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Violent crime is under control in big cities — with one big exception

Published on 21 Comments on Violent crime is under control in big cities — with one big exception

I said I wasn't going to do this, so naturally I did it: I took a look at violent crime rates in all ten of our biggest cities. Here it is:

One caveat: I wanted to compare apples to apples, and that meant violent crime, which is defined as murder + rape + robbery + aggravated assault. Some cities still provide their crime rates like this, but others don't and I had to extract those four crimes by hand. That's why a few of these numbers might be a little different from the headline numbers you've seen elsewhere, notably New York City. But mostly they're pretty close.

Now here's the chart for murder:

With the exception of a couple of outliers, it looks like our murder wave is over. The increases in murder in eight out of ten of our biggest cities are small, zero or negative.

And now a comment: I continue to be very suspicious of the numbers from New York City. There are three obvious reasons:

  • NYC is an extreme outlier. Violent crime is up 20%, while every other big city is at 5% or lower.
  • There's a massive disconnect between violent crime (up 20%) and murder (down 14%).
  • The big increase in 2022 literally came out of nowhere. This chart uses NYC's "seven major crimes" definition:
    .

None of these three things is ironclad proof of anything, but together it's hard not to shake your head and wonder what's going on. For more than 20 years serious crime in New York was consistently down with only a couple of short and minor blips. Then suddenly, out of the blue, it's up 30%? What's going on?

UPDATE: The murder rate for San Antonio originally included 53 migrants found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer in June 2022. The chart has been redrawn to exclude these deaths since they don't fit the normal sense of the word murder.

21 thoughts on “Violent crime is under control in big cities — with one big exception”

  1. Justin

    Mr. Drum needs to check out the entertainment at the NY Post.

    https://nypost.com/2022/11/04/florida-man-kills-girlfriend-three-others-after-spat/

    Not only is crime out of control in NYC, it’s out of control everywhere! And most of the perpetrators, as reported by the Post, are black creeps. It’s time for democrats to throw the black criminal class under the bus. They really are super predators.

    The entertainment value of the Posts reporting outweighs any fears generated.

      1. Salamander

        "Red state"? Gimme a break. This happened in New Mexico a decade or so ago. We also had a case where a guy driving through stopped his car to decapitate one of his children.

        New York has a long ways to go.

  2. timill

    Counting rules change, maybe?

    Example: if two perps shoot three victims in a single act, how many crimes are there? One, two, three or six?

    1. cmayo

      Don't forget that he's also black. The crime narrative in NYC went absolutely nuts once Adams was inaugurated - I remember it coming up in the comments section here earlier in the year as well.

  6. George Salt

    The urban unrest of the 1960s sparked Nixon's law-and-order backlash of the 1970s. The urban unrest associated with the George Floyd protests of 2020 have sparked a similar backlash. The GOP is dusting off its old playbook: in the 1970s they denounced "bleeding heart liberal judges" and this year I've seen lots of TV commercials pillorying "soft-on-crime Democrat judges."

    Then, there was all of that "defund the police" nonsense. That had to be the worst political own-goal within living memory. It will take a decade or more to get out of that hole.

  7. rick_jones

    What exactly does it mean to be “under control?” Kevin shows us the ten largest cities and says with one exception, New York, violent crime is under control. So let’s go ahead and set New York aside. Two of the remaining nine show decrease. The remaining seven show increases from 3 to 5.5%. Is that “under control?” Is indeed something controlling the increases and without it the increases would have been even larger?
    If emissions were to increase 5% would that be under control?
    If population were to increase 5% would that be under control?

    1. ColBatGuano

      It depends on whether there is a trendline. If it's up 5% one year and down 5% the next then it probably is under control.

    1. digimark

      Heh. You appear to keep using "logic" to understand the Republican crime-game. "logic" to a Democrat vs. "emotional whack-a-mole" to the Republicans.

      1. Justin

        Yeah - I keep hoping democrats push back on the emotion or that voters see through the republicans bull shit.

        That would be hilarious. No one cares. No one is afraid. It’s just an excuse to be an asshole and vote for the trump freaks… which they were going to anyway.

  9. Justin

    And the Maryland suburbs of DC give us another mass murder…

    CNN — Five people were found dead in a southern Maryland home Friday afternoon after gunfire was reported there, authorities said.

    The bodies were found in a house in La Plata, roughly a 35-mile drive south of Washington, DC, by law enforcement officers around 4 p.m. after a witness called 911 to report a shooting…

    Good for them! America is a shit show. Keep your head down. I’m sure we’re better off without these 5.

    1. Justin

      And we don’t care…

      La PLATA, Md. (DC News Now) — The Charles County Sheriff’s Office has ruled the five deaths inside a La Plata home a murder-suicide.

      Investigators announced it early Saturday afternoon in a news release.

      The release said that the preliminary investigation found the suspect, Andre Sales, 28, entered the house along Wildflower Drive in the Agricopia neighborhood of town. He shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, Sara Mann, 21; her brother, Kai Mann, 18; their mother, Sommaly Mann, 48 and another man, Javon Watson, 23, of White Plains.

      Sales then took his own life.

      1. Justin

        Murder suicide… this is what drive the increase in deaths. Count that up, Mr. Drum. It’s way more common than you think.

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