Murder stats bring sobering truths that hit close to home

Orleans Parish, Louisiana between 2009 and 2015 had the highest murder rate per capita of all U.S. counties,  cities or districts, according to a study published on the law enforcement web site PoliceOne.com.
Even with Chicago’s reputation, when you compare murders with population, with 43 murders per 100,000 population, Orleans climbed to the top of the list, according to a story published earlier this month in The Times-Picayune.
What county came in second? Coahoma County (Clarksdale), Mississippi with 37 murders per 100,000. There’s another Mississippi county in the top 10, too. Washington County (Greenville) with 25 per 100,000 is ranked ninth. Phillips County, Arkansas (Helena-West Helena and just across the Mississippi River from Coahoma County) ranks third with 34 murders per 100,000.
Others were St. Louis, MO and Baltimore, Maryland, tied for fourth; Petersburg City, VA, six; Macon County, Alabama, and the District of Columbia, tied at seventh; Dallas County, Alabama, tied at ninth.
Neither Memphis nor Jackson made the top ten on that list, but the same www.police.one.com web site used stats from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program to compile a list of 10 Most Dangerous Cities in the U.S., by violent crimes. Memphis was listed second on that list but Jackson is not listed. (Jackson was ranked higher on other lists, including at least one that contradicts the PoliceOne.com conclusions.) Cities that made both lists were St. Louis and Baltimore. The FBI compiles its statistics from cities with 100,000 or above population so Mississippi’s less populous jurisdictions would not be included in the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
Back to that first list, the “most murders per …” list: how many murders annually did New Orleans have to earn its dubious distinction? With about 400,000 population, that would come 172 murders per year for the Crescent City. (The 2016 number, the first year after the PoliceOne.com data was compiled, came to 175 murders.)
And how many murders did Coahoma County, with a population of about 25,000, average to become ranked second? About nine people each year, by my calculation.
And how many murders would have to occur in Panola County, with a population of about 37,000, to match Coahoma’s rate of homocide? Between 13 and 14 annually, again by my calculation, subject to correction (publisher@panolian.com).
So far this year, there have been five murders in Panola County.
And all of the foregoing are just numbers that dehumanize the real cost of the taking of a human life by another.
Each number represents an expanding concentric circles of grief, remorse, revenge and other consequences, many unanticipated.