Violent crime is a serious issue regarding an individual’s life and health, the two most significant things to our existence, and crime is unevenly distributed between neighborhoods and amongst other cities. The difference in the distribution of violent crime, is clearly noticeable in the different neighborhoods of Saint Louis city, which creates a digital divide between the north and south of the city. Using data from the Saint Louis Metropolitan Police Department on crime statistics for the year of 2015, I was able to show a spatial representation of this digital divide between the high crime rates in north Saint Louis city, and the lower crimes rates in the south, as well as the neighborhoods with the highest and lowest crime rates. In addition
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It was not long after I moved to Saint Louis, that I was told to avoid certain neighborhoods of the city due to their high crime rates, and that Saint Louis is one of the most racially segregated cities in our country. I personally experienced this unrest when I moved to Saint Louis in October of 2015, a month before the Ferguson riots in response to the Michael Brown shooting. The high crime rates in Saint Louis are also noticed and compared to the rest of the country by the FBI, most importantly, and other media. In the first half of 2015, the FBI ranked Saint Louis City as the number one U.S. city for violent crimes such as rape, robbery, aggravated assault and murder. In 2012, Forbes ranked Saint Louis City the second most dangerous of U.S. cities. Subsequently, in 2013 Forbes ranked Saint Louis City the fifth in crime among U.S. cities. Although, it should be noted that one reason why Saint Louis City is ranked so high amongst other cities, is that the county is left separate and not included in the city data. Many other cities include surrounding areas which would most likely dilute and decrease their crime ranking. Thus, the unfortunate high crime rates and the racial segregation in our city led me to explore this topic even …show more content…
As defined by the FBI, “In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.” Due to time constraints, I picked only three of the four violent crimes to analyze; murder, aggravated assaults and forcible race. After getting a shape file of the neighborhoods in the city of Saint Louis from the City of Saint Louis Open Data site, and retrieving the data for crime in the year of 2015 from the Saint Louis Metropolitan Police Department, I was able to map the three violent crimes on ArcMap and analyze different
It was not long after I moved to Saint Louis, that I was told to avoid certain neighborhoods of the city due to their high crime rates, and that Saint Louis is one of the most racially segregated cities in our country. I personally experienced this unrest when I moved to Saint Louis in October of 2015, a month before the Ferguson riots in response to the Michael Brown shooting. The high crime rates in Saint Louis are also noticed and compared to the rest of the country by the FBI, most importantly, and other media. In the first half of 2015, the FBI ranked Saint Louis City as the number one U.S. city for violent crimes such as rape, robbery, aggravated assault and murder. In 2012, Forbes ranked Saint Louis City the second most dangerous of U.S. cities. Subsequently, in 2013 Forbes ranked Saint Louis City the fifth in crime among U.S. cities. Although, it should be noted that one reason why Saint Louis City is ranked so high amongst other cities, is that the county is left separate and not included in the city data. Many other cities include surrounding areas which would most likely dilute and decrease their crime ranking. Thus, the unfortunate high crime rates and the racial segregation in our city led me to explore this topic even …show more content…
As defined by the FBI, “In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.” Due to time constraints, I picked only three of the four violent crimes to analyze; murder, aggravated assaults and forcible race. After getting a shape file of the neighborhoods in the city of Saint Louis from the City of Saint Louis Open Data site, and retrieving the data for crime in the year of 2015 from the Saint Louis Metropolitan Police Department, I was able to map the three violent crimes on ArcMap and analyze different