Here's the drop in murder rates in the largest US cities. Most of the data is through the end of March. The data from Boston comes from a New York Times story this morning.
Homicide is down almost everywhere, and in Boston it's down a phenomenal 78%.
Because in Boston everybody who can be killed has been killed?
Just wait until those ISIS guys move into the North End or onto Beacon Hill...
This confuses me. Murder and homicide are not necessarily the same thing yet they seem to be used interchangeably here.
I moved to greater Boston in 1989 from New York. 1989 at the time was the year of the greatest number of homicides ever in Boston. In the midst of this there was the Carol DiMaiti Stewart murder by her husband who tried to implicate the usual young black male as a suspect which the Boston police followed (not all of them) with great energy and little brains (and perhaps a bit of racism).
Since that time the Boston Police, led by a series of Police Commisioners (not just William Bratton !) and the city of Boston lead by Mayors Menino and
Walsh and now Woo have gone through a transformation more complete than any other major city without the chest pounding of Giuliani in NYC or the clearly just wrong Stop and Frisk of Bloomberg.
Boston policing is not perfect. The Police Union can still be backward. Boston still has big problems - housing costs and the unhoused come to mind - but 30+ years of decent public servants (or in some people's minds "the deep state") trying
to improve the lives of all the citizens of"the city on the hill" has made a big difference.
Oh, and Carol DiMaiti's family's response deserves mention.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-28-vw-1644-story.html
“…The drop follows the roughly 30% increase in murders in 2020. That means that despite this year's (2023) drop, homicides remain slightly elevated compared to 2019…”
I think overall, Mr Drum has been dismissive of the idea that crime significantly increased during the pandemic era, and generally believes it was mostly overblown by the media (ostensibly to ding Biden, I guess?).
IIRC, Mr Drum would often focus on “property crime” or “violent crime” overall, which didn’t increase as much (or at all) during that era, but is susceptible to *underreporting*, (by demotivated cops, for instance), unlike homicides. (I don't know if that happened, but I think it did).
People with an agenda could definitely be exaggerating crime narratives, while simultaneously certain specific crimes were actually increasing.
No data from Atlanta?
Right?
and Jackson isn’t a large city. Jacksonville, maybe.