Delving More Deeply Into Shooting Stats

Crime Scenes

Here are some statistics about recent killings in Baltimore:

The 107 people charged with murder last year had accumulated a combined 1,065 prior arrests - 380 related to guns and 99 related to drugs.

The 234 people killed last year had a combined 2,404 prior arrests - 162 related to guns and 898 related to drugs.

That's an average of 10 arrests per suspect and 10.3 arrests per victim. The numbers, from city police logs, are virtually identical for the first nine months of this year, with suspects averaging 11.1 arrests and victims 9.6. And the numbers are virtually identical to statistics from a decade ago.

That might help explain why Baltimore, even with a much-heralded 20-year low in slayings last year, is still the nation's second-deadliest city in per-capita homicides, behind only Detroit. That's despite a 34 percent drop in killings and a 70 percent drop in nonfatal shootings since the murderous 1990s.

If, as police say, a nonfatal shooting is nothing more than a failed murder, then these numbers make sense - surviving victims get shot again or go after the people who shot them.

The numbers appear terrifying. Explaining them is not easy.

Police repeatedly complain that the people they put in handcuffs only return to the streets to do more harm. Here are the number of times some murder suspects and victims from last year had been arrested: 74, 71, 49, 40, 38, 34, 29. ... The list goes on.

These numbers don't say anything about conviction rates, and there's a sad tale behind each case, a book-length reason why someone can get arrested 74 times before dying on a street corner or get arrested 71 times before being charged with murder.

Many are hopelessly sick addicts arrested on petty charges, such as loitering, or involving small amounts of drugs, which tend to pile up but don't result in much jail time. Cases fall apart in Baltimore for a myriad of reasons that include an overwhelmed court system, distrust of police, jury nullification and witnesses and victims who are too scared or just don't care to testify.

It's hard to determine why the sharp drop in nonfatal shootings hasn't been accompanied by an equally sharp drop in homicides, and theories abound. In 1997, the city concluded that gunmen were simply better shots, with more people suffering multiple shots to the head, and more victims were dying on the scene (16.7 percent in 1996) than in years past (11 percent in 1993).

That study hasn't been replicated in recent years, but former Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris addressed the issue on his radio show Wednesday morning. He said that when he was a commander in New York, he tried to figure out why homicides in the Bronx surged while nonfatal shootings plunged.

He suspected the police were cooking the books. He said the norm is three shootings for every homicide, which would mean Baltimore's 1996 numbers, when there were 1,542 nonfatal shootings and 331 homicides, were more outside the norm (a 4.6-to-1 ratio) than what is happening now. Last year, Baltimore police say, there were 587 nonfatal shootings and 234 homicides (a 2.5-to-1 ratio).

Using that logic, city slayings and shootings are falling at an even pace.

An issue Baltimore has to continually confront is whether anyone believes the statistics. In the 1990s, then-Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke spoke glowingly of how his administration curtailed nonfatal shootings from 2,284 in 1993 to 1,542 in 1996. But a review found the 1993 number had been inflated by a faulty computer program.

Complaints that officers don't take reports to drive down crime stats persist. In 2006, then-Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm told WBAL-TV that it was fine with him if his officers didn't take a report on every shooting, such as ones where the victim knew who had fired but refused to tell detectives. And the current commissioner has had to face his own problems with officers not properly recording crime.

The declines over the past 13 years are an encouraging sign. Weekends like this past one, when 15 people were wounded, don't undermine the stats, but they do underscore that this city remains beleaguered, violent and scared.