, Benjamin Ward, the NYPD’s first Black police commissioner, addressed a group of journalists and called this racial disparity: “Our dirty little secret. . . . We are the victims and the perpetrators. . . . We should not try to hide it. We have to speak out about it.” Ward was criticized for his comments, as he would be today, more than 30 years later.
If the violence of the past 4 months becomes the new normal, more than 1 in every 1,000 black New Yorkers will be shot over the course of a year. 90% of these shooting victims will be men. The median age of an NYC shooting victim is about 27.
To put 1 in 1,000 of a group getting shot in a year in perspective. It’s a lot, but ~1 in 350 New Yorkers have died from COVID this year. Approximately 1 in 7,500 Americans get killed every year in a car crash.
[Warning, this is a whole lot of nothing-burger in the end. But still, for those interesting in crime data, it might be worth reading.]
Shootings are up so much in NYC that social scientists are left accusing the NYPD of “juking” the stats. Now I’ve been using NYPD data for a long time and compared to, well, every other source of data I’ve every used, NYPD data is pretty damn good. Seriously. They are smart people there and they care about data quality. Doesn’t always mean the data going into the system is right, but the NYPD really does care about the quality of their data. (Now if only they would make more of it public…)
That said, even with NYPD data, I still only trust murder and shooting data. Not because of intentional manipulation as much as knowing how tricky it is when data goes into the system, and how tricky it can be to get reliable input. Much less if precinct commanders actually are trying to juke the stats
What this means is that educated people are saying it’s entirely possible — likely even — that violence isn’t really up. That instead NYPD is making up data. I actually find this preposterous when it comes to NYC shooting data. But hey, who knows?
In fact, says one good professor, one shouldn’t even write about the increase in violence. Denial is always the first stage in social science when it comes to changes in crime. It will move on to framing and confusion very soon.
Anyway, if NYPD is trying to artificially inflate shooting numbers, that’s a new one. Of course, maybe they somehow hid away shooting victims last year and every year for the past many years. I doubt it, but it’s possible.
Now the people who actually analyze this very data provided some pretty good answerrs, but it fell like water off a duck’s back. (To wit: current homicide numbers are lower because some injured people haven’t yet died; this month last year had an unusual number of non-gun homicides.) Anyway, the gist being, “Are you effing crazy? No, we haven’t changed anything. Shootings last month really were triple the year before!”
Honestly, to accuse professional crime analysts, people who do this for a living, to accuse them of conspiring to lie about data is a pretty big accusation. Especially when your only proof is, “Shootings can’t be up that much without a greater increase in murder.”
But still, I was led to gun violence archive (GVA), which I’ve never used, as potentially a more accurate source than NYPD data. And this even though some of their data collection seems to be based on little more than tweets put out… by the NYC Alerts911.
So I thought I’d spot check some data. At the time I’m typing this, I haven’t actually checked yet! For real! So this could go either way… but my money is on NYPD data. But still, this is exciting (well, to me, and actually not really).
I’ve decided to spot check the week July 6-12, mostly because I downloaded the PDF of the official NYPD Compstat data for that week. (NYPD does a horrible job of releasing data. And were they to release more data , in a good form, it would so help the NYPD [echo echo echo]. It’s just frustrating because I could have saved a day of my life if this data beyond a goddamned 1-page PDF were public. Why isn’t it?)
So that’s the NYPD data. I’m going to focus only on the 2nd from bottom line, Shooting Vic. That means people who took a bullet. Now I also happen have the actual list of every shooting and murder victim in the city, which isn’t public. It should be. But it allowed me to check the internal validity of the public Compstat page, above.
60 shooting victims. 7 murders, one of whom was not shot. 6 shooting murders. Does that match with the pdf? I hope so. [checks] Bingo! Well, there is one more murder, 7 vs 6. But that doesn’t bother me. The Excel file I have is more up to date than the PDF, so I presume one of the victims died after the PDF was put out. It happens.
Now this just proves internal consistency in the NYPD. There could still be a big conspiracy.
Now let’s look at the Gun Violence Archive for this same week in 2020. They show 7 murder victims shot and killed and 50 people (43+7) shot.
(By the way, it bugs the hell out of me that every place in Queens is listed as “Corona (Queens).” Corona is one neighborhood in Queens. Doesn’t really matter, but it’s a yellow flag for sloppiness.)
Now let’s shift to 2019. According to the NYPD Compstat page from this year (above), there were 17 shooting victims and 10 murders in 2019. (I do not know if the weeks will line up perfectly.) Let’s see…
According to the internal data I have, there were 17 shooting victims and 11 murders. Maybe 1 of those died this week? Maybe they’re off by 1. Either way, it jibes. Of note is that 8 of these murder victims last year were not shot (3 were killed by arson!).
NYPD 2019, week of 7/6 to 7/12:
This helps explain a lot of why shootings are up so much more than murders this year. In 2019 there were only 3 shooting deaths during this 28-day period. (Those were the days!) And there were 3 deaths for 17 shootings. That means 18% of those shot died.
This year only 1 murder wasn’t by shooting. There were 7 deaths out of 60 shootings: 12% (a notable difference from 18%–one that needs explaining, but not one that is unexplainable–one that could be expected if there’s more people shooting semi-randomly into crowds).
Now going to GVA for this same week in 2019. (This omits all non-shooting victims.) (Also, I want to gripe that GVA is a shitty website because it doesn’t allow me to download more than 501 cases at a time. So this took awhile to download everything from Jan 1, 2019. Grrrrrr. It also doesn’t allow to filter by locations easily. Or at least correctly. So I downloaded for all of NY State month by month, combined, and then manually took out everything that isn’t NYC. I have better things to do with my life. Or maybe I don’t?)
3 murders and 20 (17+3) shooting victims. (I don’t know what it means when they list an incident without a victim, but whatev.) This is three more shooting victims than the NYPD counts. That’s… interesting. Why the discrepancy? July 6: “GVA” has 4 victims; NYPD 3. July 7: GVA has 2; NYPD 3. July 8: GVA has 6; NYPD 4. July 9: 1 and 1. July 10: 3 and 2. July 11: 2 and 1. July 12: 2 and 3.
Some of these might be shootings that happen around midnight. Or maybe not. So as research I’m thinking let’s spot check a few days. July 10? I’m using GVA for the link to source. Definitely 2 people were shot. But the third? “Reports of” are very different than a person actually shot. Probably didn’t happen. But GVA counts it. Because there were “reports of.”
On July 6 GVA lists 4 victims. NYPD 3. But one of them listed by GVA, it turns out, wasn’t a shooting victim. He was pistol whipped, according to the NYPD. Could by lying… but no.
Here’s a crazy idea: What if @NYC_Alerts911 isn’t the most reliable source of data. And what if NYPD crime data actually is reliable? Crazy, I know. But I’ve been doing this for years. And it’s what I’ve found to be true.
Anyway, it comes down to this. For June 14 to July 12, 28-day period, GVA lists: 2019: 85 people shot in NYC 2020: 265 people shot in NYC That’s a 211% increase. NYPD (which is more accurate): 2019: 97 people shot 2020: 318 people shot That’s a 228% percent increase.
So there’s no great discrepancy. All this is because somebody carelessly analyzed the GVA incorrectly. Now I’ve wasted half a day confirming what I already know because the idea that the violence rise in NYC isn’t happening was gaining traction on Twitter. Frustrating. But that’s OK, I suppose. It’s good to confirm data. But it’s better to focus on the problem that more people are getting shot. And questioning the integrity of the good data distracts from that. That’s what pisses me off. Shootings are up in NYC. For at least the past 5 (6?) weeks; triple compared to last year. Triple! No, it’s not NYPD making up numbers. But I guess there’s always value in making sure one’s data is correct.
But seriously, for the day I’ve spent proving the obvious? Arguing if lives are really being lost? It’s just that I could have spent that time thinking about what we could be doing to actually prevent lives from being lost. That’s what’s frustrating.
My “pinned tweet” on twitter is this:
I wish I had added, “the stats are rigged” to #1. But today I saw somebody go down the list in order, through #1,#2 (though the year mentioned was 2010), #3, and #4. It’s frustrating. Because I’ve said why (at least as well as one can in 650 words).
Betteridge’s law of headlines states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” I hope I’m wrong and Betteridge is right. This piece of mine was in the Daily News.
Violence in New York is up. If you ask the NYPD, the 30-year New York City crime decline is over. Police have been known to cry wolf and can see the even most beautiful blue sky as falling. But what if this time it’s true? In New York City, violence started increasing in October, before George Floyd was killed, before protests and before “defund police” became a catchphrase. In the last 28 days (through July 12), compared to last year, shootings have more than tripled (318 vs. 97). Last week was even worse. If the last 28 days become the new normal, 2021 will have more than 4,100 shootings, a level not seen in well over 20 years. Undoubtedly bail reform, protests, looting, COVID-19, and the release of prisoners because of COVID all play a role, though how much is debate. What’s less known is how the NYPD has been methodically declawed by design. Years of political advocacy have resulted in the intentional erosion of legal police authority. There is less prosecution. Most miscreant activities have been decriminalized. The city survived and even benefited from many reforms, but now the camel’s back is breaking. It’s like a game of Jenga in which the wooden blocks of public safety are stacked into a tower. Each player in turn pulls out one block. The tower holds. But as more and more blocks are removed, one too many is pulled — one that may have been removed earlier and without consequence — and now the entire tower is tumbling down.
Here are some bits I would have kept in, but for length:
And here are some parts I would have kept, but for length: Enforcing gun laws is key. In 2013 and 2014, 40% of all the “disposed cases” for carrying an illegal gun in NYC ended up with some kind of jail or prison. In 2019 it was just 17%. Near-mandatory jail time for guns was a big reason NYC became less violence in the 90s. Or take disorder on the subways, nothing legally prevents the NYPD from enforcing quality-of-life rules. But under Mayor deBlasio, enforcement ended. To that extent police are standing down, but not because they want to. They’ve been told to, often in the name of social justice. Good policing is about changing people’s behavior before they need to be arrested. To do that police need information, leadership, tactics, and the legal right to enforcement. Crime prevention is by nature pro-active. And that, of course, is the root of some police opposition. Bit by bit the NYPD has seen their legal authority pre-empted by elected officials, primarily the mayor and district attorneys (to a lesser extent city council members) by directives not to detain people pre-trial. Open container, disorderly behavior, turnstile jumping, smoking weeds, shoplifting, but even theft, assault, and illegal gun possession are now but non-violent crimes to be ticketed and released. There is no detention. There is little prosecution. The NYPD can’t use their tools. This is a political choice. Precision policing, broken window, stationary posts, quality-of-life, Clean Halls, Borough Specialty Units, Organized Crime Control Bureau, Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, and most recently, anti-crime. All gone. By any quantifiable measure–a decline in arrests, a decline in crime, a decline in police use of lethal force, a decline in the number of complaints, plus terrorism prevention–the NYPD has been effective. But none of this matters. Instead we’re dismantling the NYPD. And for what? Just imagine telling the next generation, after murders top 1,000: “Well, of course we had to dismantle the NYPD, you see, because a cop killed a man in Minnesota.”
