For immediate release: Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Contact: Jolene Nieves Byzon, 215-300-1071
Philadelphia, PA – As part of an effort to better understand trends in Philadelphia’s gun violence crisis and rising homicides, the Office of the City Controller released an interactive map of shooting victims. The tool shows the locations of shootings, denoting fatal and non-fatal shootings, annually since 2015 (filtered by year) and includes information about the age, race/ethnicity, and gender of the victim, as well as incidents with associated court cases. Data can be viewed as a heat map or as individual location points.
“Philadelphia is in the middle of a gun violence crisis. More than 1,400 Philadelphians have been shot this year and we’re on target for the most homicides since 1997 if the current trend continues. These victims are more than statistics. As a city, we’re failing them, their families, and our communities,” said City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart. “My office is committed to transparency and data analysis and our goal is to shine a light on issues that need immediate action. It is my hope that the City can use this to inform gun violence reduction strategies and to pinpoint resources, while the public can use it to track the progress of those strategies and hold the administration accountable.”
The tool pulls publicly available data from the following sources:
- Total homicides – Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) Crime Stats;
- Shooting victims data – Open Data Philly (maintained by the PPD Statistics Unit); and
- Information on court cases – United Judicial System of Pennsylvania.
The data on shooting victims and total homicides will be updated daily in the application. Court case data will be updated weekly.
2020 Data
As of September 14, 2020, there have been 319 homicides and 1461 reported shooting victims in Philadelphia. Approximately 17% of shooting incidents (250 shootings) have been classified as fatal. Approximately 15% of all shooting incidents in 2020 have an associated court case. Shooting victims are overwhelming male (89%) and Black (85%).
View the the mapping tool here. The software used to develop the application is publicly available on the office’s GitHub.