^ The work slowdown by the police following the riots caused the murder count (as well as almost all other crime) to spike drastically the next few years.  Only now are we seeing numbers like we did before them.  No one was murdered during the riot, but a lot of people were as a result, because the effectiveness of the police was drastically reduced in order to save face.

BS. No one goes around saying 3 years ago that im killing you because of our riot. People kill because others are working in their drug area. So they knock off the competition. Rioting has NOTHING to do with that what so ever.

Have we had even one case of someone middle class or + being murdered randomly in the city this decade?  The last time I remember someone not poor being robbed and killed in the downtown area was around 1997, and it was the bass player for a band playing at one of the Main St. bars.  And being a musician there's a good chance he was into drugs himself and they generated that cover story. 

BS. No one goes around saying 3 years ago that im killing you because of our riot. People kill because others are working in their drug area. So they knock off the competition. Rioting has NOTHING to do with that what so ever.

 

The drug related murders are what I'm talking about.  There is clear evidence that the CPD shifted from preventing crime in places like OTR to responding to it once it happened.  You're missing the link between the two, the police slow down.  Of course no one cites the riot as a reason they committed murder, but the post riot environment created because the police were forced to slow their efforts created an atmosphere in which crime exploded.

Oh? When did the Mayor or Cincinnati PD say this?

That's clearly not something their going to admit to.  It's pretty obvious to any observer, though.  I've heard it from a number of people living and working on OTR that were there before, during, and after the riots.  I'm not going to spill their names.

Have we had even one case of someone middle class or + being murdered randomly in the city this decade? The last time I remember someone not poor being robbed and killed in the downtown area was around 1997, and it was the bass player for a band playing at one of the Main St. bars. And being a musician there's a good chance he was into drugs himself and they generated that cover story.

 

Well, we had the teenager who was shot down by a stray bullet two blocks from my apartment this summer, but that's about as random as you can get.

Have we had even one case of someone middle class or + being murdered randomly in the city this decade?  The last time I remember someone not poor being robbed and killed in the downtown area was around 1997, and it was the bass player for a band playing at one of the Main St. bars.  And being a musician there's a good chance he was into drugs himself and they generated that cover story.  

 

the bartender at Stanley's Pub

There was a man shot and killed in Mulligans too, I believe.

Have we had even one case of someone middle class or + being murdered randomly in the city this decade? The last time I remember someone not poor being robbed and killed in the downtown area was around 1997, and it was the bass player for a band playing at one of the Main St. bars. And being a musician there's a good chance he was into drugs himself and they generated that cover story.  

 

Melanie Bates' husband Phil...in front of their house in North Avondale just off Mitchell...ironically enough after attending a memorial service for the bartender from Stanley's.

 

I thought there was something sketchy about that Mulligans incident, no?

Are we safe then saying no more than one per year? 

 

What are you all getting at? Didnt' a brother kill his brother in hyde park? Didn't a postal worker kill some woman in oakley?

your odds of dying in a car crash each year are around 1 in 8,500

your odds of dying in a car crash each year are around 1 in 8,500

 

What are they of getting shot in Cincy?

 

 

Btw, wouldn't/shouldn't this be front page Enquirer coverage for 5 days in a row?

What are you all getting at

 

I'm wondering why people are fascinated by mob movies but don't recognize that most quote-unquote "black on black crime" is mob hits and instead fear for their personal safety. 

I don't know if they fear for their personal safety, or just don't want to be around a place where mob hits are a normal thing.  Hell, a lot of suburbanites get mad if you walk on their lawn, i can't imagine what they'd do if there was a gang hit on it.

What are you all getting at

 

I'm wondering why people are fascinated by mob movies but don't recognize that most quote-unquote "black on black crime" is mob hits and instead fear for their personal safety.

 

"But it's different!" When the Italian mob offs someone, it's sexy!

When someone kills their relative or husband or wife it's personal. Gang hits are business, and if you aren't in the business, you're not at risk unless something incredibley unlucky takes place. But the media sells advertising by insinuating that you are in grave danger everywhere, all the time.  You're in danger in the city.  You're in danger in your home.  Everything you eat could give you cancer, etc. 

 

Apparently some of the big street gangs in other cities have made killing random people part of their initiation process.  If we had something like that going on here, then yes, we would have a very serious crime problem, but also a very specific and resolvable one. 

 

 

No link but Cincy.com had an article about a guy being robbed of $350 on Fountain Square at 9pm (not sure what day). Was approached by 3 youth, one had a .38 caliber.

 

Yeah, it was covered earlier and discovered that the robbery actually occurred at 4th & Walnut (I think?).

Here is the lead article on cincinnati.com right now....amazing that, instead of trumpeting the fact that homicides have steadily declined to their lowest point in 9 years...the Enquirer instead turns it on its face.

 

Homicide: An enduring grief

Cincinnati’s homicide rate jumped from 32 in 1999 to 60 in 2009. Today countless parents and grandparents, children and spouses are living with the pain of losing their loved ones.

http://news.cincinnati.com/

Based on the data provided above by myself and Brad, it's not really decreased from the 2001 levels, and fluctuates with each year, which may indicate that the 60 murders that 2009 produced is nothing more than a statistical stagnation. The city can boast that it had fewer murders than 2008, but the overall trend hasn't changed for nearly a decade, and is still very much higher than 1999.

 

If there is a way to obtain data to say, the 1960s, and compare it with the population, I can run a full analysis with trends and plots.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100126/NEWS01/301260080/1055/NEWS/Shooting+reported+in+West+End

 

2 shootings in one night, 1 teenager (who was walking home from work) who is seriously injured. Last homicide in the city was Dec. 9, ending 2009 with 60 murders. That's not a huge decrease or anything significant; it was down from last year, but certainly not down when compared with a ten year trend. Let's hope this kid pulls through the night.

Thanks for the latest information. Knowledge is power.

Better than not reporting on it to skew perceptions or hiding the truth.

Better than not reporting on it to skew perceptions or hiding the truth.

 

Oy vey, here you go again Sherman.  If you take that position then report on every crime that takes place across the metro...not just ones in the city.  Also, your comment is insinuating that I choose not to report on crime in Cincinnati and thus "hide the truth."  You must clearly not read my work, and therefore should not make such allegations.

Another perp apprehended!

 

Delhi cops: Rooftop bandit arrested

By Jennifer Baker, Cincinnati Enquirer | January 27, 2010

 

A 29-year-old man already awaiting trial on a robbery offense was arrested and charged Tuesday with stealing several large air conditioning coils from a store rooftop on Halloween night.  William Maxson of Westwood is held at the Hamilton County jail on a felony count of theft, court records show.

 

Delhi Township police allege he scaled to the top of the Del Fair shopping center on Delhi Pike the night of Oct. 31 and made off with eight of the large coils, valued at $55,000.  Court records do not indicate how Maxson was able to get the heavy items down from the roof. Often, the metal is scrapped for money.

 

Read full article here:

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100127/NEWS0107/301270024/1055/NEWS/Delhi+cops++Rooftop+bandit+arrested

This is "Cincinnati: Crime Discussion," not "Hamilton: Crime Discussion" and et. al. I select items to post because it is not only relevant for my neighborhood or adjoining neighborhoods, but because it highlights the struggle that this city has in controlling its few crime ridden neighborhoods. Yeah, you can post all of the good-feeling stories about how low the crime rate is, or about a perp being apprehended, but it does nothing to change the overall perception of the city -- which wasn't all that rosy after the 2001 riot. And it does nothing to hide the fact that crime is still much higher in 2009 than in 1999, and that crime is still higher in 2009 than in some of the adjoining years.

 

We've made progress, but it isn't time to say all is well. Especially when 55/60 murders last year were between blacks, which highlights an obvious issue that needs to be addressed and resolved.

Who says all is well? No one has. Crime is over reported here at least in the city of Cincinnati. Stuff happens in the suburbs that's not even reported. Talk about false sense of reality.

^Page 3 and 4. Not that "all is well," but that crime is down. Yes, from last year, but certainty not in the ten-year picture. I did a two-year moving average for crime/murders for Cincinnati, and the statistics that I pulled showed that murders should be expected to slightly dip for 2010 and level off for 2011, based on prior indications.

 

Yes, stuff happens in the suburbs, but it's much more rare. There was a great Enquirer article written a while back (I don't think it was posted here, though) about crime comparisons between Cincinnati and the suburbs. When you compare the per capita murders of Cincinnati with say... Mason, West Chester or any of the other cities, we lead the pack by far. The same can be said for Part 1 and Part 2 crimes.

I did a two-year moving average for crime/murders for Cincinnati, and the statistics that I pulled showed that murders should be expected to slightly dip for 2010 and level off for 2011, based on prior indications.

 

That is an insane way to project murder rates.  In fact, trying to project murder rates based on any kind of statistical analysis is off-base.

 

Yeah, you can post all of the good-feeling stories about how low the crime rate is, or about a perp being apprehended, but it does nothing to change the overall perception of the city -- which wasn't all that rosy after the 2001 riot. And it does nothing to hide the fact that crime is still much higher in 2009 than in 1999, and that crime is still higher in 2009 than in some of the adjoining years.

 

Like I said, it's obvious you either don't read what I write on UrbanCincy, or you take statements made and interpret them as something else.

 

We've made progress, but it isn't time to say all is well. Especially when 55/60 murders last year were between blacks, which highlights an obvious issue that needs to be addressed and resolved.

 

Who has said that all is well?  I highlight the facts and connect the dots.  Is there something I have written about crime in Cincinnati that has been inaccurate, false, or somehow unrepresentative?

 

Especially when 55/60 murders last year were between blacks, which highlights an obvious issue that needs to be addressed and resolved.

 

Yes, there is an issue that needs to be addressed there.  My writing on crime in Cincinnati has delved far deeper into the complexity of social and economic issues surrounding crime than your repostings of Enquirer crime stories ever had.

Don't forget about the Butler/Warren County Crime Thread. It's not getting enough love -- you know plenty of crime is going on. It could be bigger than this one, but this site spends more time with the Enquirer/Dispatch/Plain-Dealer/Daily News/Blade than the smaller papers.

I have a newspaper RSS feed that contains 52 newspapers, but I obviously don't have enough time to tag links to every thread possible. I can give you the newspaper feeds if you want to take up that task.

Is there really a "struggle" with crime other than the perception of it?  Yet again, why are we even discussing murders when nobody here has or will be affected by them? 

 

Crime sells because people are obsessed with it -- people who can't understand statistics, that is. 

Murders are down 20% from a year ago.  That's a HUGE improvement. Thank god it's not New Orleans that has 200 murders a year.

^That's one way of spinning it, and that's my rationale above. We can say that it went 20% down from 2008, but what about from 2007? Or from 2001? It's not down overall from say, 1999. I'll probably do a full post on this at a later point (maybe tomorrow?).

 

2009: 60 murders

2008: 72 murders

2007: 63 murders

2006: 79 murders

2005: 79 murders

2004: 64 murders

2003: 71 murders

2002: 64 murders

2001: 55 murders

If you want to discount year over year statistical trends, then that's fine, but you can't go on to cherry pick a year to start from.  Why not start from 1920, 1974, 1982, or 1996?  Given that murders are probably never going to be in the single digits for an American city with more than 2 million people in its MSA, it might be better to compare per capita rates.

 

American cities have extraordinarily higher murder numbers than the rest of the developed world.  So if you really want to get down and mine the statistics, like you seem to want to do, compare metro crime data to metro crime data for comparable American MSAs (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis) and look at per capita murder rates.

 

If you don't want to do that, then please do explore the social and economical relationships with contemporary crime patterns.  I really hope you do one of these, instead of simply recanting the same tired talking point you use about the City "struggling" with crime here or there and not doing enough to combat it.

Given that the population declined from the lower murder rates of the 1990s to today, the general assumption would be that the murder rate per capita has increased. I had planned on covering that in the post.

^That's one way of spinning it, and that's my rationale above. We can say that it went 20% down from 2008, but what about from 2007? Or from 2001? It's not down overall from say, 1999. I'll probably do a full post on this at a later point (maybe tomorrow?).

 

2009: 60 murders

2008: 72 murders

2007: 63 murders

2006: 79 murders

2005: 79 murders

2004: 64 murders

2003: 71 murders

2002: 64 murders

2001: 55 murders

 

What I see there is that murders are at their lowest in 9 years.  Not bad, I'd say.

 

What troubles me most is your quote about 55/60 murders being between blacks, and how that points to a problem that needs to be fixed.  Are you saying that black on black crime is a Cincinnati phenomenon? I'd be willing to bet that most of those 55 murders probably occured in economically depressed neighborhoods, heavilly populated by African Americans.  It's no surprise that crime takes place in bad neighborhoods, so I don't really see the need to bring up race.

No, don't look too far into it, edale; it's not a racist comment nor profiling. Black on black crime is not just a Cincinnati fad, but it's something that needs to be corrected. While this city tends to dismiss race in nearly every aspect of discussion, for fear of being labeled by the NAACP or some equivalent organization, it's far from profiling.

 

The fact is, most of these murders are preventable, and stem from a particular demographic. Are they black? Most of the time, yes. Are they poor? Not necessarily, and the statistics pulled don't back that up nor can they validate it. Do they stem from particular neighborhoods? Yes.

 

So what can the city do?

 

If it aggressively goes after the underlying issues and try to correct the issue described above, you set off the perception of profiling. With that, you erode the trust between blacks and the police further. Dig with it further, and you can have protests. If you make a mistake, or say, fire a gun at someone who is may threaten an officer, you can cause a riot or mass disturbance.

 

There really isn't a good solution. The city can try to reduce the crime all it can overall, but unless it begins to target a particular demographic and solve whatever issues there may be (and I'm not talking about the police, but educating these individuals further and more extensively, adding additional support, etc.), then you are facing an uphill battle. Target those who need help.

Do you realize alot of the murders came at the hands of one person killing 3-4 or more people? If it wasnt' for that we would be down to about 40-50 murders.

There is no way to accurately detail that, nor report on it.

There is no way to accurately detail that, nor report on it.

 

The CIRV begs to differ.

If all the stakeholders in the community did all they could to combat illegitimacy, a million problems would disappear.  Drug use, crime, educational failure, social isolation, etc. would disappear if the young urban underclass would get married before having babies and worked to ensure a better life for their children than they themselves had.

If all the stakeholders in the community did all they could to combat illegitimacy, a million problems would disappear.  Drug use, crime, educational failure, social isolation, etc. would disappear if the young urban underclass would get married before having babies and worked to ensure a better life for their children than they themselves had.

 

There's a lot embedded in your comment, but in general, how do you combat those issues from a public policy perspective?  Or is it even possible?

First, create federal incentives for states that reduce their ratio of out-of-wedlock births; thereby, seeing which programs work in which states. At the local level, treat the issue as a community issue and engage churches, families, schools and mentor/role models. Instead of anti-violence, anti-gang, anti-gun, and pro-education campaigns (we see these campaigns all the time on billboards, in print, over the radio and on TV), there should be a concerted pro-family/pro-responsibility effort by all the players I listed above.

 

Illegitimacy should be a severe taboo. But in a society hell-bent on removing all taboos, it's hard to try and re-establish tried and true mores. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" circa 1965 explains the problem more completely.

 

There's a lot embedded in your comment, but in general, how do you combat those issues from a public policy perspective?  Or is it even possible?

 

If it's not possible to improve on the status quo, we might as well give up.

There is no way to accurately detail that, nor report on it.

Um false. The Enquirer did a report on murders  from 2009 about 2 weeks ago. Listing suspects and who they killed. Several suspects killed multiple people.

If all the stakeholders in the community did all they could to combat illegitimacy, a million problems would disappear.  Drug use, crime, educational failure, social isolation, etc. would disappear if the young urban underclass would get married before having babies and worked to ensure a better life for their children than they themselves had.

 

There's a lot embedded in your comment, but in general, how do you combat those issues from a public policy perspective?  Or is it even possible?

 

If this was the Lt. Governor of South Carolina, they would compare them to stray animals and stop feeding them so they would stop having sex.

 

Seriously.

 

""My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't... think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

 

--

 

To get back on point, in reply to Randy, I'm not sure. It may be politically impossible, because any obvious outreaching efforts can be deemed as profiling by certain political organizations, such as the NAACP. Entitlement programs are one thing, but combating serious drug crimes and other major offenses can lead to the issues that the police faced after the incidents in 2001. There are a lot of road blocks that prevent many potential solutions from being implemented.

There's a lot embedded in your comment, but in general, how do you combat those issues from a public policy perspective?  Or is it even possible?

 

If it's not possible to improve on the status quo, we might as well give up.

 

I believe we can improve upon the status quo, but is there a tangible policy solution?  If not, then the blame should probably not be placed on government, and instead placed upon individuals and private enterprise.

 

I asked the question above to hopefully get a response.  This is a discussion forum, so I'm sorry if my question upset you, but I want to continue this discussion in an educated manner.  We could sit here and say that government or policy makers should do this or that, but if that is distant from reality then we're just wasting our time and energy.

In all honesty I think the problem of black on black crime is very rooted in social behaviors, norms and historical trends.  I think you see this believe supported when you hear black ministers step up and call for a change in behaviors from members of the black community.

 

I think much of the disconnect between notably "black culture" and "mainstream culture" is intentionally manifested by those who engage in it.  With that said, I wonder if the fact that blacks historically had no rights has anything to do with the realities of turf wars today?

 

I'm not saying that mistakes made in the past have to be corrected now, but what I am saying is that these connections should be noted when we try to solve these extremely complex issues.

I thought the incentives for lowering out-of-wedlock births was a good policy idea; hence' that was the first thing I said.  Sure gov't can't control individuals, but there can be a concerted effort from both public and private sectors against illegitimacy and chaos.

 

What are your ideas?