Murder

[Arkady]

At the risk of distracting from a rightful appreciation of Clinton's big debate win, I'm curious what people here think about the latest FBI UCR report. Although property crime continued to decline in 2015, the violent crime rate and murder rate increased. Rates are still considerably better than in 2008, but the worsening was significant. I haven't heard a decent explanation for what's going on, so I'm hoping we can find one.

First, I'd like to note that I'm not going to pull the right-wing game here, and act like the stats must be wrong because they aren't telling me what I want to believe. These stats are compiled by professionals who take this stuff very seriously and understand the data sources better than me, so I'm willing to accept there probably really was a spike in violent crime in 2015. The question is why.

It's hard to tease out an answer with the FBI's data, given the way they report it, but if you screw around with the numbers a bit, you'll see this is a broad-based problem, with murder having risen in most kinds of communities. The worst of the worsening was in small towns in rural areas (murder rates soared from 3.32 to 4.39 in non-metro counties under 10k population). However, since far more people live in big cities, urban areas drove the national trend. Within the bigger cities, the worst trends, between 2014 and 2015, were for cities with populations between 500k and 999,999 people -- they saw an increase in murder victims twice what the 1M+ cities had and also greater than the smaller cities. There didn't appear to be any changes in the demographics of killers or their victims that would exceed the level of "noise," between the two years.

One area where there was an interesting shift was in weapons. In 2014, 67.9% of homicides used firearms. In 2015 it was up to 71.5%. The biggest uptick there was in the South, which went from 69.6% of homicides being firearm homicides, to it being 73.7%. When it comes to types of guns, handguns saw an uptick, from 46.23% of all murders in 2014 to 47.92% in 2015.

These shifts may sound small, but actually they are very important. See here:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u....able_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2011-2015.xls

If you do the math, non-firearm homicides FELL between 2014 and 2015, from 3,958 to 3,839. That's a 3% decline, even as the population was growing. If we could ignore the impact of guns, 2015 would be yet another year of impressive improvement. But something happened that caused us to have an extra 1,304 firearms murders in 2015 than in 2014, even as non-firearm homicides dropped, and property crime rates continued their long descent.

There's been talk about the "Ferguson Effect" -- the idea being that police don't like being second-guessed when they use deadly violence on minorities, and so they're backing off doing their jobs, and there's a resulting crime wave. I don't see evidence of that in the data. First, if that were the case, we'd expect the worsening to be mostly confined to cities and especially to high-minority areas. Second, we wouldn't expect to see the property crime rates continuing to decline -- why no crime wave there if police are backing off? But what if there's a different "Ferguson Effect"? What if a bunch of scared folks ran out and armed themselves against the threat of the protests they see on Fox News? And what if all those extra guns on hand are turning what would otherwise be non-deadly incidents into deadly ones?

Thoughts?

 

[as seen on tv]

good top post. no - you're not trolling. several thoughts.

property crime - statistics are highly unreliable. although the advent of 24/7 home closed circuit TVs may have reduced suburban crimes, that's certainly not the case in the hood. some people appear to have simply given up attempting to persuade police to investigate. in places like Detroit, Chicago, etc. police no longer respond to 911 property crime calls if they're busy "elsewhere". how often does a victim have to be told "no" before he or she stops calling? Our company recently put out an employee alert - local thieves were targeting "high end" cars parked in public lots and on the street. They were smashing the windows and seeing if there was anything of value in the console, trunk, etc. dozens of these in a single week. If it happens to you, do you report this, or just go to the insurance company? A real cessation of property crime would mean pawn shops going out of business, and that's clearly not happening either.

murder and assault - its up - but not exponentially. although police reticence to rush into harms way may be a small factor, I think we also need to consider that (again) impoverished blue cities aren't able to fill all vacant police openings, and there are new rules against high speed pursuits and stop and frisk. NYC, especially, has seen an uptick in crime since DiBlasio asserted that stop and frisk was over and done with. Stop and frisk not only gets guns off the street and into police custody, it also makes violent criminals afraid to take their guns with them on a lark. I don't keep track of the stats, but most shootings "in the news" seem to involve an ex felon who was prohibited from having a gun in the first place. Stop and frisk terrifies parolees, because being caught with a gun means parole is revoked and they are instantly doing time again.

Trump overstates the case when he paints a picture of cities out of control. They are only 10-20% more out of control than a year or so ago.

That said, Hillary's obsession with taking handguns away from law abiding citizens is belied by 50% reduction in the murder rate over the last 2 decades.

I fully "get" that DiBlasio is dependent on the vote of activists to hold office. And the rest of us should "get" that law abiding people continue to flee New York if they're able.

Case in point - I went to a funeral in Jersey City, NJ this past weekend. The deceased was a native new Yorker. the funeral was held in Jersey city over safety concerns. I parked my car on the street (no meters!) outside the restaurant we went to, afterwards. When we left, nobody's windows were smashed, nobody got towed, there were no panhandlers or drug dealers or bums selling "singles" or people threating to "watch your car" so that nothing happens to it.

It was nicer even than Baltimore.

 

[marvin martian]

people threating to "watch your car" so that nothing happens to it.

Is this a thing that happens? I've never heard of it.

 

[as seen on tv]

Is this a thing that happens? I've never heard of it.

most definitely. in Baltimore after dark. if you're going to a club, and parking at a public lot (street level) or "on the street. Two characters in hoodies, with their hands in their pockets will approach you immediately after you exit the vehicle. they will reassure this is NOT a stickup - they only want $10 (or $20) as a courtesy to keep an eye on your car.

 

[marvin martian]

most definitely. in Baltimore after dark. if you're going to a club, and parking at a public lot (street level) or "on the street. Two characters in hoodies, with their hands in their pockets will approach you immediately after you exit the vehicle. they will reassure this is NOT a stickup - they only want $10 (or $20) as a courtesy to keep an eye on your car.

Interesting, I'd never heard of that scam. When I lived in LA, we had the "window washers" who would approach you to wash your car windows for $5, and would sometimes get violent if refused. Their equipment always bore a suspicious resemblance to the window washing tools found at gas stations.

 

[Dawg]

Murder is up due to Θ dividing citizens and his destroying race relations back 60 years, it will increase due to Θ creating hate on Cops and they scared to do their duty by facing court.

With 93,000,000+ not employed it's harder to break into occupied homes!

 

[Jets]

Im purely speculating here, but Stop and frisk did take a number of guns off the street. Granted as numbers went down over time it could be argued that more people were worried about getting popped with firearms, which may have contributed to the drop prior to it being rules unconstutional. It may not be a coincidence that the "deterrent" effect as it were no longer applies. Why would people be as worried if they know LE will hesitate before confronting suspects.

Jmo

 

[Arkady]

property crime - statistics are highly unreliable

Agreed. They're very much responsive to definitional games, as are rates for lesser violent crimes, which is why I tend to focus in on murder rates. Still, it's going to be hard to attribute a rise in murder rates to policing changes if property crime rates continue to fall, absent some real evidence that reporting tendencies for property crime changes substantially (rather than just vague speculation along those lines).

NYC, especially, has seen an uptick in crime since DiBlasio asserted that stop and frisk was over and done with.

Some history is in order here. De Blasio became major at the start of 2014. Following that, as stop-and-frisks declined, New York's murder rate dropped to an historic low:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nypd-low-crime-first-quarter-2016_us_5702b0dae4b0a06d580653e3

If there's been an up-tick since then, commensurate with what we've seen nationally, it wouldn't make much sense to attribute that to the change in stop-and-frisk. Still, I'm willing to consider that "stop and frisk" might work. But as a civil rights matter, that doesn't matter. We have a constitutional right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures. If police are stopping people for whom they have no reasonable basis for an individualized suspicion of criminal conduct, they shouldn't be allowed to search them.... even if doing so would make us safer. I suppose it would also make us safer if police were free to wander in and out of our houses at will looking for contraband, but that also would be unconstitutional.

Trump overstates the case when he paints a picture of cities out of control. They are only 10-20% more out of control than a year or so ago.

And how much more "out of control" were they during the Bush years -- or the Reagan years, for that matter?

That said, Hillary's obsession with taking handguns away from law abiding citizens is belied by 50% reduction in the murder rate over the last 2 decades.

What obsession? I've followed her fairly closely this cycle and haven't seen any evidence of such an obsession. This subject of her supposed "obsession" never came up during the debate.... not one mention of handguns. She spoke of guns in general, and of military-style guns, but not handguns specifically. And she never called for taking them away from law abiding citizens. She just said "....we've got to get guns out of the hands of people who should not have them." That's a sentiment Trump echoed.

Case in point - I went to a funeral in Jersey City, NJ this past weekend. The deceased was a native new Yorker..... When we left, nobody's windows were smashed, nobody got towed, there were no panhandlers or drug dealers or bums selling "singles" or people threating to "watch your car" so that nothing happens to it.

It was nicer even than Baltimore.

Try New York City, then. It's quite nice these days -- the last I saw, its murder rate was well below the national average. And early data indicates it'll be even better in 2016 than 2015:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf

Notice murder is down 4.3% year-to-date.

 

[Spamature]

At the risk of distracting from a rightful appreciation of Clinton's big debate win, I'm curious what people here think about the latest FBI UCR report. Although property crime continued to decline in 2015, the violent crime rate and murder rate increased. Rates are still considerably better than in 2008, but the worsening was significant. I haven't heard a decent explanation for what's going on, so I'm hoping we can find one.

First, I'd like to note that I'm not going to pull the right-wing game here, and act like the stats must be wrong because they aren't telling me what I want to believe. These stats are compiled by professionals who take this stuff very seriously and understand the data sources better than me, so I'm willing to accept there probably really was a spike in violent crime in 2015. The question is why.

It's hard to tease out an answer with the FBI's data, given the way they report it, but if you screw around with the numbers a bit, you'll see this is a broad-based problem, with murder having risen in most kinds of communities. The worst of the worsening was in small towns in rural areas (murder rates soared from 3.32 to 4.39 in non-metro counties under 10k population). However, since far more people live in big cities, urban areas drove the national trend. Within the bigger cities, the worst trends, between 2014 and 2015, were for cities with populations between 500k and 999,999 people -- they saw an increase in murder victims twice what the 1M+ cities had and also greater than the smaller cities. There didn't appear to be any changes in the demographics of killers or their victims that would exceed the level of "noise," between the two years.

One area where there was an interesting shift was in weapons. In 2014, 67.9% of homicides used firearms. In 2015 it was up to 71.5%. The biggest uptick there was in the South, which went from 69.6% of homicides being firearm homicides, to it being 73.7%. When it comes to types of guns, handguns saw an uptick, from 46.23% of all murders in 2014 to 47.92% in 2015.

These shifts may sound small, but actually they are very important. See here:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u....able_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2011-2015.xls

If you do the math, non-firearm homicides FELL between 2014 and 2015, from 3,958 to 3,839. That's a 3% decline, even as the population was growing. If we could ignore the impact of guns, 2015 would be yet another year of impressive improvement. But something happened that caused us to have an extra 1,304 firearms murders in 2015 than in 2014, even as non-firearm homicides dropped, and property crime rates continued their long descent.

There's been talk about the "Ferguson Effect" -- the idea being that police don't like being second-guessed when they use deadly violence on minorities, and so they're backing off doing their jobs, and there's a resulting crime wave. I don't see evidence of that in the data. First, if that were the case, we'd expect the worsening to be mostly confined to cities and especially to high-minority areas. Second, we wouldn't expect to see the property crime rates continuing to decline -- why no crime wave there if police are backing off? But what if there's a different "Ferguson Effect"? What if a bunch of scared folks ran out and armed themselves against the threat of the protests they see on Fox News? And what if all those extra guns on hand are turning what would otherwise be non-deadly incidents into deadly ones?

Thoughts?

My guess is year after year of record gun sales pushed by the illogical get a gun now before they are banned mentality. Which means more guns are available to more people who will in turn create more gun victims.

 

[marvin martian]

At the risk of distracting from a rightful appreciation of Clinton's big debate win

If your boss allowed you to do so, please proceed.

 

[Arkady]

My guess is year after year of record gun sales pushed by the illogical get a gun now before they are banned mentality. Which means more guns are available to more people who will in turn create more gun victims.

The data, at least, seems to support that. That would explain why there's been a big uptick in murder, even as there's been a down-tick in both non-firearm murder and property crime. It would also line up with the fact the uptick in gun murder was mostly about handguns, and the fact it was strongest in the South (where gun culture runs strongest). But, I'd need more data to know for sure -- for example, gun sales data by year. Was 2015 a strong year for gun sales? If not, the theory falls apart.

The theory also struggles to explain why we didn't see something similar the year after Sandy Hook, given the spike in gun sales after that. One possibility is that post-Sandy Hook the spike was largely about trying to get AR-15s, out of fear they'd be banned. Long guns are less likely to cause murder rates to soar, because they're not the kind you're likely to have conveniently at hand on your person or in your car to turn a non-deadly incident into a deadly one, and they're also generally less useful to criminals, so putting more of them into circulation does less to stock the criminal market than putting more handguns into circulation does. By comparison, if what we've seen more recently was a spike in handguns and carry permits, that would mean both more guns on hand to turn incidents deadly, and more guns of the kinds criminals prefer feeding that market.

 

[Arkady]

If your boss allowed you to do so, please proceed.

If you're ever allowed to reply on the substance of the matter, just let us know.

 

[BitterPill]

At the risk of distracting from a rightful appreciation of Clinton's big debate win, I'm curious what people here think about the latest FBI UCR report. Although property crime continued to decline in 2015, the violent crime rate and murder rate increased. Rates are still considerably better than in 2008, but the worsening was significant. I haven't heard a decent explanation for what's going on, so I'm hoping we can find one.

First, I'd like to note that I'm not going to pull the right-wing game here, and act like the stats must be wrong because they aren't telling me what I want to believe. These stats are compiled by professionals who take this stuff very seriously and understand the data sources better than me, so I'm willing to accept there probably really was a spike in violent crime in 2015. The question is why.

It's hard to tease out an answer with the FBI's data, given the way they report it, but if you screw around with the numbers a bit, you'll see this is a broad-based problem, with murder having risen in most kinds of communities. The worst of the worsening was in small towns in rural areas (murder rates soared from 3.32 to 4.39 in non-metro counties under 10k population). However, since far more people live in big cities, urban areas drove the national trend. Within the bigger cities, the worst trends, between 2014 and 2015, were for cities with populations between 500k and 999,999 people -- they saw an increase in murder victims twice what the 1M+ cities had and also greater than the smaller cities. There didn't appear to be any changes in the demographics of killers or their victims that would exceed the level of "noise," between the two years.

One area where there was an interesting shift was in weapons. In 2014, 67.9% of homicides used firearms. In 2015 it was up to 71.5%. The biggest uptick there was in the South, which went from 69.6% of homicides being firearm homicides, to it being 73.7%. When it comes to types of guns, handguns saw an uptick, from 46.23% of all murders in 2014 to 47.92% in 2015.

These shifts may sound small, but actually they are very important. See here:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u....able_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2011-2015.xls

If you do the math, non-firearm homicides FELL between 2014 and 2015, from 3,958 to 3,839. That's a 3% decline, even as the population was growing. If we could ignore the impact of guns, 2015 would be yet another year of impressive improvement. But something happened that caused us to have an extra 1,304 firearms murders in 2015 than in 2014, even as non-firearm homicides dropped, and property crime rates continued their long descent.

There's been talk about the "Ferguson Effect" -- the idea being that police don't like being second-guessed when they use deadly violence on minorities, and so they're backing off doing their jobs, and there's a resulting crime wave. I don't see evidence of that in the data. First, if that were the case, we'd expect the worsening to be mostly confined to cities and especially to high-minority areas. Second, we wouldn't expect to see the property crime rates continuing to decline -- why no crime wave there if police are backing off? But what if there's a different "Ferguson Effect"? What if a bunch of scared folks ran out and armed themselves against the threat of the protests they see on Fox News? And what if all those extra guns on hand are turning what would otherwise be non-deadly incidents into deadly ones?

Thoughts?

I think it's too early to tell. For all we know 2015 might simply be an anomaly.

However, there are more firearms in play, and every year their numbers increase, so I agree that could have an effect.

 

[Deleted member 21794]

Interesting, I'd never heard of that scam. When I lived in LA, we had the "window washers" who would approach you to wash your car windows for $5, and would sometimes get violent if refused. Their equipment always bore a suspicious resemblance to the window washing tools found at gas stations.

Surely you're not suggesting homeless people are dishonest thieves. They're just down on their luck. And look at you, you hit them while they're down. You should be ashamed of yourself.

 

[BitterPill]

If you're ever allowed to reply on the substance of the matter, just let us know.

I thought I saw the Martian reply with substance once, but perhaps I'm confusing him with Drumcollie.

 

[as seen on tv]

Interesting, I'd never heard of that scam. When I lived in LA, we had the "window washers" who would approach you to wash your car windows for $5, and would sometimes get violent if refused. Their equipment always bore a suspicious resemblance to the window washing tools found at gas stations.

they have that in Philadelphia, but not Baltimore. in fact, in Philadelphia, its strictly outside the city limits, apparently.

they also have people selling newspapers they stole from the honor boxes. For a buck you can empty the honor box and be in business instantly.

 

[BitterPill]

Surely you're not suggesting homeless people are dishonest thieves. They're just down on their luck. And look at you, you hit them while they're down. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Homeless people are dishonest thieves because window washers steal their equipment from gas stations?

It's not often you'll find me defending the Martian; in fact, I believe this is the first time.

Thanks!

 

[as seen on tv]

Surely you're not suggesting homeless people are dishonest thieves. They're just down on their luck. And look at you, you hit them while they're down. You should be ashamed of yourself.

if you talk to the local shopkeepers, they can immediately distinguish between the thieves and the down on their luck guys.

down on their luck guys will sweep the sidewalk, wash the storefront windows, etc in exchange for food, cigarettes, etc.

thieves will simply walk in and take what they want, then run away.

 

[Spamature]

The data, at least, seems to support that. That would explain why there's been a big uptick in murder, even as there's been a down-tick in both non-firearm murder and property crime. It would also line up with the fact the uptick in gun murder was mostly about handguns, and the fact it was strongest in the South (where gun culture runs strongest). But, I'd need more data to know for sure -- for example, gun sales data by year. Was 2015 a strong year for gun sales? If not, the theory falls apart.

The theory also struggles to explain why we didn't see something similar the year after Sandy Hook, given the spike in gun sales after that. One possibility is that post-Sandy Hook the spike was largely about trying to get AR-15s, out of fear they'd be banned. Long guns are less likely to cause murder rates to soar, because they're not the kind you're likely to have conveniently at hand on your person or in your car to turn a non-deadly incident into a deadly one, and they're also generally less useful to criminals, so putting more of them into circulation does less to stock the criminal market than putting more handguns into circulation does. By comparison, if what we've seen more recently was a spike in handguns and carry permits, that would mean both more guns on hand to turn incidents deadly, and more guns of the kinds criminals prefer feeding that market.

There is this in an article about 2015 gun sales.

A National Increase

Gun sales have more than doubled in a decade, to about 15 million in 2013 from about seven million in 2002. More firearms are sold to residents in the United States than in any other country, according to Jurgen Brauer, a professor at Georgia Regents University.


These exclude permits that allow people in some states to buy multiple guns with a single background check.


The increase is mostly due to higher sales of handguns, which are typically bought for self-defense. Two of the fastest-growing segments of the market are women and gun owners with concealed carry permits.




Looser Restrictions

Legal changes at the local level can lead to abrupt changes in sales.


When Missouri repealed a requirement that gun buyers obtain a permit to buy a handgun in 2007, estimated gun sales went up and stayed up, by roughly 9,000 additional guns per month. The influx shifted gun-trafficking patterns, increasing the number of guns bought in Missouri that were later traced to crimes.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/10/us/gun-sales-terrorism-obama-restrictions.html?_r=0

 

[as seen on tv]

Agreed. They're very much responsive to definitional games, as are rates for lesser violent crimes, which is why I tend to focus in on murder rates. Still, it's going to be hard to attribute a rise in murder rates to policing changes if property crime rates continue to fall, absent some real evidence that reporting tendencies for property crime changes substantially (rather than just vague speculation along those lines).



Some history is in order here. De Blasio became major at the start of 2014. Following that, as stop-and-frisks declined, New York's murder rate dropped to an historic low:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nypd-low-crime-first-quarter-2016_us_5702b0dae4b0a06d580653e3

If there's been an up-tick since then, commensurate with what we've seen nationally, it wouldn't make much sense to attribute that to the change in stop-and-frisk. Still, I'm willing to consider that "stop and frisk" might work. But as a civil rights matter, that doesn't matter. We have a constitutional right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures. If police are stopping people for whom they have no reasonable basis for an individualized suspicion of criminal conduct, they shouldn't be allowed to search them.... even if doing so would make us safer. I suppose it would also make us safer if police were free to wander in and out of our houses at will looking for contraband, but that also would be unconstitutional.



And how much more "out of control" were they during the Bush years -- or the Reagan years, for that matter?



What obsession? I've followed her fairly closely this cycle and haven't seen any evidence of such an obsession. This subject of her supposed "obsession" never came up during the debate.... not one mention of handguns. She spoke of guns in general, and of military-style guns, but not handguns specifically. And she never called for taking them away from law abiding citizens. She just said "....we've got to get guns out of the hands of people who should not have them." That's a sentiment Trump echoed.



Try New York City, then. It's quite nice these days -- the last I saw, its murder rate was well below the national average. And early data indicates it'll be even better in 2016 than 2015:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf

Notice murder is down 4.3% year-to-date.

nyc "nicer", lol? you really want to claim you don't read newspapers? really?

a google search of the term "NYC slasher epidemic" brought 229,000 results in 0.76 seconds, including the example below:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/2...attacks-frighten-citizens-puzzle-experts.html