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Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

For people who live in Seattle, the perception that homicides are increasing is actually the reality: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattl...

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That's 114 homicides this year. Seattle has a population of 750,000.

I don't have any knowledge of what a "reasonable" homicide rate is, but that seems extraordinarily low for anywhere in any point in history.

My city of Calgary has about a quarter of that at one million people. We have about 25 a year.

A "reasonable" homicide rate might be something similar to the rate in other developed countries, so about 1/10 of what it is in Seattle.

Western European countries are around 1 per 100,000 population per year. Seattle is 15x that rate based on those statistics. Seems bad.

Maybe my statement was a bit too broad. What I was trying to communicate was that statistically, the chance you get murdered in Seattle is still extremely low despite the headline that seems to be spreading fear.

According to the article, that is 114 homicides in King County, not Seattle. King County has well over 2 million people.

London, with its current population of rougly 9.6 million¹, recorded 112 homocides in the 2023-2023 reporting year².

If London had the same homocide rate per capita as Seattle, that would equate to 1459 homocides in the same period.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22860/london/population#:....

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/862984/murders-in-london....

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