Baltimore is the most dangerous city in the nation, according to "USA Today." The newspaper is out with an analysis saying Baltimore had the highest per capita murder rate among the nation's 50 biggest cities last year, with nearly 56 killings per 100-thousand people.
Chicago logged 650 murders in 2017, but with a much larger population, its per capita rate was less than half of Baltimore's. The report says The FBI won’t publish its annual comprehensive crime report until later this year, but an early review of police department crime data shows that killings decreased by at least 1% in large jurisdictions compared with 2016. Earlier this month, the city went 12 days without a homicide that began February 2 with a community organization’s quaterly ceasefire 72 hour cease fire weekend. It ended February 13, with the shooting death of a 22- year old man.
USA Today reports the modest decrease in killings comes after FBI data showed back-to-back years in which homicides rose sharply in large cities. (Homicides in cities with 250,000 or more residents rose by about 15.2% from 2014 to 2015, and 8.2% from 2015 to 2016.)
According to the newspaper, there were 5,738 homicides in the nation’s 50 biggest cities in 2017 compared with 5,863 homicides in 2016, a roughly 2.3% reduction.
Las Vegas Police reported 141 homicides for 2017 in its official tally but did not include the Oct. 1 mass shooting at an outdoor country music concert that left 58 dead. If those deaths were included in the department's tally, the national big city homicide toll fell by 1.1%, the USA TODAY review found.
Even with the sharp rise in homicides in the two years prior to 2017, the national murder toll continued to hover near historic lows.
The national decrease in killings in 2017 was largely driven by double-digit percentage dips in some of the nation’s biggest cities, including Chicago (14.7%), New York City (13.4%) and Houston (11%). In fact, the New York Police Department reported that its annual murder tally fell below 300 for the first time and the city notched its lowest per capita murder rate in nearly 70 years.