This isn’t the gotcha moment you think it is. However, it is a good way to bring up the inherently tricky nature of reporting crime statistics. For example, if you search cities by murder rate, you don’t always get the same top results due to methodology; New Orleans is sometimes listed as the top city. However, you can also list cities by violent crime rates. Little Rock Arkansas, Milwaukee Wisconsin, Cleveland Ohio, & Kansas City Missouri are frequently listed in the top ten on these lists, but they are not frequently described as “war zones” in the media. Incidentally, they are also not majority black cities.

Additionally, this methodology is also predicated on an assumption that per capita is the best way to report crime. However, if you look at total homicides, for example, Philadelphia had 561 homicides in 2021 compared to Baltimore’s 337, almost double the amount of homicides. Put another way, an average day in Philadelphia has almost double the number of murders compared to Baltimore. NYC had 485 (depending on source) You can also look at it by area. If you use Philadelphia’s 561 murders and divide it by 142.7 square miles, you get 3.9 murders per square mile compared to Baltimore’s 3.66 per square mile or Milwaukee’s 1.99.

Using the term “war zone” is also sensationalist and disingenuous. For example, the current death toll in Ukraine is north of 200,000. All that is to say, more than one thing can be true. Baltimore can have a high crime rate and still have cool things that the media doesn’t report on, other large cities can have cool things and lots of crime that isn’t focused on as much in national conversation.