1. WHY ARE THERE MORE MURDERS IN NEW YORK COMPARED TO OTHER CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES?<br />Luis Torres<br />The Facts<br />Murders that have been reported to Law Enforcement in the US in 2010<br />211 murders in Chicago (Population 2,848,431)<br />229 murders in New York City (Population 8,400,907)<br />154 murders in Los Angeles (Population 3,848,776)<br />146 murders in Philadelphia (Population 1,597,605)<br />Why does New York City have the most murders?<br />1. Not enough police to cover all areas and watch everyone on the street.<br />2. People don’t respect police officers.<br />3. They don’t have special police teams assigned to high crime areas like Chicago or Los Angeles.<br />4. They have the highest population, which leads to more opportunities to commit murder.<br />Based on just personal knowledge and facts I gathered I believe that New York is the city with the highest amount of murders because its population to officer is a ridiculous 222 people to one officer. The officers aren’t able to see everyone or be everywhere, which leads to crimes being committed. Some other factors that I think make New York the highest ranking city for murder is that people don’t respect officers and also because New York does not have a special task force dedicated only to their high crime areas.<br />I do not think that my last two hypotheses are likely because not every person hates the police and they don’t have a special task force but I am pretty sure they have something in place to try and deter crime. The first reason makes the sense to me because there is a way to many people for officers to have their eyes on all at once. Crime is bond to happen in some areas due to the reason of these officers can’t be everywhere. <br />I don’t know how many officers are on per shift, or how many murders are committed each shift but I can tell you that these crimes are happening and it because the disparity between officer and civilian. I cannot even tell you what is considered murder and what a murdered body is classified a little outside of New York City boundaries. During the last couple of years the murder rate has slowly increased in major cities while as a nation the rate has lowered. Cities like New York have to find a way to naturalize the difference between population and the amount of officers in order to keep the streets clean and keep the murder rates down.<br />I read a New York Times article which discussed New York having to restructure their police force because of a budget crisis at hand but do we need a vigilante crisis as well. The population is already at war with each other, so why do we need to further demise the streets by talking officers that can serve the people off as well. The difference is to big to ignore what a few officers might mean on a shift if there are release from duty. The streets need more officers to deal with such a mass population that engulf the police force like no where else in the US.<br />Therefore, as I can compare what I read about murder having a big enough police force to deal with a over populated population is crucial when deciding weather to cut police forces or not. For example, earlier this year the Newark police department had to lay off about a quarter of its police force and saw an immediate hike in crimes in the areas where officers uses to patrol but cannot anymore due to lack of man power. Hence having an increased population can cause more crime if inadequate amount of sworn officers are put in place to control their behavior. <br /> <br />