Updated Murder Charts

It's been a few months since I've updated my murder charts online, but you can see the latest charts (updated thru 7/19) on my XML chart webpage. As of 7/19, we are at 122 murders for 2009 versus 116 at this time last year. That sort of seems like a big deal (murders are up 5.2%!), but murders are so infrequent and noisy that I don't think it makes much difference. Between 7/19 and 7/31 there were 9 murders in 2008. It's easy to imagine fewer happening this year.

Overall, we're running at 233 murders for the last 12 months. I counted 229 murders in 2008, so basically we're seeing the exact same murder rate for the last 18 months or so. Not bad considering that 2008 was the best year in decades for Baltimore.

Anyway, here's one more chart to illustrate how noisy murder statistics are, even in a city with as many murders are Baltimore:

Please note: July 2009 is a partial total (as of 7/19)

-----

Notes: Again, I do not count people who die this year as a result of an act of violence in a prior year. Since I have the luxury of going back and editing my statistics (FBI, BPD, etc. do not), I am only counting violence in the year it occurs. For more of a discussion on why I do this, see my previous posts on murders from January 2009 and March 2009.