Month: January 2016

Baltimore is the 19th most violent city in the world

The annual list of most violent cities in the world has been released, and Baltimore is again in it. While St. Louis took the top spot for American cities, and 15th overall, Baltimore was not far behind in 19th place.

The report was published by a Mexican violence “observatory,” an office within a violence prevention organization. The “Citizen Council for Public Safety and Penal Justice” operates out of Mexico City and uses very sound methodology to make a determination of the ranking of these cities. They use published media reports, independent tracking of cases, and official estimates to come up with the list.

Other notable bullet points from the report:

  • Caracas, Venezuela, is now the most violent city in the world.
  • 41 of the 50 most violent cities are in Latin America.
  • 5 of the 50 cities are in Mexico.
  • Medellin, Colombia, and Juarez, Mexico, are not on the list for 2015.

You can read the whole report by 2016_01_25_seguridad_justicia_y_paz-50_most_violent_cities_2015. (Some parts are in Spanish.)

Screen Shot 2016-01-25 at 7.14.51 PM

2015 Homicides In Review

Aside from being a record year, 2015 had no weeks without a homicide. There was even a stretch of 13 days with at least one homicide each day. Morning was the calmest time of day for homicides. Most of the victims were in the 25-35 age group. And 87% of victims were killed by firearm.

As plenty of news organizations have reported, 2015 was one of the deadliest years on record in Baltimore with regard to homicides. Using data published on Baltimore City’s Open Data site and Cham’s Page, here are some numbers we’ve put together for 2015:

  • There were a total of 344 reported homicides for a rate of 55.1 homicides per 100,000 residents. This would make Baltimore the deadliest city in America based on per capita rates.

WHEN? Continue reading “2015 Homicides In Review”

2015 Homicides and Police Cameras

You would think that there would be little to no homicides occurring within a certain distance from a police camera. You would be wrong. Cameras are specifically put in dangerous places, so dangerous things are going to happen whether the camera is there or not.

Below is a map a friend of mine created from data available from Baltimore City. It doesn’t contain all homicides in 2015. (It will be updated as soon as all the cases are added to the public database.) It contains homicides up to December 12, 2015. It also contains the locations (black diamonds) of Baltimore Police Department crime cameras. Finally, the police district names were overlaid on the map as well.

It’s easy to think that there is some sort of correlation between the location of cameras and the location of homicides. Some believe that the two data points overlap, so the cameras do not work. Other believe that there is enough of a difference between the location of the cameras and the location of the homicides, so the cameras work (somewhat). Continue reading “2015 Homicides and Police Cameras”