New York City is frequently cited here as having a high crime rate --it's safer than most

[CreekDog]

for murder rates for example, it's the safest city among the US top 5 cities:

2010
NY, NY 6.4
LA, CA 7.6
CHICAGO, IL 15.2
HOUSTON, TX 11.8
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19.6

Of the 10 US cities with 1 million or more, New York has a lower murder rate than 7 of them.
Of the 34 US cities with 500,000 or more, New York has a lower murder rate than 23 of them.

(i posted this here because New York City is cited as having a high crime rate and that crime rate is related by posters to the strict (by US standards) gun control in that state)

[TheWraith]

1. Yep. Now compare that to Chicago.

In fact, comparing the two would give you a pretty good indication that the murder rate is not controlled by the availability of guns.

[Lizzie Poppet]

3. Yep.

There's a fairly big deviation in murder rates between the two...and both have some of the most stringent gun control laws in the nation.

[Hoyt]

12. How can you say that? Murder rate might be higher with a bunch of Zimmermans running around

shooting people that "do not appear to belong in certain areas of city."

[Glassunion]

2. NYC has a habit of cooking the books (so to speak) on their violent crime rates.

They have several precincts under investigation at the moment for intentionally re-classifying crimes to non-violent crimes to improve the city's and precinct rates.

The Village Voice did a great piece on it, I'll see what I can do about locating it online.

[CreekDog]

4. so are we just going to throw out statistics when we don't like them?

that's a particular pattern in this group, you know.

do you want to talk about another large city? or is that going to be cooked if it's murder rate is low?

[Glassunion]

6. No that is not what I'm saying.

I'm not saying throw out the stats at all. You started the discussion, I'm replying to it with information that you may or may not have been aware of that affects those statistics.

All I am saying is that the integrity of the data is in question. Nothing more.

[Glassunion]

7. The Village Voice articles I mentioned.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-inside-bed-stuy-s-81st-precinct/
and
http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-03-07/news/the-nypd-tapes-confirmed/

It is quite a bit to read.

Tens of more articles here: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/the_nypd_tapes/

[sarisataka]

8. Goose and gander?

... and there are those who dismiss Kleck's numbers because peers A,B and C said the methodology is wrong, while conveniently ignoring peers D, E and F who validate his claims.

..or those who believe any report from Fox, the NRA or other 'right-wing' source is invalid unless CNN etc. report the same thing verbatim. (and then it should not get full credit because they just 'copied' the story)


Each side will pick and choose the data that supports their side and pretend opposing data does not exist or is wrong.


My counter question(s)- If NYC has such model restrictions, why are they the not #1 safest city? Is their rate low because of high population?

[burf]

5. There are allegations that the reporting

in NYC is a bit off.

-- In an exclusive interview, a 19-year veteran of the NYPD describes widespread manipulation of crime reports at the 100th Precinct in Queens. The sergeant says when he blew the whistle on the routine fudging of crimes, the department retaliated and transferred him to a midnight shift at Bronx Central.


Sergeant Robert Borrelli spent weeks with Eyewitness News, examining hours of audio tape and numerous crime reports.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=8594984

Sergeant Borrelli is not the only one coming forward, and the precinct in which he worked is not the only one where fudging is alleged.

[X_Digger]

9. Ahh, see others mentioned Adrian Schoolcraft

Some other interesting numbers..

In populations over 500k, Baltimore with a bullet at 34.8, Detroit at 34.5, DC at 21.9.

The bottom of that list? El Paso, 0.8, Honolulu 2.0, San Jose 2.1.

[gejohnston]

10. where did you get those numbers?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

Also, El Paso is the safest of them all with 0.8

[X_Digger]

11. UCR 2010, table 5, apparently.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl05.xls

You have to massage the cells in excel if you're going to sort by various rates.

[GreenStormCloud]

13. Now take a look at El Paso, TX.

In 2010 El Paso, TX had only three (3) murders. The rest of the crime rate was also low. The population of El Paso is about 650,000.

BTW - El Paso has more guns than people.

[slackmaster]

14. I can't recall seeing NYC cited on this forum as having high crime rates

Can you cite some examples?

[sarisataka]

15. But is it the whole story...

Let's look at overall violent crime/100k:

2010 Murder Total Violent Crime
NY, NY 6.4 581.7
LA, CA 7.6 559.2
CHICAGO, IL 15.2 N/A- incomplete report
HOUSTON, TX 11.8 986.1
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19.6 1189.4

And some mid-sized cities: (I picked St. Paul/Minneapolis because they are adjacent, then the next closest city by pop.)

Newark NJ(280k) 32.1 1029.0
St Paul MN(281k) 5.7 751.2
Arlington TX(383k) 4.2 501.7
Mpls. MN (385k) 9.6 1053.7

and the caveat:

...by crime rate is based on Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports statistics.[1] The population numbers are based on U.S. Census estimates for the year end. The number of murders includes nonnegligent manslaughter. This list is based on the reporting.

<snip>

The FBI web site recommends against using its data to judge how effective law enforcement agencies are, since there are many factors that influence crime rates other than law enforcement.[2] In November 2007, the executive board of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) went further than the FBI itself, and approved a resolution opposing not only the use of the ratings to judge police departments, but also opposing any development of city crime rankings from FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs) at all. The resolution opposed these rankings on the grounds that they "fail to account for the many conditions affecting crime rates" and "divert attention from the individual and community characteristics that elevate crime in all cities", though it did not provide sources or further elaborate on these claims. The resolution states the rankings "represent an irresponsible misuse of the data and do groundless harm to many communities" and "work against a key goal of our society, which is a better understanding of crime-related issues by both scientists and the public".[3]

[1] "Crime in the United States by Metropolitan Statistical Area, 2010 (Table 6)". FBI. Retrieved 20 September 2011.
[2] "A Word About UCR Data". FBI. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
[3] Criminologists Condemn City crime rankings (November 16, 2008).PRNewswire. Retrieved on January 13, 2008.