Most violent large US cities, Flint and Detroit

[majohnson]

http://detnews.com/article/20110523/...tatistics-show

[BrushStart]

As long as it keeps getting better bit by bit, I have hope.

[Fnemecek]

As long as it keeps getting better bit by bit, I have hope.

I hate to rain on your parade, but almost all of the improvements for 2010 came during Warren Evans's tenure as chief of police. Since his departure, things have been getting consistently worse on the crime front.

For the first quarter of 2011, there was an increase in both murders and non-fatal shootings.

[BrushStart]

I hate to rain on your parade, but almost all of the improvements for 2010 came during Warren Evans's tenure as chief of police. Since his departure, things have been getting consistently worse on the crime front.

For the first quarter of 2011, there was an increase in both murders and non-fatal shootings.

I'm not having a parade.

[Carey]

The release of one year's crime stats means little. Let's look at the trends: Over the past 40 years, Detroit has maintained an unhappy distinction: It has always been among the very worst American cities for crime.

Sometimes the murder rate dips a little and rapes rise, and other times burglaries go down and car thefts increase. One police chief might go to prison for stealing $1 million; another time a police chief might preside over a slight improvement in the overall crime situtation.

But one thing never changes: Statistically, when compared to other American cities, Detroit's crime rate remains among the very highest. Detroiters certainly have tried all sorts of remedies, from No-Crime-Day marches to juvenile curfews to gun turn-ins. Nothing has worked. It's depressing, but as long as poverty and unemployment numbers also remain among the nation's highest, and the police force continues to shrink, how can we predict the crime rate is going to drop?

[English]

It's depressing, but as long as poverty and unemployment numbers also remain among the nation's highest, and the police force continues to shrink, how can we predict the crime rate is going to drop?

Exactly. There just isn't any serious effort to address poverty in this country. The War on Poverty seems to have failed miserably, along with the War on Drugs. No one has any ideas that are scalable -- anti-poverty success stories seem to involve lots of time, money, and resources.

[Det_ard]

I don't see us "winning the war on poverty" but keeping out of poverty is highly correlated with:

1) finish HS
2) no kids before marriage
3) marriage after 20.

Now how to make this happen in the dysfunction subcultures across this country that fail all three, I dunno, I'm predicting plenty of poor for the foreseeable future.

[thecarl]

One scalable idea that tends to work well is to devote yourself to the children you bring into the world, who represent the future, and who will carry your name as they live on.

[Brian1979]

I don't know how you can rate Flint as a large U.S. city, it only has about 100,000 people that's medium size if anything.

[TKshreve]

One scalable idea that tends to work well is to devote yourself to the children you bring into the world, who represent the future, and who will carry your name as they live on.

Yeah and make your farts smell like roses while you're at it.

Either our society will epiphanize the answer, or we are doomed. Our world can not continue to sustain these abhorant populations of poverty. Not even in our extravagantly endowed nation.

[coracle]

As long as it keeps getting better bit by bit, I have hope.

It's not surprising that the murder figures are down. We've had over 200,000 citizens leave the city over the last decade so we could expect some murderers have left and committing their crimes in other cities [[maybe some in Flint). If the city population continues to fall we can expect less and less murders in Detroit as the years go by as the perps leave.

[Meddle]

This is news?

[coracle]

The release of one year's crime stats means little. Let's look at the trends: Over the past 40 years, Detroit has maintained an unhappy distinction: It has always been among the very worst American cities for crime.

Sometimes the murder rate dips a little and rapes rise, and other times burglaries go down and car thefts increase. One police chief might go to prison for stealing $1 million; another time a police chief might preside over a slight improvement in the overall crime situtation.

But one thing never changes: Statistically, when compared to other American cities, Detroit's crime rate remains among the very highest. Detroiters certainly have tried all sorts of remedies, from No-Crime-Day marches to juvenile curfews to gun turn-ins. Nothing has worked. It's depressing, but as long as poverty and unemployment numbers also remain among the nation's highest, and the police force continues to shrink, how can we predict the crime rate is going to drop?

Wikipedia quotes Detroit 2009 murder rate at 40 per 100,000 citizens for a total of 364 [[which would mead the population was 9.1Million!). In 2010 th e total murders were recorded at 308 and

[laphoque]

Big picture: the homicide rate is down from between 48 & 59/100K in 1974 [[Detroit went from ~1.5 mil to 1.2 mil from '70 to '80) to 43/100K now. [[308 ÷ 710111 • 100000). Wikipedia used the 2009 estimate of 900000 for their population variable. There are less than half the number of homicides today since the peak. About a 56% drop. Our population has declined about 53% since 1970 and 42% since 1980.

You could twist these numbers many ways but please twist them to make your point.

I think things have gotten better, but we will see the numbers jog up and down until drug prohibition has ended.

[iheartthed]

I wonder what are the odds that the two cities with the highest crime rates would be in the same state?

[hybridy]

I wonder what are the odds that the two cities with the highest crime rates would be in the same state?

have you forgetten about saginaw?

detroit 500k+
flint 100k+
saginaw 50k+

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/in...aginaw_th.html

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/in...9/post_75.html

[iheartthed]

have you forgetten about saginaw?

detroit 500k+
flint 100k+
saginaw 50k+

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/in...aginaw_th.html

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/in...9/post_75.html

I didn't forget about it, but I hadn't seen the full list. I wasn't sure whether Saginaw was on there.