While 3,100 American soldiers have died in the war in Iraq, 1,518 Detroiters have been murdered during roughly the same four-year stretch from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2006, says Cox.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1596454,00.html

Murder and Freezing Temps... a connection I've been curious of

NYC Has 9 Days Without Murder, Thanks To Freezing Temps

“Some have argued that there is something about cold that actually inhibits aggression — literally the effect that cold has on the brain,” said Ellen G. Cohn, a professor of criminal justice at Florida International University. She added, however, that she believed cold reduced violence primarily for a different reason: fewer people are likely to be on the streets, which, she said, means “victims and offenders are less likely to come into contact with each other."

http://gothamist.com/2013/01/26/nyc_has_9_days_without_murder_thank.php

Detroit Tops The 2012 List Of America's Most Dangerous Cities

“If you want to change crime at a place you have to change the nature of the place.”

Roman said urban homicides tend to come in four forms: Women killing their children, family members killing each other, people killing other people they know, and “stranger crimes,” such as killings committed during a robbery or a drug deal gone bad. This last category is dwarfed by the other three, he said, and getting smaller all the time. Better policing has a lot to do with it, plus inventions like the cellphone, which has reduced the number of affluent customers wandering into dangerous parts of town to buy drugs

Detroit, where mobsters brought in Canadian whiskey by the boatload in the 1920s, is now a major transit point for foreign-sourced Ecstasy and other drugs, Hakala said.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/10/18/detroit-tops-the-2012-list-of-americas-most-dangerous-cities/2/