Contrarian: Murder Doesn’t Matter

Let’s stop counting homicides, because when it comes to public safety, homicides don’t count

Despite its sky-high homicide rate, Baltimore’s total violent crime has fallen by 40 percent since 1999. That’s the largest drop for any big city in America, and it puts Philadelphia’s 10 percent reduction over the same period to shame. It’s probably no coincidence, though, that Baltimore is gaining jobs faster than its suburbs, while Philadelphia lost 10,000 jobs last year alone. Baltimore’s housing values are growing much faster than Philadelphia’s, too, and its population loss, which was worse than ours for decades, has all but stopped.

Marty O’Malley may be desperate, but those numbers aren’t blarney. We can only hope that someday we’ll get a mayor so desperate that he’ll start thinking and talking straight about crime.