MURDER IN MIAMI

LIKE SO MANY OTHER ISSUES, MURDER IN MIAMI REFLECTS THE MASSIVE INCOME INEQUALITY AND RACIAL DEVIDES THAT PLAGUE THE CITY

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DECEMBER 16, 2016

A couple months ago, I started thinking about who gets murdered in Miami. I was prompted by the information that I had received about the destruction of homicide evidence housed in a rotting shipping container under the I-95 Overpass.

Like anyone who watches local TV news at 11 PM, murder and mayhem is  often the lead story of the night, so I was more than aware that folks were regularly getting killed on Miami's streets, and that a lot of them seemed to be young, poor and Black.

The discovery of the destroyed homicide evidence got me to thinking not only about how many people actually get murdered in Miami, but how the families of these particular murder victims had been affected by the news of the destroyed evidence.

Since October 20th I've been trying to get the Chief of Police to give me a copy of the list of 564 murder victims whose cases might have been affected by the destruction of evidence, but unfortunately the Chief, on top of being lazy and a liar is also a dick when it comes to obeying the public records law, and to date he has refused to even acknowledge my request, much less comply with it.

In the meantime, I went to the Medical Examiner's office - aka, the morgue - to get whatever information they had on murders in the City of Miami.

As an aside, I know that most folks will never had a reason to go to the Medical Examiner's office, but in recent months I've had to go there several times, and I want to tell you that the folks there are the nicest, most cooperative and helpful public employees I've ever dealt with in Miami-Dade County.  

If you ask for information and they have it, they give it to you without any of the usual bullshit that you get from so many other agencies and public employees about "who are you,' 'why do you want that information,' and all of the other crap that you often get from public employees who either think they "own" the documents you want, or figure that the information that you're asking for will prove to be embarrassing to them.

Anyhow, I asked for information on all of the murders that had taken place within the city limits of Miami from January 1, 2010 to December 5, 2016.

They provided me with a PDF of the information for those years, and here are just a couple of the highlights of what that information revealed.  During those years, 503 people were murdered in Miami. The overwhelming majority of those murdered were men. Of the 503 total people murdered, 353 were Black.  

423 were shot to death. Most interesting is that of the 503 murders, only 59 of them were committed ether on Miami Avenue, or east of Miami Avenue. 444 murders were committed west of Miami Avenue.

Below is a portion of the list that provides some of that information. Because the information is in an Excel PDF file, I found no way that I could upload it so that the all of the columns of information would open without the document breaking up.

If you would like a PDF copy of the Excel file that provides a lot of other information including the specific addresses of where these murders took place - a great resources from which to create overlay maps - send me an email.

The one thing that you can take away from this information is that Miami is indeed a tale of two cities when it comes to murder, and that your odds of staying alive are greatly increased if you never venture west of Miami Avenue.

It's Miami, Bitches!

City of Miami Homicides by al_crespo on Scribd