26 homicides in Seattle in 2012

[link to seattletimes.com]

This is incredibly low for a big city like Seattle. The last murder in the city before the new year was in the last week of October,2012. You look at places like Atlanta [the City of Atlanta has 430,000 vs 620,00 Seattle] are bragging about having 'only' 87 murders, which is low for them Atlanta peaked at over 260-odd murders in the mid 1970s,when it's population was far smaller. Seattle's highest murder for one year was 64.

Washington DC a similar sized city peaked at around 500 murders in one year, and was still 100, but that's low for them.

Houston averaged hundreds of murders per year in the early-mid 80s when it had 700,000. It went from 269 in 2010 to 198 in 2011,with a population of 2,000,000.

Chicago has had a record high murder rate this year. NYC has had a continuing decline from around 2000 per year in the late 80s-early 90s to under 400, with a population of 8,000,000.

St. Louis, Detroit, Atlanta, D.C., Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Philly all are big cities with high murder rates.

Even Texas cities like Dallas and Houston have high crime rates, although their murder rates are way down from their peaks.