Sailer: The Worst And Best Counties For Hispanic Homicides

By Steve Sailer

11/04/2022

Because people are interested, for once, in crime statistics due to election red vs. blue arguments, I made up a list of the 100 counties with the most Hispanics (all at least 6 figures) and ranked them by the annual Hispanic homicide victimization rate per 100,000 Hispanics over 2018-2021.

The worst Hispanic homicide rate is Philadelphia County, PA at 20.9, which appears to be due to a combination of Puerto Ricans (see also #9 Hampden County, MA, which is fairly Puerto Rican Springfield), shooty black gangs, and DA Larry Krasner.

The counties at the bad end of the list tend to be in blue states, but I wouldn’t swear there is a casual correlation. In truth, this topic is pretty new to me so I’m in exploratory mode here

The best Latino homicide rate is idyllic suburban Westchester County, NY at 1.8. (The bottom of the list is affluent suburbs/exurbs such as #99 Collin, TX north of Dallas, home to Plano and Frisco.)

The list is pretty idiosyncratic with quite a few different apparent factors. For example, having a lot of violent blacks, such as #1 Philadelphia, #6 Milwaukee, and #14 Cook (Chicago) counties appears to contribute to higher Hispanic victimization rates, probably due both to more Hispanics being murdered by blacks and (more speculatively) Hispanics being more likely to form gangs to fight blacks there. A strange case is #10 Prince George’s County, MD at 10.0. What type of Latinos are these?

The second worst Hispanic homicide victimization rate is Bernalillo County, NM (Albuquerque) at 18.1. I’ve never really understood why Albuquerque tends to have worse social statistics than its demographics would imply, while, down the Rio Grande, El Paso tends to have better. (I get a vague impression that Hispanic homicide victimization tolls often are higher where Hispanics fight American Indians or Pacific Islanders a lot, but it’s a pretty obscure topic.)

Then comes El Paso County, CO (15.7), which confused me at first because I read in Time Magazine in 1971 that El Paso has a low murder rate due to the lithium in the ground water. But that’s sedate #62 El Paso County, TX (4.2), whereas El Paso, CO is third. Its county seat is Colorado Springs, which I associate with Evangelicals and the Air Force Academy. Denver County is #8 at 10.3 and Pueblo County, CO, which doesn’t make the top 100 in population, is at 14.3, so something appears to be wrong with Colorado Latinos in general.

Then comes #4 Kern County (Bakersfield) at 14.4.

In contrast, Southern California counties are not terribly high ranking, such as #29 Los Angeles at 7.2 and #72 San Diego at 3.7. (San Diego County has the same pretty good rate as Miami-Dade, FL.) I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Bakersfield’s problems are due to people who can’t afford Los Angeles or San Diego anymore moving there.

When pundits wonder why America has such high home prices, don’t forget that letting housing costs rise is just about the surest way to solve local social problems by handing your problem people off to be somewhere else’s hot potato.

Then rural Yakima, WA at #5 (13.4), which I didn’t see coming. I don’t know much of anything about Yakima County.

[Comment at Unz.com]

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