The Time Machine

While researching the previous post, I came across this webpage with a January 1, 2000, article written in press-release style entitled New Orleans Murder Count Hits 14 Year Low - Chief Pennington's Promise Becomes Reality:

Superintendent Richard J. Pennington announced that New Orleans recorded 162 murders during the year 1999, the first time since 1985 that the murder count has dropped below 200, and the lowest murder count since 1985's murder count of 152. The 162 murders were a drop of 30% from the previous year and marked the fifth consecutive year that murder has declined in the city.

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New Orleans murder rate, the number of people murdered per 100,000 residents, stands at 33 for 1999, compared with almost 87 in 1994, the year Pennington was appointed Superintendent of Police. Nationally, the murder rate is between 6.0 and 7.0 murders per 100,000 people, meaning that New Orleans still has many more murders than the national average.

Notice that a couple of past numbers converge with present numbers. We had 162 murders last year, but in 1999 that number was a success story. And we are back to the murder rate of 87 per 100,000 people for the first 70 days of 2007, the same number that Pennington started with and lowered to 33.

What could have been…