Murder was worse! (If I did my math correctly.)

One hundred years ago, in 1906, 255 people were murdered in New York City. The population of New York was 3,437,202 in 1900, and it was 8,085,742 as of 2003. At the 1906 murder rate, 600 people would be murdered this year. Murder has gone up so far this year, but the total last year was 540 — even with the current increase it should still come out under 600.

Interesting, no? In the good old days, we were not so good. 1913 was particularly bad. 326 people were murdered that year. What was going on in New York that year??

Based on what I was able to find out about clearance rates for the time period, I estimate that 84 of the murders in 1906 and 136 of the murders from 1913 were never solved.

(The picture is Orchard Street in 1906.)

This is a crime scene photo from either the suicide or murder of mob hitman, Abe Reles, taken in front of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island in 1941.

I found the case files for Abe Reles in a warehouse in Brooklyn maintained by the Central Records Division. I’ve posted this before, but normally case records for unsolved homicides are supposed to stay in the precinct where the homicides occurred. Anything older than the 1980’s is often missing, however. They were lost in a move, the people at the precinct usually explain, or destroyed in a flooded basement. But 187 boxes of homicide records both solved and unsolved, and spanning the years 1921 to 1973, sit largely forgotten in an aisle at the very back of the Central Records warehouse. Some boxes have a few cases, some have thirty or more. They may be falling apart from age, but there are probably 4,000 to 7,000 case files there.

I thought of writing about Reles, but for various reasons decided not to. It’s a gruesome and interesting story though. He killed people by jamming an ice pick through their ear into their brain. He was eventually caught and was going to be convicted most likely, but instead he became a government witness. Hence the quotes around the word suicide.

LAPD blog. It can get a little PR-y, but it’s also informative and I like when they talk back about articles about the LAPD.

NYPD Rant. Just what it says, a bunch of guys ranting. But if you want to know what goes on inside these guy’s heads, this is the place. I’ve also gotten some pretty interesting information here.

The Policeman’s Blog. Inside the head of a policeman in the UK!

Cold Case website of the San Jose Police Department.

Cold Case website of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. [The link I had is no longer working.]

Cold Case website of the Home Office Police (UK). [The link I had is no longer working.]

Cold Case website of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Cold Case website of the Kentucky State Police.

I go to YouTube more and more, just to browse, and I did a search on the NYPD yesterday. A bunch of stuff came back, good and bad. I decided to put up a positive one. Someone put this together from one of the graduation ceremonies. I love the girl’s voice, the first one you hear. [The link I had is broken.]

I went to a promotion ceremony when two of the guys in the Cold Case Squad were promoted. It was extremely moving. The NYPD is incredibly good at celebration and making you feel like you matter, and you’re important. The whole thing was just so uplifting, but the thing they got the most right was making everyone feel like they were part of a family, and a family that does good work. I was jealous! I wanted to be part of the family.