Baltimore, a city with a population of only 620,000 people, has had more homicides than New York City so far this year.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore had 213 homicides as of Wednesday night. New York, a city with an ever-growing population of over 8.4 million, had only 208 homicides as of that date. The Sun points out that if NYC had the same per capita murder rate as Baltimore, 2,874 people would have been killed as of now, which is over 600 more people than were killed in all of 1990, the year with the most recorded homicides.
Baltimore has long harbored a higher murder rate than New York City, but the city's seen a significant spike in crime and murders this year, which some attribute to exacerbated unrest and tension between cops and citizens since the death of unarmed Freddie Gray in police custody in April. Meanwhile, critics have expressed concern that the city's decision do do away with the NYPD's controversial Stop-and-Frisk program has led to increased shootings in New York and reports have traced the rise in murders and shootings back to the start of the de Blasio administration in 2014, though some caution jumping to attribute any spike in violence to the mayor.
As for the city with the highest murder count this year, Chicago's had 284 homicides to date—they have a population of 2.7 million people.
