City Murder Rates

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Things are really out of control in Chicago.

i mean, yes, the homicide rate in chicago is atrociously and shamefully high. that's obvious.

at the same time, it's not a "new" thing like many people here on the forum often seem to think it is, as though they just "discovered" that chicago has shockingly high rates of gun violence.

i've lived here for all 45 years of my life, and it's always just sadly been this way within certain underclass communities in chicago.

you get kind of numb to it because year after year, decade after decade, the shit never changes.

the never-ending bloodshed is staggering on the one hand, yet the sense of futility about it on the other makes many people just shrug their shoulders. "what ya gonna do?"

[Chisouthside]

I think too what kinda freaks people out is that in the last 20 years alot of formerly violent neighborhoods have gentrified like Wicker Park, Logan Square, West Town, Pilsen and you have residents moving in who skipped the violent years. In turns this makes the gun violence even more concentrated in certain areas but when it spills out of those areas back into the formerly violent, gentrified areas it shocks the people there because they are not used to it or have really experienced it.

[subterranean]

Portland just broke its all-time homicide record this year, with 71. The last time they were this high was 1987.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i mean, yes, the homicide rate in chicago is atrociously and shamefully high. that's obvious.

at the same time, it's not a "new" thing like many people here on the forum often seem to think it is, as though they just "discovered" that chicago has shockingly high rates of gun violence.

i've lived here for all 45 years of my life, and it's always just sadly been this way within certain underclass communities in chicago.

you get kind of numb to it because year after year, decade after decade, the shit never changes.

the never-ending bloodshed is staggering on the one hand, yet the sense of futility about it on the other makes many people just shrug their shoulders. "what ya gonna do?"

Is Chicago on pace for an all-time record or were there years in the 70s-80s-90s that were even worse?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Is Chicago on pace for an all-time record or were there years in the 70s-80s-90s that were even worse?

we'll probably end the year with around 800 murders.

between 1970 and 1995, there were 16 years where the city was over 800 for the year.

the all-time high homicide tally in chicago as set in 1974 with 970 murders that year.



but even in the so-called "good years" from 2004 - 2015, the city was still averaging 450 - 500 murders per year.

no matter how you look at it, that's still really, really fucking bad.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i mean, yes, the homicide rate in chicago is atrociously and shamefully high. that's obvious.

at the same time, it's not a "new" thing like many people here on the forum often seem to think it is, as though they just "discovered" that chicago has shockingly high rates of gun violence.

i've lived here for all 45 years of my life, and it's always just sadly been this way within certain underclass communities in chicago.

you get kind of numb to it because year after year, decade after decade, the shit never changes.

the never-ending bloodshed is staggering on the one hand, yet the sense of futility about it on the other makes many people just shrug their shoulders. "what ya gonna do?"

Yes, it's always been high, but I guess the surge on the past 10(?) years got lots of media attention.

About São Paulo state (police in Brazil are under the states) I mentioned a couple times here, imported the Giuliani's NYC tolerance zero policy. Mostly the "philosophy" of it and for propaganda purposes, because realities were quite distinct. However, massive investments on police seemed to have worked: crime rates and specially homicides plunged continuously over the past 20 years.

If worked down here, in a complete different country, with very distinct criminal legislation, I guess this model could be reproduced back in the US.

[Chisouthside]

No thanks, we already have an excessive force police problem in the US, we dont need to import the high numbers of extra judicial killings committed by Brazilian police.

[Crawford]

I wouldn't trust the official Brazilian homicide rates, at all. Mexico's official govt. stats on homicide rates are absolute rubbish. I can't imagine Bolsanero can be trusted on any federal data point. Cops regularly engage in massacres in some cities.

Portland has grown considerably since the 1980's, so its homicide rates are nowhere near the peak. It still has a pretty low homicide rate for crap U.S. standards.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Portland has grown considerably since the 1980's, so its homicide rates are nowhere near the peak. It still has a pretty low homicide rate for crap U.S. standards.

That's a good point. I looked it up and the old record of 70 murders was set in 1987 when the city had 250,000 fewer people.

Still, the year isn't over. Even October isn't quite over.

Also three years ago the city had 26 murders for about the same population.

What direction would we like to see our cities headed in? Upwards or downwards?

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Portland has grown considerably since the 1980's, so its homicide rates are nowhere near the peak. It still has a pretty low homicide rate for crap U.S. standards.

We ain't stopping here.

[Acajack]

To clarify, I don't really have anything against Portland and I don't care about Americans' internecine battles that either prompt people to blindly attack or blindly defend it because it's a symbolic woke, liberal or Dem city.

But as a resident of a very low crime city I do find Portland is an interesting case study as a place that a very short-time ago was fairly low-crime but has become at minimum a high(ish) crime city with a definite unruly side.

(And its demographics haven't really changed much so that's not the reason.)

[subterranean]

Lots of people are definitely on drugs, there is virtually no mental health system right now, there is way more vagrancy, and people are becoming incredibly bold in the relative vacuum of police. The extreme left has hijacked the dialog and we're having a ridiculous time recruiting new officers. Despite this hijacked dialog, the majority of people here are actually reasonable people.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I wouldn't trust the official Brazilian homicide rates, at all. Mexico's official govt. stats on homicide rates are absolute rubbish. I can't imagine Bolsanero can be trusted on any federal data point. Cops regularly engage in massacres in some cities.

Portland has grown considerably since the 1980's, so its homicide rates are nowhere near the peak. It still has a pretty low homicide rate for crap U.S. standards.

That's not how things work at all.

Brazil records every single death, coming from several different and completely independent sources: Ministry of Health, the 27 state security secretaries and the civil register services. Indeed, Brazilian police kills a lot and every single death is counted, by the press, by the hospitals and even by the police itself. It's not a secret.

I don't know what kind of B-movie you got this impression, but Brazilian state is a very robust burocracy and they know very well how to collect data. It's nowhere near Mexican state in this regard. We saw how off their Covid stats were, for instance.

It's Bolsonaro, the name. And he has zero control or even interest on these kind of data. Brazilian public service is very well paid, you cannot get fired and therefore quite immune to this kind of control. Public service is actually quite hostile to Bolsonaro.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I wouldn't trust the official Brazilian homicide rates, at all. Mexico's official govt. stats on homicide rates are absolute rubbish. I can't imagine Bolsanero can be trusted on any federal data point. Cops regularly engage in massacres in some cities.

Portland has grown considerably since the 1980's, so its homicide rates are nowhere near the peak. It still has a pretty low homicide rate for crap U.S. standards.

That's not how things work at all.

Brazil is perfectly able to record deaths, coming from several different and completely independent sources: Ministry of Health, the 27 state security secretaries and the civil register services. Indeed, Brazilian police kills a lot and every single death is counted, by the press, by the hospitals and even by the police itself. It's not a secret, as it's the case in the US: the police kills and put it on their books. No worries.

I don't know what kind of B-movie you got this impression where everything outside the US is hell, but Brazilian state is a very robust burocracy and they know very well how to collect data. It's nowhere near Mexican state in this regard. We saw how off their Covid stats were, for instance.

It's Bolsonaro, the name. And he has zero control or even interest on these kind of data. Brazilian public service is very well paid, you cannot get fired and therefore quite immune to this kind of control. Public service is actually quite hostile to Bolsonaro.

[tablemtn]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Portland has grown considerably since the 1980's, so its homicide rates are nowhere near the peak. It still has a pretty low homicide rate for crap U.S. standards.

But it doesn't anymore. Portland's murder rate now exceeds the US national average (which was 6.5 murders per 100,000 people last year). And the rate of increase is very striking, since it had a murder rate of 2.3 per 100,000 less than a decade ago. This is despite factors like an aging population, better forensics/trauma medicine, an increasing surveillance state, etc. which all naturally push DOWN on the murder rate.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Acajack

But as a resident of a very low crime city I do find Portland is an interesting case study as a place that a very short-time ago was fairly low-crime but has become at minimum a high(ish) crime city with a definite unruly side.

(And its demographics haven't really changed much so that's not the reason.)

On what basis does Portland have a high(ish) crime rate? This is a discussion of murder rates, not crime rates, and Portland has a low murder rate. Does it have high overall crime rates?

The reason we're having this discussion is bc Portland is probably the U.S. city most associated with Things Cultists Fear.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by tablemtn

But it doesn't anymore. Portland's murder rate now exceeds the US national average (which was 6.5 murders per 100,000 people last year).

Homicides are overwhelmingly in urban centers, so saying an urban center has a homicide rate than exceeds the national average doesn't say much of anything. It's like saying that Jacksonville is denser than the average U.S. community, therefore Jacksonville is dense.

The U.S. metro with the highest overall crime rate is Anchorage. Most of the other contenders are smaller, anonymous Sunbelt metros like Lubbock. Pine Bluff and Albuquerque. Excepting Memphis, none really have "reputations" (and let's be real, Memphis has a "reputation" for another reason, owing to its demographic makeup - it's the blackest metro, so high crime rate is besides the point).

[biguc]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Yes, it's always been high, but I guess the surge on the past 10(?) years got lots of media attention.

About São Paulo state (police in Brazil are under the states) I mentioned a couple times here, imported the Giuliani's NYC tolerance zero policy. Mostly the "philosophy" of it and for propaganda purposes, because realities were quite distinct. However, massive investments on police seemed to have worked: crime rates and specially homicides plunged continuously over the past 20 years.

If worked down here, in a complete different country, with very distinct criminal legislation, I guess this model could be reproduced back in the US.

If anyone's going to give that pedophile credit for a coincidence, let us never forget the time murders went up 500% in one year on Ghouliani's watch.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by biguc

If anyone's going to give that pedophile credit for a coincidence, let us never forget the time murders went up 500% in one year on Ghouliani's watch.

That was the late 1990’s, early 2000’s. Everybody gave credit to Giuliani and NYC dramatic reduction on crimes were attributed to him.

But as I said, people here are not aware of Giuliani or barely took notice crime fell a lot in the past 20 years. It’s a kind of long-term trend that goes unnoticed.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

On what basis does Portland have a high(ish) crime rate? This is a discussion of murder rates, not crime rates, and Portland has a low murder rate. Does it have high overall crime rates?

The reason we're having this discussion is bc Portland is probably the U.S. city most associated with Things Cultists Fear.

I am Canadian and to us and most people in western democracies, a murder rate of over 10 per 100,000 people is not "low".

Even in the context of the US, a low murder rate is in the 3-4-5 per 100,000 range. Which is where NYC is at.

Places like St. Louis and Baltimore shouldn't be the barometer for what a low murder rate is.

In the western developed world, a homicide rate of 1-2 per 100,000 is considered good, average or "low".

As for other crime in Portland, I don't know what the rate is but although property crime can be a serious problem in cities, violent crime and especially are the biggest indicators of safety.

I just love it when people say "Sure murders are skyrocketing in the city, but on the bright side bicycle theft is way down..."