US Murder rate 7.8/100,000 and Atlanta Murder rate 21.7/100,000

Kind of lightweight but an interesting article, Louisville, Kentucky is Ground Zero for America's Homicide Crisis by Joshua Crawford & Abigail Hall.  Murders in the US are up 30% from 2019-2020 due to the de-policing which followed the George Floyd riots (and attendant Defund the Police brouhaha.)  That is the highest increase ever.

Violent crime is on American minds again. A recent poll from Morning Consult/Politico found that 78 percent of voters believe that violent crime is a “major problem” in the United States, and nearly as high a percentage thought that the problem is getting worse.

[snip]

From 1980 to 2015, for example, Louisville averaged just 54 homicides a year. But in 2015, Louisville surpassed 80 homicides for the first time since 1979. In 2016, the city had its then-deadliest year ever, with 117 murders.

Over the next few years, the city observed similar rates of violence. Then things exploded. In 2020, Louisville saw 173 murders. If New York City had Louisville’s 2020 murder rate, it would have seen 2,465 murders instead of the 496 it suffered. In Louisville, 2021 looks even worse: through the first 8 months of the year, there were 23 murders per every 100,000 residents. That puts the city’s murder rate above those of Philadelphia (22.7), Atlanta (21.7), and Chicago (20.5). 

Hmm.  My city, Atlanta is 21.7 murders per 100,000.   

Our murders increased nearly 60% from 2019 to 2020 (from 99 to 158) and so far this year we are on track for another increase of 60% in the number of murders.  The police force is 25-30% under headcount (depending on what you accept as the targeted headcount).

But where does that put us in terms of murder rate?  21.7 per 100,000 according to the RCP article.  But where in the national line-up?

Well, the US murder rate is 7.8 per 100,000 in 2020.  Atlanta is, based on murder rate, roughly three times as violent as the US as whole.  

Among cities in the US?  We are 20th but we are in pretty bad company among those top 20 (these appear to be 2019 numbers).

The twenty cities in the United States with the highest murder rates (murders per 100,000 people) are:

St. Louis, MO (69.4)

Baltimore, MD (51.1)

New Orleans, LA (40.6)

Detroit, MI (39.7)

Cleveland, OH (33.7)

Las Vegas, NV (31.4)

Kansas City, MO (31.2)

Memphis, TN (27.1)

Newark, NJ (25.6)

Chicago, IL (24)

Cincinnati, OH (23.8)

Philadelphia, PA (20.2)

Milwaukee, WI (20.0)

Tulsa, OK (18.6)

Pittsburgh, PA (18.4)

Indianapolis, IN (17.7)

Louisville, KY (17.5)

Oakland, CA (17.1)

Washington D.C. (17.0)

Atlanta, GA (16.7)

Interesting but what I am most interested in is that comparison - US Murder rate 7.8/100,000 and Atlanta Murder rate 21.7/100,000.  As much attention as I pay to numbers, I had not appreciated that the gap was quite so large.