Murder by the numbers

Murder by the numbers

It is chilling when a city’s police chief refers to “assassinations” when describing the homicides his department is investigating. But that’s the word Youngstown Police Chief Rod Foley used the other day during a discussion of shootings that brought the city’s year-to-date homicide tally to 22, which is already two more than the year-end total in 2010.

And while a word such as assassination has shock value, numbers can also have the effect of a slap across the face. Here are some that should sting.

Youngstown’s population is just shy of 67,000. That means the city has a homicide rate of 33 per 100,000 as of today. And since the city has averaged more than three homicides in late November-through-December over the last decade, the year-end homicide rate is likely to be closer to 38 per 100,000.

Last Monday, The Vindicator ran a column by Andres Oppenheimer, the Miami Herald’s Latin America correspondent, in which he listed the homicide rates per 100,000 population for five Central American countries that are now or are in danger of becoming battlegrounds in drug-trade wars. The average homicide rate for those countries was 43 per 100,000, ranging from 11 in Costa Rica to 82 in Honduras. By way of further comparison, the rate is 18 in Mexico and five in the United States.

That makes Youngstown’s rate about even with Guatemala and seven times the U.S. average. The city is involved in a deadly numbers game, and it is losing horribly.