[Update: June 5, 2010: In January, an armed robber held up a jewlery store on Madison Avenue between 75th an 76th, shooting and killing a 71-year old employee. This is the first shooting homicide in the Upper East Side in over seven years, and per the linked-to article, seemingly random.]
The New York Times came out with a neat interactive map of homicides in New York City — something which would be really cool if it were not about murder. According to the map, ove the six and a half year period covered (2003 to present), NYC recorded just over 3,400 homicides, of which 15% — or about 500 — were in Manhattan.
The Upper East Side section of Manhattan is incredibly safe, apparently. 11 homicides over the period, or about two per year. For an area with a population of 200,000+, that gives roughly a 1 homicide per 100,000 per annum. To put that in perspective, in 2003, Maine had the “best” homicide rate in the nation, at 1.2 per 100,000.
There are no formal barriers separating the Upper East Side from the rest of Manhattan — yes, it abutts Central Park on the west but one can easily walk though that, and the east is bound by the East River. North and south, though, the lines are 96th and 59th streets respectively, which is to say, the borders are entirely fluid with the neighborhoods next to them. (A guess as to why the lines are where they are? On the south side, Central Park ends on 59th; on the north, the Metro North train tracks come above ground at 97th.) The borders are known but hardly observed in any true fashion — we regularly consider a playground on 99th and 5th to be in the “Upper East Side”, for example.
If you live here, you probably will understand why the neighborhood is safer than most, but experience does not translate well to words. I was not terribly surprised to see a low homicide rate, although admittedly it was much lower than I expected. What did surprise me, however, was one simple fact: no firearms were used in the homicides. Or, more accurately, guns abide by the borders.
The map above sums it up. The green dots — firearm-related homicides — all fall outside the borders of the Upper East Side. There are two which are close, of course: 57th and Madison, 97th and 3rd. Two blocks south of the UES, one block north. This makes the UES a massive outlier, as 69% of the 3,400+ homicides city-wide were firearm-related.
Why?
You lack projects and people with money always pay for their drugs. Police are also quick to remove “suspicious” people from rich neighborhoods.
That's part of the reason why the homicide rate is so low generally, sure. There are few projects (some, though, for example in the 90s) and while there are homeless, they are pretty well known in the neighborhood and non-threatening. (I'll have to take your word that Upper East Siders with drug habits always pay cash.) That does not fully explain why there are literally no gun-related homicides in the area, unless you are also suggesting — which I think is also right — that your reasons mean that six and a half years is too small a sample size. So I'll read that into your comment.
But what is troubling me is the fact that there are two gun-related homicides just outside the Upper East Side's borders, and the fact that those borders are illusory and mostly meaningless. A cynic would think that real estate agents did a data dive on crime data in NYC and, having found that gun deaths were zero if we drew lines at 59th and 96th, drew those exact lines.
Rich areas have more money, but one would think the tough guys would go to rich areas in order to “obtain” said money. Perhaps there is a class-based deterrent effect of tough guys being visually identified when they are creeping in rich areas looking for targets. I believe the only way to get a real answer to this question is to ask someone in the know. Maybe people in rich areas make difficult targets and access to money means higher risk of consequences? Tough guys are risk mitigators too.
Two factors that might have statistical significance –
1. What percentage of people in that area spend time floating around the area? DO the people here spend more time indoors, at fancy restaurants, in their car with a driver?
2. What percentage of the time are the people who own homes there actually there? This particular population of people spends a significant amount of time in other places in the world. A better look at the population might be to find the average number of people within the region, versus those who are registered to actually live there. Then you might find that the “real” population closer to 100,000 or 50,000 or even less – who knows, which would increase that murder per 100,000 number.
90% of murders are by acquaintances. It's not too hard to figure out from there why the murder rate is much lower in rich neighborhoods.
But why no guns?
(1) The Upper East Side is a pedestrian section of a pedestrian city. Even late at night there are upstanding citizens walking around. I live across the street from a bar and whenever there's a marginally important game, there's foot traffic in and around the area until at least two hours after the game ends. And you don't drive anywhere except for out of the neighborhood. You walk to the grocery store, drug store, dry cleaners, etc.
(2) If anything, the “real” population is higher than the 200k cited by Wikipedia. It does not count most of the people who work in the neighborhood but live in other neighborhoods, as the typical area worker does.
I don't think there are a lot of armed robberies of stores in Manhattan, period. There's too much foot traffic to make it worthwhile. You'd be better off mugging a pedestrian on a side street than holding up a corner market.
Two factors that might have statistical significance –
1. What percentage of people in that area spend time floating around the area? DO the people here spend more time indoors, at fancy restaurants, in their car with a driver?
2. What percentage of the time are the people who own homes there actually there? This particular population of people spends a significant amount of time in other places in the world. A better look at the population might be to find the average number of people within the region, versus those who are registered to actually live there. Then you might find that the “real” population closer to 100,000 or 50,000 or even less – who knows, which would increase that murder per 100,000 number.
90% of murders are by acquaintances. It's not too hard to figure out from there why the murder rate is much lower in rich neighborhoods.
But why no guns?
(1) The Upper East Side is a pedestrian section of a pedestrian city. Even late at night there are upstanding citizens walking around. I live across the street from a bar and whenever there's a marginally important game, there's foot traffic in and around the area until at least two hours after the game ends. And you don't drive anywhere except for out of the neighborhood. You walk to the grocery store, drug store, dry cleaners, etc.
(2) If anything, the “real” population is higher than the 200k cited by Wikipedia. It does not count most of the people who work in the neighborhood but live in other neighborhoods, as the typical area worker does.
I don't think there are a lot of armed robberies of stores in Manhattan, period. There's too much foot traffic to make it worthwhile. You'd be better off mugging a pedestrian on a side street than holding up a corner market.
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I'd suggest that in lower income areas guns are more prevalant because of the higher crime rate i.e. criminals are more likely to carry guns.
Murders in richer areas are more likely to be spur of the moment or in anger where people grab the nearest thing to them. Generally something you can hit someone with (blunt object) or a knife.