The big, non-political news around here is that the Montreal Expos are moving to Washington, a city that's missed baseball for 33 years. Of course, whenever there's good news, there's a trial lawyer around to stink up the place. Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, intends to grab a major piece of the action. Two words: Ex-tortion. (Apologies to Sam Goldwyn.)
Well, Angelos, I call your extortion and raise you a murder and non-negligent manslaughter.
I've pulled out my trusty copy of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for 2002 (latest full version available), which can be found here. You mean you don't keep the UCR at your bedside?
Some preliminaries: For 2002, the UCR uses the following population figures: 5,458,137 for Maryland and 671,028 for the City of Baltimore (not including suburban areas). Also, in 2002, Maryland had the third highest rate of violent crime, trailing South Carolina and falling only a few hanging chads behind Florida. For those who are keeping score, violent crime includes (a) murder, (b) rape, (c) robbery, and (d) aggravated assault.
Some observations:
- Baltimore has a violent crime rate of 2054.9 per 100,000 population. For purposes of comparison, Washington, D.C., has a rate of 1595.9 per 100,000.
- Baltimore has about 12% of the population of Maryland but a grossly disporportionate share of the violent crime.
- In 2002, there were 513 murders (including non-negligent manslaughter) in Maryland, 253 of which (49.3%) were in Baltimore.
- In 2002, Baltimore had 13.0% of the rapes in Maryland (about proportionate) but had 35.1% of the robberies and 32.4% of the aggravated assaults.
I plan to look into some of this in future posts.
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