Status update: No homicides for more than two weeks?

Feb. 26, 2010, 11:22 a.m.

If you keep up with L.A. Now, you have no doubt noticed that homicides have not stopped occurring in Los Angeles County. Yet the last post on this blog is the Feb. 7 killing of Ronald Barron, posted almost two weeks ago.

The Homicide Report relies on a spreadsheet released by the county coroner's office, usually once per week, detailing deaths in the county that have been classified by the coroner as homicides.

We have been requesting this document for the last two weeks but have not yet received it. Once we do, we will continue to update this blog faithfully. In the mean time, you can follow L.A. Now's "crime & courts" and "homicide report" feeds.

-- Ken Schwencke

Six reader comments

Hi Slicc,

There's nothing inherently racist about giving the race or ethnicity of homicide victims. We explain the practice in our FAQ, which you are free to peruse: http://projects.latimes.com/homicide-report/about/#race -- an excerpt:

"Race and ethnicity, like age and gender, are stark predictors of homicide risk. Blacks are much more likely to die from homicide than whites, and Latinos somewhat more likely. Black men, in particular, are extraordinarily vulnerable: They are less than 9% of the county's population, but they represented nearly a third of homicide victims over the three years of data in the Homicide Report. That means one in a 1,000 blacks became homicide victims over those three years, more than 10 times the rate for whites and nearly four times the rate for Latinos.

The Homicide Report recognizes the peril of turning victims into statistics by reducing their lives and deaths to a few facts -- particularly racial designations that provide only the roughest markers of ancestry and history. But given the magnitude of difference in homicide risk along racial and ethnic lines – -and the suffering homicide inflicts on subsets of the population -- we opt to present the racial and ethnic contours of the problem so conspicuous in the coroner's data."

— Ken Schwencke March 1, 2010 at 9:44 p.m.

they're probably not updating you so much because of your approach to your web site. your posting these murders in a racist kind of way. You put so and so "a latino" male or so and so a "black male" to try and seperate all races in los angeles why not just write a 44 year old male was gunned down etc etc... but you have to add that stupid lil black male or latino male bla bla noone gives a damn we know their latino or black or white from the freaking name or picture but who really cares what they are.......are you racist or something? like "ooooooo look how many latino or blacks or whites got killed compare and contrast" who cares wierd racist idiot. a person is a person male is a male female is a female. Personally i wouldent help you post or update you on anything untill you develop some brain matter.

— Slicc Ric March 1, 2010 at 7:53 p.m.

The Homicide Report

Status update: No homicides for more than two weeks?

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Six reader comments