City Murder Rates

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

But there are homicides in St. Louis County too. In 2019, there were 65, for instance. Let's say city+county reaches 400 this year. That's still a 30/100,000 murder rate.

São Paulo, for instance, stamds at 7/100,000 and it's far from having a safe reputation amongst its inhabitants.

first, STL City + County is not going to reach 400 homicides. there's half a month left and the city is at ~240 while the county is at ~50. the total will probably be ~300, which is the number i stated above when i added the county homicides to the city homicides.

the number of combined homicides is still FAR FAR below that for Tijuana and Juarez. the greater point here is that comparing blind rates based on wildly disparate boundaries and populations tells you very little about what it's actually like on the ground. some of St. Louis' neighborhoods are dangerous, particularly if you are part of a certain demographic or involved with drugs or gang activity. that demographic comprises 90% of the homicides. (i'm not excusing it—just saying the reality is more nuanced than an arbitrarily-defined rate can convey). i strongly doubt there's anything close to a useful comparison that could be made between Sao Paulo and St. Louis.