.. two more fatal shootings bring the mid-year toll to 93.
& shiteous father->mother- & two-daughter stabbing this morning in Crofton.
and Baltimoreans' life expectancy is a smidge better than it was a decade ago, but still some sobering numbers, eg. "average life expectancy in Hollins Market is 20 years shorter than in wealthier Roland Park." (also see "Shocking Stats Dept.")
What's going on at Hopkins? A whole lotta shroomin'!
14 comments:
Just two short questions. How do you count murders & is it possible to falsify murder count in certain area, city...?
Thanks for answer.
well, if you were going to be a strict constructionist, you'd only count an incident resulting in a dead person as a murder after a trier of fact like a judge or jury has determined intent (as in, it wasn't an accident). Given the city's conviction rate, that would put the annual murder tally at about 15.
On this blog we count homicides, as in death at the hands of another, and every year there will be a few taken off the tally that are deemed justified, and a few added that were at first thought accidental or not, or as the result of a malingering intentional fatal injury. What doesn't get counted are unclassified deaths, which in Baltimore have been known to number in the hundreds, and also deaths in state custody.
The Medical Examiner counts overdoses as unclassified, because, he says, you can't really know if someone was, say, injected with tainted heroin on purpose, or if the heroin dealer is really to blame. Or, say, you find a guy shot in the head in the park, it could have been a suicide and someone stole the gun, and it's up to the ME to decide if the evidence is there to suspect foul play. So sure, the murder count can be falsified, if the ME/ officers mistakenly (or intentionally) count homicides as suicides, accidents, justified, or cause undetermined.
Ok. But I have another thing in mind. When there is a murder in town, is it possible that it stays unreported (in case that police departments would like to be seen as successful in fighting with the crime). I mean that they would intentionally falsify murder count (like they could potentially do in other crime stats) and give lower numbers. That's why I asked you, where do you get information about murders (no offense, you are doing great job).
So, if New Orleans had 175 and Detroit 308 murders last year, can we actually believe that this towns are murder capitals of US or is it just because their police departments don't falsify murder count (so much)?
Thanks for answer.
well, from what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong Buz & Fenton, it's the office of the Medical Examiner that determines the cause of death (homicide, suicide, undetermined), not the police (though I assume the ME uses information from the police report to aid in the determination), and the ME works for the state, not the city.
So could there be a conspiracy starting from the office of the chief of police to manipulate the ME's homicide number? FHB, Norris, Clark, Hamm et al. presiding over a clandestine meeting to say hey, if you see a grey- area case, don't look too much into it, focus in your reports on evidence that supports that a death was accidental, if you see Pookie shoot Leroy, just say you found the body in the park, probably a suicide?
I doubt it ever happened that way, but everyone in the enforcement-> ME -> judiciary troika is working with very, very limited resources, like 1/3 of what they'd need to do a proper textbook job, so there's no doubt all levels of the chain are already highly predisposed to limit the number of intentional homicide cases with which to be dealt.
And with, say, 270 declared deliberate homicides and 340 undetermined deaths a year, we will never know the "real" number, it is unknowable.
... We need some young wanna-go-to-Harvard Peter Moskos-y type to come down and write a dissertation on it. Pick one recent year and meticulously discover the real number... wonder how long that would take?
I'd suggest watching Frontline's recent show about death investigation in the United States. I wouldn't be surprised if Baltimore's murder tally is more accurate than average. I'm sure that OCME could use more resources, but at least we have a professional medical examiner for the whole state. In a lot of states death investigations are the responsibility of elected county coroners who have too little funding, no experience and contract out autopsy work to private pathology practices of questionable quality. New Orleans (unrelated note, why do we romanticize that craphole of a city? It's really just a much more hot and humid version of Detroit) was used as an example of a particularly bad jurisdiction.
Paul "Oreo" Schurick and Julius Henson were indicted for election fraud.
Looks like $1 million in current accounts and $7.8 million in old accounts. Unclear whether the older accounts are collectable or not.
Now explain the "Oreo," Meph, was Mr. Shruck the one who cooked up that "Michael Steele target of Oreo hurling at Morgan" "incident"?
Schurick, that is
Was the Oreo incident completely fabricated or just blown completely out of proportion? I've forgotten the details, but I seem to recall that one or two jackasses may have shown up with Oreos but Steele's people then wildly exaggerated what happened.
Yes, Schurick was quoted as saying that the Oreos were "thick in the air like locusts". The CW is that, as ppatin said, a couple of jackasses passed them out at the Steele/Larson debate, but nobody threw them at Michael Steele. Ehrlich and Schurick decided to revive that story when Steele ran for the Senate in 2006- and received help from douchebag Sean Hannity in exaggerating the incident.
"Thick like locusts," RTFLOL!! WOW, yes, here it is via Gadi Dechter at the CP and from the horse's mouth: "It was raining Oreos. They were thick in the air like locusts. I was there.”
.. said former Sun reporter Sarah Koenig, “The air was not thick with anything except political bullshit." bwhahahahaha!
MJ & anonymous---
MJ: good, detailed answer!
However, I'll add:
Most cases of homicide are fairly straightforward: the victim is found dead, and has been shot, stabbed or beaten to death. So, the police report is simply written "homicide". Suicides also are usually pretty well discerned. In any case, and MJ writes, the actual legal determination is made by the state's medical examiner.
There are a number of cases where the cause of death cannot be determined, and thus are initially written up as "suspicious"--particularly when the body is found decomposed and/or in the water. In those cases, the Medical Examiner makes a thorough physical examination of the remains, and performs certain toxicology tests. In many cases a determination can then be made using the standard of a preponderance of evidence.
Much has been made of Baltimore's high number of undetermined deaths, but after discussing the matter with Justin Fenton, who's looked at it a lot, it appears the ME has gone both ways in declaring deaths murder and others accidental suicide in a number of cases. In the undetermined ones, he is simply taking the position that there's no preponderance of enough evidence.
Thanks Buz! Yes, Fenton had a great article on Fowler's explanation of the undetermends a while back, hope someone will post a link if they can find it...
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