Its no murder mystery

Last week Oakland chalked up its 100th murder for 2003. Alphonso Jose Carbajal, 29 was found shot in the head on the morning of October 20th and was pronounced dead shortly afterward. I'm sorry to say this comes as no shock to me, I've always known that Oakland has one of the highest homicide rates in the country and I've lived here for over nine years now. For a city with a population of 400,000 we'll end the year with a homicide rate of over five times the USA national average (5.5 homicides per 100,000 in Y2K).

As I noted in a previous blog entry the USA national average is already several times that of most European countries, and almost ten times that of Japan. That means Oakland is running at twenty times the homicide rate of the United Kingdom, or fifty times that of Japan. According to OECD figures the United Kingdom and the United States have approximately the same number of police per capita (around 240 per 100,000) so why the huge difference in homicide rates? And within the USA why the huge variation? After all isn't Oakland situated within the Bay Area, one of the most affluent regions of all the United States? Oakland has around 800 police (778 in 2002), which is 20% under the national average, but still not massively so. In Japan they make do with almost half the number of police per capita of Europe and the USA so you can't just blame it on lack of police.

Sitting here in the safest district of Oakland I can hear what must be the dozenth set of police sirens this evening. Its a warm night and I'm sure people are out on the streets enjoying it. Sadly the odds are another two people will have died by then end of the weekend. I'm not going to pretend I have the answers. But I do find it shocking as ever, that one can live in one of the wealthiest area of the nation and find oneself slap bang in the middle of one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. I believe it goes to show that some things are very out of balance in this country and that a concentration of wealth certainly does not inherently lead to any answers. Crime will follow the money and the follow the opportunity to redistribute wealth and benefits down the food chain from were they have been vacuumed in vast quantities for the last 30 years.