By Adam Pagnucco.
Yesterday, we looked at the geography of violent crime in MoCo. Today, let’s look at demographics.
To assess demographics, we looked at zip code population data from the Census Bureau’s 2017-21 American Community Survey. First, let’s examine violent crime rates by zip code median household income.
There is a clear correlation here: zip codes with higher household incomes tend to have lower rates of violent crime.
Now let’s look at population percentage by zip code of the four major racial groups: Asians, Blacks, Latinos and White Non-Latinos.
Heavily Latino zip codes had the highest rates of violent crime during the period. Heavily Black zip codes also tended to have a bit more crime but the correlation was weaker. On the other side of the spectrum, zip codes with high White percentages and low Latino and Black percentages had the lowest rates of violent crime.
Finally, let’s examine population density.
Population density was positively associated with violent crime. The densest zip codes in the county are 20910 (Downtown Silver Spring), 20912 (Takoma Park), 20903 (Long Branch), 20886 (Montgomery Village) and 20902 (Wheaton). All had above-average violent crime rates for the county, though Long Branch was not far above the average.
There is significant correlation among the types of zip codes listed above. Many zip codes with low population densities like 20812 (Glen Echo), 20818 (Cabin John), 20837 (Poolesville), 20838 (Barnesville), 20839 (Beallsville) and 20842 (Dickerson) are overwhelmingly White. In the five densest zip codes, people of color are the majority. Likewise, higher income zip codes tend to have higher White percentages than lower income zip codes. These correlations introduce a lot of nuance in any analysis of crime.
Police incident data does not allow establishment of causation. But the data above suggests that victims of violent crime are disproportionately low-income people, people of color and people who live in or frequent urban areas. Progressives who favor defunding police need to consider that these groups will be disproportionately harmed by removal of police service. The county’s land use strategy of encouraging dense, downtown transit-oriented development also requires police service in such areas to protect quality of life.
Next, we will move on to property crime.