New York City celebrates day without violent crime | Hacker News Reader

New York City celebrates day without violent crime

bbc.co.uk

63 pointsZenst26 comments

Reminded me of http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-celebrates-full-week...

What a beautiful thing to report. A significant reduction from 1990's six murders per day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City).

Does anyone else think it's odd that that link only records 600 murders in NYC in 2001? I would expect the number to be closer to 3,000.

If you are talking about 9/11, casualties of war & terrorism are not counted for violent crime stats.

While I see your point, that would basically make the statistic useless.

In the article, they kind of give police credit for making this happen. What if it's the war on soda that's doing this?

Speak for yourself, I'm more likely to murder someone if I don't get enough caffeine. ;)

Someone on Reddit posted that this could just be the effect of victims not being found, as in the perpetrators got better at hiding bodies.

> Someone on Reddit posted that this could just be the effect of victims not being found, as in the perpetrators got better at hiding bodies.

The quickest way to support this would be to check the number of missing persons cases; specifically, check to see if the people who used to get murdered (presumably young minority males) are now going missing instead.

Um... there was a hurricane... kinda hard to go kill some one when you can't even leave your house.

Yup, when the massive snow storm hit Baltimore 2 years ago their murder rate for that month was a historic low. As soon as the snow was cleared the crime rate returned to normal.

Have the Beeb given up on editors for their website? The first sentence is so unlikely to be true, "a day entirely without violent crime", really? I could perhaps accept this if they added the word "reported". But the following statement that "Monday was the most bloodshed-free 24-hour period in recent history" is devoid of meaning, if a spokesman really said this then they should be fired. "Least bloodshed" has meaning, "most bloodshed-free" is simply idiotic. And yes, people who talk about "50% less" when they mean "half as much" are also exposing themselves as people who do not understand what they are saying. Hmmm, more coffee required.

I'm with you for the first part, but "50% less" seems to me both clear and strictly equivalent with "half as much". What am I missing?

If I have 200 units of fish, and the next day I have 50% less, then I would indeed have 100 units of fish.

Maybe he meant the opposite, "50% more" versus "double"? If I had 50% more the next day, I would have 300 units of fish, not 400.

I think it was a comment about Mathematical Illiteracy. Many people have little idea what X% more / less actually means.

http://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its...

There have been 366 murders so far this year in New York City, compared with 472 at this time last year.

As an ex-resident of NYC, while I applaud the fact that violent crime is at its lowest point in 50 years, I still think 366 murders per year (with a month to go) is appalling, big city or not. I'm not sure if murders are equally distributed across boroughs, but assuming they are, 366/5 = ~73 murders per year per borough, or a murder per borough every five days.

The goal should be zero, and we shouldn't rest until it's the norm. An improvement in statistics is great, but I don't exactly see it as a cause for celebration.

The goal should be zero, and we shouldn't rest until it's the norm.

Wouldn't that lead to a War on Drugs style situation? You'll basically end up throwing more and more resources and taking away more and more freedoms chasing smaller and smaller marginal returns.

Instead pick a realistic target that will make you look good compared to other cities in the world, say 2 pr. 100000 population or about 160 murders, and work towards that.

This sounds like a dream world to me because we rack up that many murders in a week in South Africa.

So whilst it might no be impressive from your perspective I think it's amazing.

I hate to just bust out some stats here, but:

The average murder rate in the US is roughly 5.0 per 100,000 and falling [1]. NYC's population fluctuates between its 8.2 million residents in the evenings and closer to 10.5 million people during the day (due to commuters), but let's go with a conservative 8.5M for this calculation. In that case, we should expect 425 murders in a city this size. At 366 murders in 2012 by the end of November, we're on track to beating that average.

Murders are horrible, and I don't want to in any way say that a nonzero murder rate is good, but I actually do think that NYC's massive decrease in homicide over the last two decades is a cause for celebration. I didn't live here in the late 90s, but I have friends who did who would never have set foot in large swaths of Manhattan because they were simply too unsafe. These same people will happily go to a house party in Bed Stuy.

Are we done? No. Is this cause to celebrate? I think so. Celebrating major milestones on the road to improvement is normal and healthy. The only trick is not to conflate that celebration with you being "done." I don't think we're doing that.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

I grew up in NYC during the high-crime Lindsay/Koch years. I would apply some skepticism to crime statistics derived from police reports. While I don't doubt that violent crime is way down, it's also true that people tend not to bother to report many crimes, because the police don't seem to be interested. While I'm sure that most murders would end up in the official statistics, I know that plenty of assaults, etc. are just never reported.

they just didn't find that day's body(s).

really, if anything the title of the article is what is wrong with big cities. Why not celebrate a day in Afghanistan where a soldier or enemy combatant doesn't die.

It says the same thing, gee, 364 days of something bad.

I thought it was The Onion at first..

They should call it Guiliani Day.

Sandy

> Despite a July spike in homicides, the city's murder rate is on target to hit its lowest point since 1960.

> Just a few months ago, residents were living through what one tabloid newspaper called the "summer of blood".

And so we see a major problem with news sources.

Sensationalism.

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