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We’re not talking about Metro areas, we’re talking about cities. West Coast cities, including most CA cities and Portland and Seattle, tend to have low murder rates. The numbers bear that out. Metro areas tend to be higher than New England, yes.
SF and Seattle in particular have parts of their metros that have significantly higher murder rates than the cities themselves. But New England Metro Areas tend to have a lot of very rural areas. That is not the case on the West Coast, so its not an apples to apples comparison.
As for San Diego, it had a murder rate of 1.7 Per 100K a couple of years ago. That is lower than many Canadian cities and similar to some European cities.
Cities across the country and the world differ in size and land area. Saying only city rates matter is the equivalent of saying St Louis is as bad as Cape Town because they have the same murder rate. St Louis encompasses only 9% of its metro area while Cape Town's homicide rate encompasses nearly its entire metropolitan area. To fairly compare the two, you should go by metro. In reality, St Louis is not as dangerous as Cape Town.
Hartford is 17 square miles. That's why Hartford's murder rate is typically on the higher end. It's inflated by its tiny land area. When you factor in the overall urban area, its murder rate is on par with San Diego metro. And Boston is a city with an already relatively low murder rate inflated by its small land area. If Boston's city limits were scaled to Philly's size Boston would be another Seattle with a minuscule murder rate. Still much higher than European cities but the lowest of American major cities.
I don't get the point that New England cities have sparser metro areas. The whole east coast does. Philly metro and Boston metro are comparably sized yet Philly has FOUR TIMES more homicides in its suburbs than the City of Boston has in its actual city.
Last edited by joeyg2014; 06-18-2020 at 03:21 PM..
As of yesterday (6/17), Philly has 187 homicides; 152 on 6/17/19.
Not sure of Chicago's total to date but that city saw its deadliest 24-hour period with 18 homicides on May 31 alone and not riot related. 25 total killed that weekend with a 85 shootings.
So much for BLM or even getting a homicide slowdown during a lockdown pandemic.
As of yesterday (6/17), Philly has 187 homicides; 152 on 6/17/19.
Not sure of Chicago's total to date but that city saw its deadliest 24-hour period with 18 homicides on May 31 alone and not riot related. 25 total killed that weekend with a 85 shootings.
So much for BLM or even getting a homicide slowdown during a lockdown pandemic.
Let's defund the police!
3 comments, all pertaining to discrimination.. Nice alt by the way
Cities across the country and the world differ in size and land area. Saying only city rates matter is the equivalent of saying St Louis is as bad as Cape Town because they have the same murder rate. St Louis encompasses only 9% of its metro area while Cape Town's homicide rate encompasses nearly its entire metropolitan area. To fairly compare the two, you should go by metro. In reality, St Louis is not as dangerous as Cape Town.
Hartford is 17 square miles. That's why Hartford's murder rate is typically on the higher end. It's inflated by its tiny land area. When you factor in the overall urban area, its murder rate is on par with San Diego metro. And Boston is a city with an already relatively low murder rate inflated by its small land area. If Boston's city limits were scaled to Philly's size Boston would be another Seattle with a minuscule murder rate. Still much higher than European cities but the lowest of American major cities.
I don't get the point that New England cities have sparser metro areas. The whole east coast does. Philly metro and Boston metro are comparably sized yet Philly has FOUR TIMES more homicides in its suburbs than the City of Boston has in its actual city.
Doesn't most crime happen in Bostons' suburbs? Philadelphia suburbs are equal to Bostons regarding homicides, there was only 1 in my city, and it was from a Philadelphian who chased another Philadelphian across the border.
3 comments, all pertaining to discrimination.. Nice alt by the way
Don't know what you're talking about but Philly has 187 homicides and is way up from even last year; Chicago is a bigger mess.
What is BLM position on the cost of these black lives? Or is BLM only interested in white cop-black male deady encounters? Shouldn't it really be Some Black Lives Matter (SBLM) then?
Why haven't the white folks hijacked the black-on-black crime issue like they stole the black community-police brutality issue?
After all, ground zero for the George Floyd issue is in Seattle...lol.
Last edited by coventry80; 06-18-2020 at 04:56 PM..
Cities across the country and the world differ in size and land area. Saying only city rates matter is the equivalent of saying St Louis is as bad as Cape Town because they have the same murder rate. St Louis encompasses only 9% of its metro area while Cape Town's homicide rate encompasses nearly its entire metropolitan area. To fairly compare the two, you should go by metro. In reality, St Louis is not as dangerous as Cape Town.
Hartford is 17 square miles. That's why Hartford's murder rate is typically on the higher end. It's inflated by its tiny land area. When you factor in the overall urban area, its murder rate is on par with San Diego metro. And Boston is a city with an already relatively low murder rate inflated by its small land area. If Boston's city limits were scaled to Philly's size Boston would be another Seattle with a minuscule murder rate. Still much higher than European cities but the lowest of American major cities.
I don't get the point that New England cities have sparser metro areas. The whole east coast does. Philly metro and Boston metro are comparably sized yet Philly has FOUR TIMES more homicides in its suburbs than the City of Boston has in its actual city.
Seattle's murder rate is pretty low, but not among the lowest of American major cities. According to City Data, in 2018 Seattle had a murder rate of 4.3 (32 total murders).
San Jose and San Diego - the two cities I originally pointed out - were the lowest. San Diego had a murder rate of 2.4 (35 total murders, only 3 more than Seattle, but with twice the population and 4 times the land area of Seattle). San Jose was at 2.7 with 28 total murders.
In this case, it doesn't matter that San Jose has over twice the land area of Seattle. Even if you shrunk San Jose down to Seattle's size in terms of area and population, but kept the same number of murders, it would still have a lower rate!
Yes, size matters both in terms of area and population, but if most of the area is relatively unpopulated you're inflating your safety stats. San Jose and San Diego have fairly uniform metro areas in terms of population density and both make up a good share of the their full metro areas. Meanwhile, Seattle is the densest city in its metro by a good amount, but the second biggest city in the region, Tacoma, had twice the murder rate in 2018.
In other words, using Metro area completely dilutes the picture and you don't get a good sense of what is actually happening. But by any metric, San Diego, San Jose and several other California cities are the upper echelon when it comes to safety. And yes, so is New England.
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