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Three websites report murder numbers in Milwaukee.
One source of information is the Dashboard, a collaboration between the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission. In addition, this site provides information on non-fatal shootings, as well as information on crimes such as the weapon used, the suspect if known, the relationship between the victim and suspect, and the circumstances leading up to the incident. Other information is also reported. .
The second source of data on homicides is a dashboard run by the Milwaukee Police Department. In addition to murders, the site also includes statistics on other crimes.
The third is a database of homicide victims run by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. For each victim, we include links to more information about the person and the crime. Also included are links to newspaper articles about the murder.
What are the long-term trends?
As the graph below shows, homicides in Milwaukee doubled from 2019 to 2020 after four years of gradual decline. While other factors may have been at play, the clear culprit is the coronavirus pandemic that hit Wisconsin and the United States in March 2020, and the ensuing restrictions on social gatherings and the wearing of masks when going out. efforts to control it, such as mandating around other people. (The pandemic, in particular, appears to have caused a surge in highly aggressive driving, including speeding through residential streets and using bike lanes for passing.)
But even as vaccines became available and mask mandates and limits on gatherings were eased or lifted, shootings continued to rise over the next two years. In 2023, the number of shootings finally decreased. However, it was still significantly higher than the number reached in 2019.
Is the current downward trend sustainable?
All three data sources report a recent decline in homicides, but they differ widely on the magnitude of that decline. For full-year changes from 2022 to 2023, the percentage varies between 18% and 25%. Estimates for year-to-date declines range from a low of 9% to a high of 36%.
Why are the change estimates so disparate? Part of the explanation may lie in the disparity in the last updated dates of the three sites. Either way, Milwaukee is moving in the right direction.
Who is most at risk of becoming a homicide victim?
The following graph shows the profiles of the Milwaukee shooting victims (green) and the shooting suspects (yellow). Often, police are unable to find witnesses or other information that can help identify the suspect and explain why the green pillar is larger than the yellow pillar.
The graph shows the number of homicide and nonfatal shooting victims by age, demographics, gender, and ethnicity.
A common metric for measuring health risk is the rate per 100,000 inhabitants. Applying this metric to Milwaukee's census data, a rough calculation shows that in 2023, black Milwaukeeans would be shot at a rate of 383 per 100,000 residents, compared to 68 for whites. For men, it was 290, compared to 69 for women. For residents between the ages of 18 and 29, the rate was 320. For Hispanic residents, it was 93.
Putting this together shows who is statistically most likely to become a victim. He is a black male in his late 20s. The person falls into all three of his most at-risk demographic groups: race, age, and gender. Identifying policies that would reverse these statistics would be a high priority.
How does geography affect risk?
Your risk of gun violence is greatly influenced by where you live. This effect is very stable over time. The following graph compares the 2023 homicide and non-fatal shooting rates to his 2022 rates on the horizontal axis for each of Milwaukee's 15 aldermanic districts. Dashed lines are diagonal lines. In districts along that line, such as City Council District 15, the rate of mass shootings remained unchanged over the past year. As with Districts 1 and 2, falling below that line means the number of shootings has decreased.
The data shows that the 15th District, which includes much of the north and south sides of the central city, has the highest homicide rate, as the district map shows. According to the map, the lowest homicide rate was in the larger 11th District, which includes much of the city's Far West, Far Southwest and Far South neighborhoods.
A large amount of information is collected about homicides and other injuries in Milwaukee and across the nation. The key challenge is to use that information to reduce the resulting carnage.