Statistics and Stereotypes

(Update: I was corrected in the comments by people with better statistics. I am now convinced that Oakland has a severe crime problem relative to other cities, and I'm leaving this post up to show you that if you still believe Oakland does not have a crime problem, you should change your mind like I did. Go here.)

Of course I'm adding my own name to the list of Oaklanders remembering Officers Romans, Sakai and Dunakin, and hoping that Officer Hege recovers.

Statistics time. The idea that Oakland is a dangerous city is prevalent, and somewhat misleading. That I can say this after an outrage like yesterday
is backed up by numbers. I'm originally from the Philly suburbs. Below is a table of Philadelphia and Oakland violent crime rates per capita, relative to the national average:

CITY	Murder	Forcible Rape	Robbery	Aggravated Assault	All Violent Crime
Oakland	3.5	1.81	2.78	1.87	2.31
Philly	3.04	1.85	2.94	1.78	2.31

That I can claim even the day after these killings that Oakland isn't that bad is backed up by statistics, but that I have to say it is because of the high profile of the event. Humans are bad at thinking about statistics but good at thinking about human drama. Look at those numbers again. What's your association with Philly - forcible rape? Robbery? Both higher than Oakland! No, your association is cheesesteaks and the Liberty Bell, the virtues of which are both extolled by proud (ex-)Philadelphians, many more of whom move to Oakland than the other way around. Are Philadelphians deluded and naive, or are Oaklanders buying into the negative image of our own city exacerbated by high-profile tragedies like this one?

Because of these shootings, even if you're an Oakland cop, you have a 0.5% chance per year of getting shot in the line of duty. I'm not diminishing the heroic burden the OPD bears, but putting a number on it puts it in perspective. My probability of getting shot is very close to zero. And chances are, so is yours, unless you live in certain parts of the city which we all want to make safer.

People across California and the country just had their stereotypes of Oakland reinforced, and this isn't helping the city's residents or businesses. Horrific as it is, we have to not only work on the city, we have to defend Oakland's reputation. That's why when friends elsewhere in the Bay Area and the country make generalizations or tasteless jokes at Oakland's expense, I stop them their tracks. Not only do I not think it's funny, I won't be a passive party in reinforcing a negative image for the city.

On the media criticism front, not to kick the Chronicle while it's down, but their article on the shooting was rambling and disorganized, and I'm glad to see the Oakland Tribune stepping up with excellent coverage. I'm glad to see that we can expect (as we should) that our own city's paper covers events here better than the Chronicle. To this end, once again props to Zennie for doing original reporting and getting out there on other media. The vast majority of bloggers, including myself, are opinion jockeys whose only real journalism comes from links to original reporting and data we find elsewhere. It's exactly because there aren't many Zennies that losing traditional print media with professional journalists is a disaster.