Now you wanna talk about a small city with a bad crime rate...... The True Facts :: A dude could get killied in that place!
"I live in Wilmington, Delaware. It’s a city located in northern New Castle County, the most populace of the three counties in the State. In fact, Delaware is so small; it could fit into Bronx County in New York and still have room left over.
Wilmington is the largest of Delaware’s cities with a population of about 73,000 people. Through the first ten months of this year, we’ve had twenty-three homicides, tying a previous record set back in 2006. Last year we had fourteen of them.
However, at this rate, we’ll end the year with twenty-eight homicides: twice the number from last year. Compared to other cities, on the other hand, twenty-eight is a relatively small number, even relative to homicides, when taken by itself.
The city officials I mentioned above like to quell the growing discontent over this matter by telling folks that things could be a lot worse. They like to remind us that Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, just thirty-miles to our North, is on track to experience 305-homicides.
But, the city of Philadelphia has a population of around 1.5-million as compared to Wilmington’s 73-thousand: a fact that these officials fail to mention. Doing this distorts the picture considerably.
They also fail to mention that the homicide rate in Philadelphia has dropped by almost 26% over last year’s number since the new mayor instituted genuine community policing in many of the high-crime areas.
The point is that we can’t look at just absolute murder rates per 100,000 residents, from city-to-city, in order to judge population crankiness, not to mention their relative propensities to kill people.
We have to use a statistic that accounts for relative population size in order to put everything into a proper perspective. The one used, universally, for presenting this perspective is occurrences per 100,000 people.
I have neighbors who refuse to travel into cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and even Philadelphia simply because they think—because of news reports—that it’s too dangerous; they might get shot!
To address this erroneous perception, I collected the current year’s population and homicide data (through mid-October 2008) for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and little old, tiny Wilmington, Delaware.
I converted everything to occurrences per 100,000 people. It’s easy to do. Simply divide the area population by 100,000 to get the number of 100,000-people groups. Then divide this result into the number of homicides for the period.
Here’s a sample calculation for a fictitious city with a population of 2-million people and 300-homicides for the year. Take 2,000,000 and divide it by 100,000. The result is 20. Take 300, the number of homicides for the year and divide it by 20. The result is 15 homicides per 100,000 people.
New York City has a population of 8.28-million people with projected year-end homicides of 497. Therefore, New York City—at least for this year—will have experienced 6-homicides for every 100,000 people.
Los Angeles has a population of about 4-million people. Its projected year-end homicides is 360. If projections hold, Los Angeles will have experienced about 9-homicides per 100,000 city residents.
Chicago’s population is about 2.9-million. A projected number of year-end homicides is 426. Assuming the status-quo, the residents of this city can expect around 15 homicides per 100,000 population.
Wilmington’s neighbor, Philadelphia, has a population of about 1.5-million people. Its projected year-end homicides is 305. Again, if projections hold, Philadelphia can expect to experience a homicide rate of 20 per 100,000 residents.
Finally, we arrive at the thriving metropolis of tiny Wilmington, Delaware. Its population is only about 73,000 people. It experienced its 23rd homicide for the current year as of Friday (October 31st).
If the rate stays constant—and it usually does in Wilmington—we’ll end the year (December 31, 2008) with 28-homicides, handing us the unwanted distinction of 38-murders per 100,000 residents.
This certainly seems to render Wilmington, Delaware as a place best NOT to live in… in fact, a place best not to even visit!
Compared to New York City, Wilmington’s population is only around 0.9% as large but its homicide rate 6.3 times larger. And, in comparison, Wilmington is only 1.8% the size of Los Angeles, California, but with a homicide rate 4.2 times larger.
Continuing with the comparisons, Wilmington’s population is only 2.5% the size of Chicago’s, but a person is twice as likely to become the victim of a homicide.
Again, in Wilmington, with a population only 4.9% the size of Philadelphia’s, a person is ALMOST twice as likely (1.9 times to be precise) to die as the result of a homicide.
For whatever reasons, more of Wilmington’s population seems a lot crankier and much more likely to kill people than those in four of the country’s larger cities."
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