The Homocide Report (A Perspective On Iraqi Violence)

LA Times ^ | Jill Leovy

[tomnbeverly]

Are there a lot of homicides in Los Angeles?

Not particularly, although it depends on the point of comparison.

To be sure, the raw number of homicides is large, making for a lengthy list on The Homicide Report. But that's mostly because of the size of the population. Big populations make for big statistics; thus L.A. County accounted for 43% of the total number of homicides in California in 2005, and about 6% of all the homicides in the nation.

Measured as a rate per capita, though, the number of homicides here is pretty middling. Among major cities, L.A. city ranked 16th in the nation in homicide rates, according to a list compiled by the Los Angeles Police Department. (L.A. County's rates are similar to the city's.)

With about 13 deaths annually for every 100,000 people last year, the city of L.A. was tied with San Francisco and Boston in the rankings, and placed just a hair above Denver. Detroit, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Baltimore, and Kansas City, Mo., all ranked higher.

L.A. looks even better when its demographics are taken into account. A recent study funded by the National Institute of Justice found that when homicide rates are adjusted for several factors, such as poverty, unemployment and the percentage of blacks in the population, the city of L.A. ranked 39th on a list of 67 American cities.

In short, our high-risk demographics (lots of poverty, lots of single-parent homes) put us at a disadvantage with wealthier, whiter cities such as San Diego, which are blessed with low homicide numbers thanks in part to low-risk demographics.

But even so, we do fairly well. "I wouldn't think to characterize L.A. as a major homicide place," said Al Blumstein, criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University.

[tomnbeverly]

"The Los Angeles Police Department's Southeast Division in Watts, for example, had a homicide rate of 45 deaths per 100,000 people last year" and with rates in the 90's under Clinton double what they are today obviously we should have given up on South Central a long time ago. Did we surge to victory or withdraw in defeat?

With a Population of just under 34 Million the homocide rate of South Central has the making of a failed state even with these new lower numbers of the 21st Century.

So Nancy Pelosi (California Matriarch) maybe you should be talking more about pulling the Police out of the failed state of South Central then about pulling our troops out of Iraq. For the same reason.

[ARE SOLE]

John Edwards better not travel to Iraq with all that homocide going on.



Regards.

[tomnbeverly]

I think Ann would call it Faggotocide...

[Jabba the Nutt]

They're counting Blacks in the demographics for homicide, are they counting Mexicans? Mexico City has a murder rate at least 3x that of the US. If you bring 20 million Mexicans to the US, wouldn't they also bring their murder rate?