In fact, as Jayne reveals in an interview with weaselface Health Commissioner Joshua Scharfstein, those numbers only included incidents admitted at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Univ. Maryland Trauma, which are the two largest trauma centers.
They fail to include any data from Johns Hopkins-Bayview or Sinai Trauma, which as it happens is the one institution whose trauma admissions actually increased during the period under consideration.(O'Malley's term of office).
When you add those figures, the reduction in shock trauma gun cases looks less like 40% and more like 25%. You can see Scharfstein's memo to police Commr. Hamm at this location.
Scharfstein sqirms in his chair and insists that he thought the interview had been rigged in advance so as to ensure he wouldn't be embarrassed by new facts and leaves the room. Oops.
I love Jayne Miller.
Now, as I was saying, what ever happened to that independent audit of the City's crime numbers ????
Speaking of violence
About 80% of survey respondents think the City is not safer...
...among whom may be the two women shot on Sunday morning on the 3000 block, Frisby Street in Better Waverly or the resident of the 2600 block, North Calvert Street in Charles Village who woke around the same time Sunday morning to find an intruder had invaded their home. Details in the Police Blotter.
6 comments:
At least this puts to rest the rumors we're the same person... plus really shows how someone's perspective can change what you hear about an event, and, that though we disagree philisophically and politically at times, we both have a big gay crush on Jayne Miller!
I saw the Jayne Miller report as well and while I agree that not including data from other hospitals looks suspicious there are plausible reasons for doing that including the possibility that bayview and sinai may be taking cases from outside the city line and not counting them accordingly.
Also, there is the Fire department EMS data which seems to be ignored by Jayne. This data shows a 34% drop from 1999-2005.
Anyways, a 30 second interview with a surprise question does not make very good reporting in my view.
Well, you're really just interested in the difference between their totals of (city + county) admissions for each of the comparison years. Unless you feel that the mix of county vs. city changed a great deal over the period? If in fact, Sinai has seen a jump in its trauma admissions, one would expect given its central location that those would not include a great deal from the county, so the center with the greatest demographic increase would be city-biased, if anything.
The EMS data are about halfway between the O'Malley claim and the four-hospital result.
Now, recall that the O'Malley administratioin closed many of the small neighborhood fire stations in favor of larger, more regional superstations. One reason the reported trauma cases through BCFD EMS may be downward-biased over time is that the wait times for superstation dispatches are longer, so more emergency cases may be transporting without an ambo because of them. I'd have to kinda think through other effects.
All the more reason to support an independent audit.
Now galt, there is no "I" in "blog!"
If the drop in violent crime is therefore more like maybe 25.X% during the O'Malley administration, let's consider the exogenous decrease in metro city violent crime nationally.
the Violent crime rate for the nation's metro cities decreased from 774 per 100,000 pop. in 1995 to 545 in 2002, a decrease across geography of abouot 30%. The nation's very largest cities recorded rather greater decreases.
Therefore, a decrease of 25% in Baltimore City under the O'Malley administration suggests that we are still about 5% underattained. That is, something in the local response is holding Baltimore back from the national trend. Now, why are we several years behind the trend? Welcome to Baltimore.
But there's no reason to be impressed with the dude sitting in the Mayor's chair.
Very interesting - the reported numbers in the City memo do distinguish between "Baltimore City" residents and others patients/victims. But I'm curious how that works - someone from Woodlawn shot in the City isn't a "city resident" under that definition and so is discounted. The goal is almost certainly to remove cases which are flown to the major urban trauma centers from outside of the city. But it also removes plenty of Baltimore City vicitms, unless you assume an equal number of Baltimoreans get shot in the various counties.
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