Homicide increases by police district

[thoth]

I wonder about the rise in Agg Assualt. Is this because increased medical technology makes it more likely that you will survive a shooting? I read before that only like 25% of people who get shot in Philadelphia actually die because we have so many excellent medical institutions throughout the city, thereby skewing violence stats.

It looks like this year so far there were 536 shooting victims, and 173 homicides. Obviously not all, but likely many of the homicides were gun related, so that's something like an 80% survival rate. Do those get chalked up as Agg Assaults on police data like that posted above?

[opie]

I wonder about the rise in Agg Assualt. Is this because increased medical technology makes it more likely that you will survive a shooting? I read before that only like 25% of people who get shot in Philadelphia actually die because we have so many excellent medical institutions throughout the city, thereby skewing violence stats.

It looks like this year so far there were 536 shooting victims, and 173 homicides. Obviously not all, but likely many of the homicides were gun related, so that's something like an 80% survival rate. Do those get chalked up as Agg Assaults on police data like that posted above?

They had a symposium of crime experts discussing the reasons why murder rates were down a couple years ago and one expert said that advances in medical care like trauma centers were a factor. He estimated that 25 percent of those murdered in 1980 would have survived now.

[randomuser]

I don't see how this is surprising. There's a number of factors at play here, which when combined can easily cause an uptick in homicides and crime in general.

It was mild almost this entire year. Nobody wants to fight or kill somebody in cold weather. People still will of course, but there's a reason the most violent time of year in any city tends to be during the warmest months.

Neighborhoods like Port Richmond, Olney, Overbrook, etc are known for lasting longer than other "regular Philly" neighborhoods throughout the city. How many of those do you know of that still exist in any city? "Normal" neighborhoods are exactly the ones that are vulnerable to things like this because they are only held together by a strong community.

As somebody pointed out already, at least one of the districts is in multiple parts of the city, some of which are places where that level of violence isn't uncommon. This isn't as cut and dry as districts getting more violent.

Another thing not mentioned is the way things have changed even in my lifetime. I'm around 25 so when I say that things have changed within my lifetime, I'm talking about roughly within the past 10 or 15 years. People can say how much worse certain neighborhoods got but that's only a part of the story. There used to be boundaries and standards of behavior. Kids who don't know anything about "the life" didn't bump hip hop or speak or act in a way that wasn't natural to their neighborhood before urban and "hood" culture got watered-down, packaged and sold to the masses outside of it. It wasn't considered acceptable to be an addict if you were from a good background, let alone a dealer. Parents actually parented in a lot of places. Being a thug was something to look down on, not something somebody who grew up with a white-picket fence idolized. You knew what culture was and what culture wasn't yours, and you didn't pretend otherwise. You didn't jump somebody, sucker-punch them, engage in an unfair fight, pick on the helpless or weak, or use a weapon, and if you did then the neighborhood disciplined you for it. There were actual leaders and role-models and people had to answer to not just their parents but to the community. There was an order to things. It's just a microcosm of America really.

When you add all of that into neighborhoods that have always been violent because the hard-nosed people within them grew up fighting and defending themselves, you're going to have a problem with escalation. As somebody else said, every crime has a story (the person said murder but it's the same thing for any crime really) so if you really want to know the larger trends then you should read the reasons for the murders and make a chart of that. When people get murdered for non-criminal related reasons, that's when you've got a problem. Another good indicator is the number of shootings and aggravated assaults because as somebody else noted, many would-be murder victims are lucky enough to get great care or to have their would-be murderer have awful aim.

Newcomers need to stop with that "start snitching" bullsh*t though. You clearly don't have a clue what it's like to grow up in a neighborhood full of dealers and other problems as opposed to just moving to one if you think it's as simple as that. Everybody knows where you live and everybody knows what happens in the neighborhood. People who grow up there are more connected to their neighborhoods and to the city and metro in general than newcomers ever will be. They know or know of people who do drugs or sell them or rob others or who are in jail or dead. Those people know other people, who know other people, who know other people, and so on. It's one giant web of ways for you to get killed without even doing something as stupid as snitching. People taking out witnesses don't see it as anything except protecting their business. What's a bit of cash to somebody in comparison to a prison term or to having their business shut down or lose money?

[JJS]

Newcomers need to stop with that "start snitching" bullsh*t though. You clearly don't have a clue what it's like to grow up in a neighborhood full of dealers and other problems as opposed to just moving to one if you think it's as simple as that. Everybody knows where you live and everybody knows what happens in the neighborhood. People who grow up there are more connected to their neighborhoods and to the city and metro in general than newcomers ever will be. They know or know of people who do drugs or sell them or rob others or who are in jail or dead. Those people know other people, who know other people, who know other people, and so on. It's one giant web of ways for you to get killed without even doing something as stupid as snitching. People taking out witnesses don't see it as anything except protecting their business. What's a bit of cash to somebody in comparison to a prison term or to having their business shut down or lose money?

People in my neighborhood would not hesitate to snitch. Which is probably why I didn't see drug dealers on the corners, or hear guns fired every night, or open the paper every morning to see how many people got murdered the day before. Retribution is a grave concern, but we should abandon hope of improvement if we're going to excuse people from "snitching". (Tangent: I have an issue with the term "snitch", as used in this context. It carries an inescapable negative connotation. No one wants to be a snitch. Perhaps another term is needed?)

It might be bullsh*t to excuse people from "snitching" ("honoring their civic duty"? how about "not being a coward"?) and simultaneously allocate more resources to improve the neighborhoods of those who obey the "no snitch" policy. At some point, you have to cut your losses. Maybe all you can do is wait for cold weather.

[OffenseTaken]

Here at the OffenseTaken Crime Lab, we wanted to know the extent to which this year's figures reflected a broader pattern in the geographical distribution of homicides over the years. So we made this gif showing where the city's homicides have taken place from 1988 to last year. Two-year intervals were chosen to smooth out some of the aberrations (and because the OffenseTaken Crime Lab doesn't have all afternoon).

The whole 24-year history confirms what thoth pointed out, but complicates it slightly. The column beginning at Girard, representing the bulk of where the murders in the city took place, hasn't really grown "taller" (as someone pointed out upthread, the 36th has always been a busy house), but it started getting "wider" (seeping into Kensington et al.) after the turn of the millennium. The other parts of town, not surprisingly, have seen more of an outward push than a scattering: westward into the 50's and 60's, and southward past Lombard, then past Washington.

So it looks like the partial-year figures from 2012 are more accurate a snapshot of the big picture than many of us had expected. Any other observations?

(Tangent: I have an issue with the term "snitch", as used in this context. It carries an inescapable negative connotation. No one wants to be a snitch. Perhaps another term is needed?)

No, he means "snitch," as in: he has stated that he would threaten people on this forum with physical violence more often if he didn't suspect they were "snitches."

Seriously: don't bother. The sooner you put that creep on your Ignore list, the better.

[seand]

I wonder about the rise in Agg Assualt. Is this because increased medical technology makes it more likely that you will survive a shooting? I read before that only like 25% of people who get shot in Philadelphia actually die because we have so many excellent medical institutions throughout the city, thereby skewing violence stats.

Doctors from Temple consulted on improving gunshot field medicine for our troops in Iraq because here in Philly we are world experts on treating non-fatal gun shot wounds apparently. Or so I read.

[Sharkfood]

I don't see how this is surprising. There's a number of factors at play here, which when combined can easily cause an uptick in homicides and crime in general.

It was mild almost this entire year. Nobody wants to fight or kill somebody in cold weather. People still will of course, but there's a reason the most violent time of year in any city tends to be during the warmest months.

I love these mild winter arguments. Of course, Los Angeles is mild year round and has over 4,000,000 people, yet they still managed to get homicides down under 300 last year. Detroit had a mild winter this year also; yet Detroit homicides are down year to date in 2012. The mild winter didn't push up New York homicides either. I think it's time to stop making excuses.

[JakeL]

Here at the OffenseTaken Crime Lab, we wanted to know the extent to which this year's figures reflected a broader pattern in the geographical distribution of homicides over the years. So we made this gif showing where the city's homicides have taken place from 1988 to last year. Two-year intervals were chosen to smooth out some of the aberrations (and because the OffenseTaken Crime Lab doesn't have all afternoon).

The whole 24-year history confirms what thoth pointed out, but complicates it slightly. The column beginning at Girard, representing the bulk of where the murders in the city took place, hasn't really grown "taller" (as someone pointed out upthread, the 36th has always been a busy house), but it started getting "wider" (seeping into Kensington et al.) after the turn of the millennium. The other parts of town, not surprisingly, have seen more of an outward push than a scattering: westward into the 50's and 60's, and southward past Lombard, then past Washington.

So it looks like the partial-year figures from 2012 are more accurate a snapshot of the big picture than many of us had expected. Any other observations?



No, he means "snitch," as in: he has stated that he would threaten people on this forum with physical violence more often if he didn't suspect they were "snitches."

Seriously: don't bother. The sooner you put that creep on your Ignore list, the better.

It is interesting to see how these areas change, while some stay the same. Fortunately, my neighborhood, Brewerytown, as seen a significant reduction in homicides. If you watch the graphic, you'll see upwards of multiple homicides, such as an average of 9 or 10, and then a complete drop in homicides in 2010-2011. That trend has continued into this year as well. Murders in the Mid-Atlantic, 2012

There's a significant police presence here, one that I heard was not as significant before the Westrum Development occurred. Driving through deep North Philly last week, I was surprised how unpoliced it is given the volume of crime.

The outlier in the Brewerytown / Sharswood / Lower Templetown area is a two block radius around the PHA Towers in Sharswood. Following the Inquirer's Murder Map shows that homicides consistently happen within this area even as crime outside of this circle drops. Rumor has it that the towers will be coming down in the coming years.

What I think would be really interesting to this data over the years is to generate heatmaps to show the shifting trends. While there have been significant neighborhood homicide changes over the years, being able to discern this through the pinpoint map is difficult. Unfortunately, it looks like the Inquirer's data points for addresses aren't publicly posted, otherwise I would like to get started on this heat map idea.

[CenterCityGuy]

I expect a lot of crime now that so many social service programs are being cut and so many are trying to find ways to survive they are unemployed and have job search skills so there only option to rob so they can eat.


That's why you hear about so many home invasions and robberies

[Hospitalitygirl]

I love these mild winter arguments. Of course, Los Angeles is mild year round and has over 4,000,000 people, yet they still managed to get homicides down under 300 last year. Detroit had a mild winter this year also; yet Detroit homicides are down year to date in 2012. The mild winter didn't push up New York homicides either. I think it's time to stop making excuses.

Detroit just doesn't have that many people living there. Look to Chicago.

This past weekend, Chicago also had at least 4 homicides and 23 shootings.

[MariusPontmercy]

I expect a lot of crime now that so many social service programs are being cut and so many are trying to find ways to survive they are unemployed and have job search skills so there only option to rob so they can eat.


That's why you hear about so many home invasions and robberies

Plenty of people in poverty don't rob, steal, and beat others up for money. It might be an explanation for why the most dysfunctional do, but its not an excuse.

[randomuser]

People in my neighborhood would not hesitate to snitch. Which is probably why I didn't see drug dealers on the corners, or hear guns fired every night, or open the paper every morning to see how many people got murdered the day before. Retribution is a grave concern, but we should abandon hope of improvement if we're going to excuse people from "snitching". (Tangent: I have an issue with the term "snitch", as used in this context. It carries an inescapable negative connotation. No one wants to be a snitch. Perhaps another term is needed?)

It might be bullsh*t to excuse people from "snitching" ("honoring their civic duty"? how about "not being a coward"?) and simultaneously allocate more resources to improve the neighborhoods of those who obey the "no snitch" policy. At some point, you have to cut your losses. Maybe all you can do is wait for cold weather.

So that's the reason, is it? Your neighborhood is full of less violence than others because people are willing to tell the cops whenever something happens?

Tell you what. You can label somebody a coward for not snitching when everybody knows where you live, you grow up there, and you snitch on somebody who has no problem whatsoever having you taken out. If you did in fact grow up where you live and you've snitched on some drug kingpin then good for you. I suspect that either you haven't though or that your neighborhood's situation isn't anywhere near as cut and dry as you're making it.

I used snitch in the context of the "start snitching" logo I've seen on some Philly area paper and on somebody's avatar of this message-board. The only way I use snitch as an insult is when somebody starts something or has somebody do something to them like jump them and snitches on that person instead of handling it himself.

I love these mild winter arguments. Of course, Los Angeles is mild year round and has over 4,000,000 people, yet they still managed to get homicides down under 300 last year. Detroit had a mild winter this year also; yet Detroit homicides are down year to date in 2012. The mild winter didn't push up New York homicides either. I think it's time to stop making excuses.

Don't ever compare LA to Philly. LA is a f*cking joke compared to Philly. All of California is. Their bad neighborhoods look like our suburbs, and they have never once experienced the problems of this area. They also need almost twice the area of New York to get those 4 million people, and mild weather doesn't change things there because it's never not mild. Philly on the other hand has 1.5 million people in mostly compact rowhome neighborhoods and usually has at least one full month of cold winter.

Detroit's homicides could be down for a number of reasons, yes. New York's homicides are down due to the fact that their city has always had the asset of Manhattan, they've gentrified parts of their city, and their policing has been much improved since the days when they had 1,000 murders a year.

I think it's time to stop making comparisons that aren't actually comparable.

Here at the OffenseTaken Crime Lab, we wanted to know the extent to which this year's figures reflected a broader pattern in the geographical distribution of homicides over the years. So we made this gif showing where the city's homicides have taken place from 1988 to last year. Two-year intervals were chosen to smooth out some of the aberrations (and because the OffenseTaken Crime Lab doesn't have all afternoon).

The whole 24-year history confirms what thoth pointed out, but complicates it slightly. The column beginning at Girard, representing the bulk of where the murders in the city took place, hasn't really grown "taller" (as someone pointed out upthread, the 36th has always been a busy house), but it started getting "wider" (seeping into Kensington et al.) after the turn of the millennium. The other parts of town, not surprisingly, have seen more of an outward push than a scattering: westward into the 50's and 60's, and southward past Lombard, then past Washington.

So it looks like the partial-year figures from 2012 are more accurate a snapshot of the big picture than many of us had expected. Any other observations?

People who have been in the area this whole time didn't need to see a map to know this. Outside of Center City, most of the city and even the metro was built around and sustained by industry. That industry doesn't exist anymore the way it used to. Places built around industry don't tend to be ritzy or anything other than hard-nosed places even when they're "nice" before they lose their industry. Add in the many changes the city went through during that time, the many changes that occurred nationally and globally, increased use of heroin after Vietnam, crack in the 80s, and heroin again after that to a neighborhood known for being tough which lost pretty much all of its industry and you're going to have problems. It doesn't help when that place borders the "Badlands" either. After that, the neighborhoods furthest from Center City and from the inner-city that stretched to parts of West, parts of Southwest, the area around Center City and of course North Philly, were the safest, most stable ones in the city. When the inner-city started being improved and things pushed further and further out, the number of safe and stable "regular Philly" neighborhoods kept decreasing and now there's very few left. It's just continued radiating out from its origins, and it didn't help that the city built so many projects all over either.

There are many factors at play that unfortunately have come into things around the same time as each other. How many young people wanting to step up for the communities that raised them do you know? How many future block captains? Generational turnover only works if there are people for the responsibility to be handed off to by those stepping aside.

Plenty of people in poverty don't rob, steal, and beat others up for money. It might be an explanation for why the most dysfunctional do, but its not an excuse.

You've got a point there. I think when that influence and all of that gets into an area though, it's not easy to get rid of it.

That's what I was talking about when I mentioned how things have changed in the more stable, working class neighborhoods in and around the city in my lifetime. Things like hip hop and hood culture became prevalent and kids started thinking "why not?" They weren't well off and their neighborhoods had problems and they could somewhat relate so why not embrace all of that? Then it goes from being an outside thing to a neighborhood thing and it becomes entrenched in the neighborhood. People need to start telling kids the reasons "why not" to be that way and "why not" to embrace that culture and that mentality.

[boognish]

[annie]

Doctors from Temple consulted on improving gunshot field medicine for our troops in Iraq because here in Philly we are world experts on treating non-fatal gun shot wounds apparently. Or so I read.

Penn. And then things got bad over there they started bringing techniques back home.

[OffenseTaken]

The outlier in the Brewerytown / Sharswood / Lower Templetown area is a two block radius around the PHA Towers in Sharswood. Following the Inquirer's Murder Map shows that homicides consistently happen within this area even as crime outside of this circle drops. Rumor has it that the towers will be coming down in the coming years.

It's also another reason why other crime categories need their own historic map: the homicide "island" centered on the PHA housing might be just more concentrated than a robberty/burglary/assault island that may encompass even your own block. The obvious problem is, the other crime categories going back to '85 (posted upthread) are citywide. This info has got to be somewhere, but you may have to go into the library to get it, which would take things to a whole new level of nerddom.

What I think would be really interesting to this data over the years is to generate heatmaps to show the shifting trends. While there have been significant neighborhood homicide changes over the years, being able to discern this through the pinpoint map is difficult. Unfortunately, it looks like the Inquirer's data points for addresses aren't publicly posted, otherwise I would like to get started on this heat map idea.

I wonder: is there some way of representing both actual numbers and rates of change on the same projection? From year to year, places like Manayunk/EF can go from zero homicides to 3, and I feel like a map that shows trending would call more attention to this than it deserves.

I love these mild winter arguments. Of course, Los Angeles is mild year round and has over 4,000,000 people, yet they still managed to get homicides down under 300 last year. Detroit had a mild winter this year also; yet Detroit homicides are down year to date in 2012. The mild winter didn't push up New York homicides either. I think it's time to stop making excuses.

It sounds nice. Crime happens more often in the summertime; it's warmer in the summertime; therefore, if it's warmer in the wintertime, then the crime in the wintertime will be more like the crime in the summertime.

The uptick in the warmer months is at least as much a result of tempers running short in hot weather as it is of people being outside. Crime does go down in periods of extreme cold or heat, but obviously there are better predictors. There's been an upward trend for three years in a row here in Philadelphia, no matter what the weather's been like.

Penn. And then things got bad over there they started bringing techniques back home.

Here's the sad story, if anyone's interested.