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csmith28 · Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 8:14 pm Post subject:

Homicides, lifestyles linked in police data
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Many Phoenix victims had ties to gangs, drugs

David J. Cieslak and Ryan Konig
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 14, 2005 12:00 AM

Half of the people murdered in Phoenix last year shouldn't have been surprised.

A review of Phoenix police data by The Arizona Republic indicates that 50 percent of the city's homicide victims maintained a lifestyle that brought violence to their doorstep, such as being involved in gangs, immigrant smuggling, prostitution or drugs.

And records show that the poorest neighborhoods were hardest hit. The Republic analysis shows that the rate of homicides in low-income communities was four times higher than it was in more-affluent areas, with about 80 percent of the 221 killings occurring in neighborhoods where residents live below Phoenix's median household income.

The numbers, which include all unnatural deaths except fatal officer-involved shootings, also indicate that a third of the city's homicides were tied to narcotics, while gang involvement claimed nearly 10 percent of last year's murder victims.

"In all honesty, we probably have a dozen innocent victims," Phoenix police Lt. Benny PiÃ±a, head of the agency's homicide unit, said after reviewing 2004's murder list. "Everyone else at some point was involved in a high-risk lifestyle."

Link to the full story in the Liberal Leaning Arizona Republic:
http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/0214homicidetruths14-CP.html

Oddly there are not references to "Gun Related Crime", no telling how many of these people were knifed or bludgened to death.

Another amazing thing to me is how this objective news story completely neglects to report what percentage of the murderers were involved in Drugs, Gangs, Smuggling etc.

I am not real sure how prostitution came into the equation. I haven't heard much about escorts going on killing spree's in the USA but I do realize that prostitution is still a major part of organized crime world wide.

Oh and then yesterday some dumbass wounds two people in department store in New York with what the media said was an AK47 and it make international news.

Well it wasn't really an AK47. It was a semi-automatic version of an AK-47 and though the incident is regretable it does not represent a trend on the behalf of the law abiding gun owners of the United States.
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