Crime's Tipping Point: Harsh Truths from Hard Data

Violence interventions or natural decline? Dissecting murder rate trends to determine what’s really reducing homicides

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My most beneficial college course was statistics. Honestly, I can’t compute a bell curve or a standard deviation without a textbook but what I learned in that class benefited me every single day. It has also informed nearly every mode of analysis in my career in the decades since.

The instructor, an adjunct professor from the high school ninth grade center down the road, had the easygoing humor of a talk show host with an uncanny resemblance to George Jefferson’s British neighbor Harry Bentley. His commonsense lessons from magazine advertisements, lotteries, and gambler’s odds influence and enlighten my perceptions and assessments every day.

The murder reduction

Now that it is 2025, somehow it is time to brag on the crime statistics of 2024, especially the reduction in violent crime. The Associated Press has published several articles that speak to the success of violence reduction programs in large cities. In one such article they attribute any reduction to the investment of such groups:

“Violence interruption and intervention programs have helped decrease gun violence and homicide numbers in Chicago and elsewhere, (Kim) Smith said. But even with fewer crimes, people experiencing it in their neighborhood lowers their perception of being safe.” Smith continues: “The presence of those crimes is the thing that people get the most distress from, and that has the biggest impact on people being able to enjoy their neighborhood and on quality of life,” she said.

Am I alone in remembering a 2024 Chicago where multiple unrelated weekend mass shootings were regular national news? How about the financial settlement with the family of Dexter Reed, who attempted to shoot and murder a Chicago Police Officer, who was wounded by Reed’s gun? Police cars attempted to stop him with flashing police lights and all the plainclothes officers were clearly bearing unmistakable police patches on their vests. Here is how the settlement was reported so passively in the media:

“Dexter Reed was struck 13 times after four Chicago police officers fired off 96 shots in 41 seconds. Reed was killed. The incident followed a traffic stop where Reed fired his gun first, injuring an officer.”