July 14, 2017
Thom Carroll/PhillyVoice
The Philadelphia Police Department headquarters at 750 Race Street.
Murders in Philadelphia are up by 20 percent over the first half of 2017, according to the news site FiveThirtyEight.
That’s a big contrast to Philly’s neighbor, Camden, where murders are down dramatically, a recent PhillyVoice report showed
Philly’s spike in murders is a problem seen in other large cities with populations above 250,000, according to the story, which was written by Jeff Asher, a crime analyst with the city of New Orleans, one of the big cities with a large hike in homicides.
Police declined comment, though they pointed to their own statistics, which show murders are actually up by 22 percent.
A spokeswoman for the mayor said that while murders are up, overall crime is slightly down.
Lauren Hitt said the city spends $60 million on anti-violence programs, but added they need better coordination; the city's managing director's office will propose an action plan within six months, she added.
She also said the department is trying to better engage children, deploy more strategically and better use intelligence to head off issues, as well as working with other law enforcement partners.
Earlier this week, Capt. James Clark, the longtime head of the police Homicide Unit, was transferred.
The 30-year veteran told Philly.com he believed he was reassigned to conduct background checks for police recruits because the solve rate for murders in the city had plunged from more than 70 percent to just 37 percent recently.
The other major cities that are up sharply according to FiveThirtyEight are:
• Baltimore, up 34 percent
• New Orleans, up 31 percent
• Charlotte, up 24 percent
• Kansas City, Missouri, up 21 percent
Cities with murders down sharply halfway through 2017 are:
• New York, down 34 percent
• Houston, down 31 percent
• Atlanta, down 21 percent
• Newark, down 18 percent
• Wichita, Kansas, down 15 percent
St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans and Detroit have ranked among the top four cities in murder rate per 100,000 residents every year since 2014 and the FiveThirtyEight report said so far that seems to hold true for 2017.
The report also found this trend is similar to last year’s with more big cities seeing a rise in the number of murders than declines.
The entire FivethirtyEight account is here.
