Local Craig's List murder

[CathyA]

This is soooooooo very tragic. A young man (with a wife and infant son), wanted to buy his parents a laptop. He made arrangements with a person on Craig's list. He went to meet him. I'm not sure if he was going to the person's apartment, or just meeting him outside, but when he got there, the man robbed him and murdered him. It was during the day.
This makes me so mad I can't see straight. We're getting more and more and more violent crimes in the city near here, and it doesn't seem to be being addressed. They focus more on trying to get the Super Bowl here, or another big sports thing, or working on making it a "destination city" (damn, I hate that phrase).
They say they have no leads. The poor guy survived fighting in Iraq........only to be murdered in the good ol' US of A.
It just makes me sick. This is going to happen more and more if we don't get a handle on how we deal with criminals.

[bae]

There's perception, then there's fact:

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[CathyA]

I don't mind when its bad guys murdering bad guys...........but when total innocents are involved, its just unacceptable.

This is from an RTV6 article in Indy:

INDIANAPOLIS - The number of homicides is up sharply in Indianapolis in 2013 compared to 2012.

Statistics released Tuesday by the Indianapolis Metro Police Department show the number of homicides in the city through June 13, 2013 at 68, compared to 46 during the same period last year.

That's an increase of 48 percent.

However, the number of violent crimes overall in the city is down slightly from 2012 levels, police said.

IMPD's count showed that the number of rapes is down 10 percent, from 205 year-to-date in 2012 to 184 so far this year.

The number of robberies is up 8 percent, but the number of aggravated assaults is down 15 percent, statistics showed.

IMPD's statistics also showed a decrease in the number of property crimes, a decrease of nearly 12 percent overall.

The number of arsons is down from 250 through the same time last year to 160 so far this year.


Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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[bae]

The Indianapolis metro area has a population of nearly 1.75 million people.

How to lie with statistics: OMG, the number of murders is up 48%!!! Well, you had 22 more murders, out of a population of 1.75 million people. .001%... What does the yearly variation look like? Is murder such a rare event there that a few more/less murders can make the numbers look very excitingly different, if you use the wrong scale/metric?

My whole county has a murder every decade or three. The rate is up *hugely* if one happens. Does that mean there's an underlying problem?

You need to dig a couple levels deep.

[sweetana3]

I am more concerned with stranger murders or suburban murders. I live in Indy and when I read the paper, I check the address of the crime first. They almost always happen within identified high crime and poverty areas or areas of dense populations of renters and a variety of ethnicities.

We were all concerned with the two suburban home invasions and 12 people have been arrested for these. Most all with lengthy criminal backgrounds. It appears the "Craigslist killers" were two brothers who were just arrested also with criminal histories. The police are totally on top of these issues probably because of 1. stupid criminals, 2. informants who care, and 3. increased media attention.

75% of the murders have been solved according to the latest info. I bet a lot were domestic/family or gang/drug related.

You do have to look beyond the statistics to see what is really happening. Right now we have too many guns in the hands of too many people who just don't care, are showing off, or apparently don't know what a gun is capable of doing. One man was killed while he and a friend were fixing up a house. Two hoodlums came up to rob them and they shot and killed one of the people on the porch. Maybe he mouthed off or maybe he didn't. Maybe they did not have enough money on them. Who knows. The kids did not care.

[bae]

You do have to look beyond the statistics to see what is really happening.


Well, you *do* need to look at the statistics, instead of relying on anecdote...

Unless you intend to springboard to something like:



Right now we have too many guns in the hands of too many people who just don't care, are showing off, or apparently don't know what a gun is capable of doing.

Note that the number of firearms in private hands in the USA has increased hugely over the past few decades, and laws allowing firearms ownership and carry have been becoming the norm.

And yet gun homicide rates have been *dropping* over this same period. Weird, eh?

Look to the data, not your "feel".

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says

[RosieTR]

Correlative, not necessarily causative. Maybe it's not guns ownership; after all, the obesity rate has increased in inverse proportion to the crime rate.

[redfox]

Emotional impact, particularly of this singular event is what CathyA is reporting. I understand your fury, CathyA.