“Trivial disputes with fatal conclusions”
Tom Ferrick Jr. has a bleak piece in today’s Inquirer exploring what the statistics say about the homicide rate in Philadelphia. The numbers for young black males aged 15-29 are devastating. And if you’re really interested in numbers, take a look at the Weapons Related Injury Surveillance System (WRISS) Report (warning: pdf file). It’s an exhaustive report on shootings in Philadelphia between 2002 and 2006 broken down by age, race, type and number of wound, time of day, almost any variable you can imagine. In addition, it spells out some of the reporting procedures police follow as well as uses they make of the aggregated data.
