Homicide '04

A truly shocking amount of people are murdered in the US every year. Of course, because most of the victims are black, few eyebrows are raised. You see, when a cute white girl is killed (Laci Peterson) it's a big deal, but when it's some black kid in the ghetto, well, c'est la vie. Here in Baltimore 278 people (246 black) lost their lives through homicide in 2004. Chicago had 445, New York 565. In Baltimore, that's 1 in every 2,350 residents. The whole of Britain has about 1000 murders per year (that's 1 in 60,000 people). The US in total has about 17,000 murders per year (about 1 in 17,000). Anyway, Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley promised to get the murder figure down. He's failed.