The Pittsburgh police department stopped providing data on the race of crime suspects to the FBI after 2019. The state of Pennsylvania also does not provide data on the race of suspects.
Surprisingly, the Allegheny County Department of Human Resources provides some nice data. They have a three-category racial breakdown of all known suspects from 2010 through 2021.
Across these twelve years, 85% of known offenders were Black, and 82% of victims were Black.
Note that all Hispanic/Latino victims and offenders are counted as White. Blacks are the only race with an exclusive category.
Black homicide rate vs non-Black rate:
Pittsburgh has about 301k people and is 24% Black. In 2010, the population was 305K and about 26% Black.
If we take an average population of 303k, an average Black percentage of 25%, and average the number of annual homicides of 51.58, then:
Estimated Black homicide rate (43.85 per year / 75.75k people) = 57.9 per 100k
Estimated non-Black homicide rate (7.74/ 227.25k people) = 3.4 per 100k
The Black homicide rate is a staggering 17 times higher than the non-Black rate across this twelve year period.
Pittsburgh’s highest homicide rate in the city’s history was in 2008. Homicide rates in 1993, 2003, and 2014 are also almost tied with this rate. By 2019, the rate had come way down. They began rising again after nationwide BLM riots.
1993: 83 (366k, 22.7 per 100k)
2003: 74 (326k, 22.7 per 100k)
2008: 72 (313k, 23.0 per 100k)
2014: 70 (306k, 22.9 per 100k)
2019: 39 (300k, 13.0 per 100k)
2020: 49 (303k, 16.2 per 100k)
2021: 51 (301k, 16.9 per 100k)
2022: Homicides reached 59 before the end of October.
Recently Pittsburgh had a mass shooting at a funeral for a homicide victim. The funeral was being streamed live on the internet. Six people and one horse were wounded by gunfire.
The suspects are two Black males, Shawn Davis, 19, and Hezekiah Nixon, 16. Nixon is also one of the multiple suspects in a triple shooting on August 7th. Stephone Drayton, 40, was killed in that shooting.
