New Haven Independent

Posted by: cedarhillresident | April 2, 2007 8:51 PM

I am so glad that Officer Shafiq Abdussabur program is going to be up and running. Can I ask is there going to be somekind of a number or a way community groups can let them know of kids they may have concern for???

I have to say I am not sure if the numbers are up because it is getting worse or because the people answering the phone are not blowing us off anymore. Before when you called they would say that there was nothing they can do and now I acutually had the person ask me would you like us to send officer?
I called all the block watch to share in the joy that someone that answered the phone there was nice!

Posted by: andy ross | April 2, 2007 10:58 PM

Police Chief Cisco Ortiz This message is for you. You have a
Challenging job doing what you do for this city every day and of course that includes your men and women in uniform and plain cloths. Thanks for the good news but keep it up and bring in good quarter after another and then year after year by being strong and resolved in making New Haven the Safest city in all New Enland.
God Keep you all safe while you protect our lives and property.

Posted by: MARYROSARIO | April 2, 2007 11:30 PM

GREAT JOB ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GET OUT INTO THE STREETS AND TAKE BACK OUR CHILDREN.TO ALL COMMUNITIES PASS THE WORD AND HELP OUR KIDS.

Posted by: MARYROSARIO | April 3, 2007 12:12 AM

NICE JOB CHIEF I BELIEVE THIS PROGRAM IS SOOOO NEEDED.GETTING OUT INTO THE STREETS IS THE KEY TO HELPING THESE KIDS.LET ME KNOW IF THEY NEED HELP I WILL BE THERE.

Posted by: WTF | April 3, 2007 10:18 AM

Ortiz needs to Resign...Stop ass kissing for a second and reflect on the fact that the feds issued search and arrest warrants on officers on his watch. Where is the accountability? This is great news...but it does not make up for one of the largest blunders by a chief. Do the respectable thing and resign, the chief in Chicago saw the writing on the wall and so should you.

Posted by: a reader | April 3, 2007 2:05 PM

This is a great accomplishment, especially if you consider other cities.

Baltimore, for example, had 15 murders just in the first NINE DAYS of 2007 - they've had about 100 by now. New York City has been experiencing a huge murder wave, for example, the two cops gunned down a couple of weeks ago, and dozens of murders throughout each borough.

Let's hope crime here continues to buck the national trend.

Posted by: Edward_h | April 4, 2007 12:39 AM

A Reader

I doubt Baltimore has had 55+ murders since the below article. For NYC to have "dozens" of murders in each borough each borough would have had to have at least 24 murders. What information are you basing your statements on?

Baltimore, Maryland Murders as of March 2, 2007 = 45

http://www.examiner.com/a-594723~Murder_City__Two_die_every_three_days.html

New York City Murders as of March 28, 2007 = 84

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/28/america/NA-GEN-New-York-Homicide-Rate.php

Posted by: WTF | April 4, 2007 11:10 AM

Edward H,

Someone has done their homework...to add on to what has been mentioned. What about the population difference between NYC, Baltimore, and New Haven....Its hard to compare 125,000 to over a million. Those cities are out of our weight class...a reader needs to make a more accurate comparison...

Posted by: Pat McCann | April 4, 2007 11:28 AM

To WTF: it's easy to critize from the comfort of your keyboard & not out on the street. A full 3 months without a homicide is an achievement that comes from hard work & not butt kissing. Just see Newark, NJ - a city about NH's size & it had 27 murders this 1st quarter.
You shouldn't begrudge the Chief for feeling good about that - we all should.
why don't you blame George Bush for taking officers off the street, sending all our tax money to Iraq rather tha spending it on our young people & others at home that could use a helping hand & maybe prevent some of the crime that is a direct result of the rich getting richer & everyone else getting screwed.

Posted by: MARYROSARIO | April 4, 2007 5:27 PM

RIGHT ON PAT. ITS NOT ABOUT KISSING BUTT BUT ABOUT WITH ALL THATS GOING ON ITS ABOUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!! I STILL SAY GOOD JOB

Posted by: charlie | April 5, 2007 1:13 PM

Wow, Baltimore has two murders every three days? Thank you for that link Ed.

It's also worthwhile to point out that murders in large cities like NYC and Baltimore tend to be more random (and therefore less likely to be solved), while murders in smaller cities are usually among groups who know each other very well, therefore almost all solvable.

Keep up the good work, NHPD!

Posted by: Edward_H | April 5, 2007 1:40 PM

Great news about the decrease in murders compared to the first 3 months of 2006. But I don't think these numbers are anything to get excited about. Take a close look at the numbers and most other categories of crime are showing increases. Chief Badger himself stated shootings are on the rise. Which leads me to believe the only reason we have not had a murder yet is due to the poor aim of the criminals who learn how to fire a gun by watching rap videos. What, if any, response does the Chief Ortiz have for combatting the 67% increase in reported rapes for the first three months of 2007?

Posted by: charlie | April 5, 2007 5:17 PM

Percentages are pretty meaningless when the numbers are that small, Ed.

Posted by: Edward_H | April 5, 2007 7:44 PM

I doubt the women who were raped would agree Charlie

Posted by: cedarhillresident | April 5, 2007 8:34 PM

Edward_H thank you!!

Posted by: charlie | April 7, 2007 9:58 AM

Obviously, any rape is one too many. But numbers that small typically fluctuate from year to year and aren't tied to any particular trends. I agree with you that I hope there is a strategy to combat that type of crime, but my guess is that it is more of a long term one tied to education and encouraging victims of any type of domestic violence to report men who abuse them (most rapes are tied to domestic violence, very few are "random").

Posted by: guest | April 7, 2007 1:49 PM

Crime rates are equalized usually by stating how many per 100,000 people. So,

Phoenix with 1.4 million people and 118 murders in 2006 had 8 murders per 100,000 people.

Denver, with over half a million people had 23 murders in 2006, or about 4 out of every 100,000 people.

Hartford and Bridgeport submitted their numbers to the FBI and what they were for 2006 were:
Hartford 14 murders, 125,000 city population, 11 murders per 100,000 people.

Bridgeport: 2006: 12 murders in city of 140,000 people, or about 8.5 murders per 100,000 people.

God knows what Camden, NJ had, but Newark is a city of about 281,000 people and had 51 murders in 2006, for a rate of about 18 murders per 100,000 people.

Th Big Apple has 8.1 million people. In 2006 there were 266 murders, for a rate of 3.2 murders per 100,000 people. Topping the New York charts with the highest murder rate in NYC, I believe, may have been the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, with 28 murders in 2006. (according to NYPD) East New York doesn't have great art museums, restaurants and so on. It just has a lot of bloodshed and a really nasty tow yard. Is New Haven a Culture Magnet or Death Trap? You decide or just ask the mayor. East New York was settled by a Connecticut merchant in the early 1800s who supposedly envisioned founding a city to rival New York.

Again, New Haven hasn't audited and submitted its stats to the FBI in years, but using the same population estimates the FBI used to compile the statistics for the other cities, (2005 census bureau estimates) New Haven's population is about 124,791 people. According to Chief Ortiz, there were 24 homicides in New Haven in 2006, for a rate of 19 homicides for every 100,000 people.

Not long ago, the NYT ran a story about how NYC had gotten a handle on violent crime, but that smaller cities in its radius, in NY, NJ and CT, were seeing spikes in their homicide rates. The article searched for explanations.

BTW, the FBI tables I am referring to list "murders," not "homicides." Maybe we need to do some more digging to make sure we are comparing apples to apples.

Here are some numbers to double check: According to New Orleans, by way of the FBI, its population is about 463,000 and had 56 murders in 2006, for a rate of about 12 out of every 100,000. Is N.O population easy to estimate these days? I wonder. Lets wait for the 2006 census bureau, post-Katrina estimates. Katrina may have been one of those rare occasions where murders could have been miscounted, bodies lost or not listed in the right category. And let's not forget the negligence, to put it generously, that caused the deaths of so many dumped in the dome, or ditched in nursing homes, but I digress.

New Orleans 2005 murder rate was 134 people, or 29 out of every 100,000 people murdered.

Finally, Detroit reported a rate of 20 per 100,000 people for 2006.

Nationwide, 19 out of 100,000 people is way up there. It is considered high and it is high. That's why it was big news and why,I am sure, it was a bigger priority than ever.

Summer is coming, and all those social workers who flock to the schools to help kids after killings and traumas will dissappear. Cops will take deseved vacations and the guns are warming up -- all at the same time. Those stupid ATV vehicles already are out, a sure sign of the yearly mayhem as the first Red Breasted Robin. I hope we have a strategy in place.

Posted by: charlie | April 9, 2007 10:20 AM

Guest, first of all, your numbers are WAAAAAAAAAAAY off. The numbers you are using are incorrect. Newark had over 100 murders last year, not 50. New York City had nearly 600 murders, not 300. Bridgeport had 30 murders, not 11!

You are using half-year stats from the FBI UCR website for some of the cities you're discussing, not full year stats!

Second of all, demographics between East Coast and Midwest/West Coast cities are not comparable because East Coast cities only include small core areas, not suburban areas. New Haven, Hartford, Boston, etc., were laid out in the 1700s and their city boundaries have not grown since then. Midwestern cities, West Coast cities etc are newer, and therefore include a huge proportion of suburbs in their total land area (as a result, they also have much lower population densities, because they include farmland as well as central cities - places like Hartford are very dense because they only include pre-World War I areas of dense housing!)

The only way to compare city murder rates is by looking at metropolitan area figures, because those are the only measures that compare cities on an even basis.

Here are a few numbers:
(Murders per 100,000 residents)

Stamford-Norwalk CT 1.1
Danbury CT 1.5
Portland ME 1.9
Salt Lake City-Ogden UT 2.2
Boston MA-NH-ME 2.6
Des Moines IA 2.6
Seattle-Bellevue-Everett WA 2.9
Hartford CT 3
Minneapolis-St. Paul MN-WI 3
San Diego CA 3
New Haven-Meriden CT 3.3
Scranton PA 3.3
Providence-Fall River-Warwick RI-MA 3.4
Bridgeport CT 3.8
Buffalo-Niagara Falls NY 4.4
Syracuse NY 4.5
Denver CO 4.6
Oklahoma City OK 4.6
Omaha NE-IA 4.6
Pittsburgh PA 4.8
Sacramento CA 5.2
San Francisco CA 5.2
Santa Fe NM 5.2
Fort Wayne IN 5.7
Trenton NJ 5.9
Louisville KY-IN 6
Newark NJ 6.5
Columbus OH 6.6
New York NY 6.6
Colorado Springs CO 7.2
Dallas TX 7.8
Philadelphia PA-NJ 7.8
Indianapolis IN 7.9
Houston TX 8.4
Miami FL 8.7
St. Louis MO-IL 8.7
Flint MI 8.8
Washington DC-MD-VA 9.4
Albuquerque NM 9.6
Chicago IL 9.8
Montgomery AL 9.8
Las Vegas NV-AZ 9.9
Detroit MI 10.9
Los Angeles-Long Beach CA 11.8
Baltimore MD 12
Gary IN 14.9
Memphis TN-AR-MS 15.1
New Orleans LA 24.4

Posted by: cedarhillresident | April 10, 2007 7:58 PM

ok so our murder rates are going down or at least at a stand still!! Thank goodness. But what we are not addressing are the fact that the shootings, the number of robbery and drug related incidents are on the rise!!

shootings up 12%

Just look at that number 12% this is by men 16 to 25. What the heck is going on in this city?? Why are the children shooting eachother? DRUGS!!! We need to let the dang drug dealers know they need to stay out of NEW HAVEN!!! NO area is there area anymore!! You let the drug dealing happen in the poor area guess where they go for there money to by the drugs?? We need to stop it at the source.

I really think that Officer Shafiq Abdussabur program will be a great start but the police need to realize that a reactive force is not going to stop the problems...they need to be proactive and not allow it to start. But I have to say I am starting to see that so ..... here's to a safe New Haven!