...a crime rate as low as New York City's.
Today, the Daily News spends the last day of 2007 focusing on the story that has been the most consistent throughout the year - the murder rate.
Dave Davies starts his cover story by reminding us that the City of Brotherly Love, known nationwide as "Killadelphia," officially has the highest murder rate of the top 10 largest cities in the nation. When some smaller cities are included, Philadelphia falls to fifth behind Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington. See chart.
(Wait, isn't our new police commissioner from Washington?)
Now, the tales of murder rates and total numbers of murders can be misleading and the story is very complicated. While it's easy for me to wish for the 5.9 murders per 100,000 people that New York will finish 2007 with, the truth is, those numbers are skewed by New York's sheer size. One might think that because New York is still on target to finish with about 490 total murders, it may be better to compare the cities differently.
New York has over 8 million people. Philadelphia has almost 1.5 million. Maybe they have similar murder rates compared to the numbers of people living in poverty? For simplicity's sake, let's make that comparison using just poverty numbers and murder rate. I know that murders do occur among people who aren't living in poverty but since the prevalence of poverty is the most often cited cause, it may be illustrative to focus on those numbers for a second.
With a 19% poverty rate, New York has about 1.5 million people living at or below the poverty line while Philadelphia's 25% rate means that about 360,000 Philadelphians are in that demographic. So yes, New York has a lot more people than Philadelphia (8m to 1.5m) but it's not true that all of those extra 6.5 million are well-off. Clearly, there's a great number of poor people living the Big Apple too. New York's murder rate per people living in poverty at about 33. Philadelphia's is about 109! So even if we just look at those numbers, Philadelphia still has a murder rate that's about 3.3 times higher.
As far as I can tell that's what criminologists who study New York's dramatic drop in murders - from over 2200 in 1990 to under 500 this year - mean by this:
Frank Zimring, author of "The Great American Crime Decline," said no changes in New York's economy or demographics explain its remarkable drop in violent crime, so "you conclude it's the police by the process of elimination."
So you can't explain New York's drop in murders by pointing to it's economic growth between 1990 and today and you can't explain it's low murder rate compared to ours by just pointing to how well off NYC is overall. In fact, some criminologist say that New York's embrace of - stop reading this if you're a fan of Geno's owner Joey Vento - immigration could be at least partially responsible for that city's crime turnaround:
"New York is different in a lot of ways. New York would have lost population in the last census if not for all the immigration, and there are studies going back to the 1930s showing lower crime rates among foreign-born residents.
"In addition [Mayor] Michael Bloomberg has done a lot of innovative things. And Tom (sic) Kelly is an incredible police commissioner."
(For the record, Raymond Kelly is the police commissioner of New York and while Tom Kelly can be considered a miracle worker for guiding the Twins to two World Series championships, he was never police commissioner of New York.)
So the consensus, among people quoted by the Daily News who aren't named "Sylvester Johnson," is that policing can make a difference. Hence this challenge thrown down by the Inquirer's Editorial Board on Sunday:
Mayor-elect Michael Nutter has made fighting crime a top priority. To be effective, he must consider the size of the city's police force and how officers are deployed.
Nutter has already made one good move by tapping as his new commissioner Charles Ramsey, who had an excellent track record during his nine years as police chief in Washington.
Philadelphians have good reason to expect better results by their Police Department in 2008.
So for 2008, whaddya say? Can we hope for a murder rate that equals New York, which, by my estimation would result in a total of about 87 murders. Still too many, but when you consider that it also means that the lives of about 300 people will be spared, it's a damn good start.
(For more about a policing tactic currently being used in New York, check out this article from last week's NYT that talks about Operation Impact - their latest, and very effective, method of hot spot policing.)
Comments (8)
I assume you know this, but the fact that Washington's murder rate is still higher than ours doesn't count as much as how much that rate went down during Ramsey's tenure as police chief (a lot, for the record).
I don't think we can expect a rate as low as New York's next year, but we can long term. I would hope for a rate as low as Chicago's by the end of Nutter's first term, and no higher than LA's by the end of the second. Consistency's also key, the rate not only needs to go down, but it needs to stay down (look up Miami's rate over the past 3 years or so to see what I mean -- hey, isn't Miami's current police chief former NYC top brass?)
Posted by Anonymous | December 31, 2007 4:56 PM
I am interested in learning more about the impact immigration may have on the murder rate. Can we test this theory by examining north of City Hall and separating by Broad Street? West of Broad up to NW is primarily American born. East of Broad up to the lower NE is heavily populated by immigrants (albeit, many are Puerto Rico who'd count as American born).
It would seem to me that immigrants may well have lower murder rates because they may tend to have a) intact families with stronger social links, b) more spending within their own communities (and a potential multiplier effect which would create more entrepreneurship and jobs) and c) less pent up frustration about opportunities since they haven't been in the country as long.
Posted by Anonymous | January 1, 2008 10:24 PM
Immigration's a bit of a wild card, IMO. A lot depends on the skill/education level of the immigrants, as well as on whether they find work when they arrive. Most of Philly's more skilled/educated immigrants seem to avoid the city and instead move to the suburbs, which I don't think is as big a problem with New York.
Still, I generally think that immigration is mostly a positive development for Philly, if only because most of the countries the immigrants are from have cultures that value city life, whereas American culture largely looks down on it.
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