The ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties of Hallowe’en have left, and, according to the Philadelphia Police Department, there have been 358n homicides through the end of October in the City of Brotherly Love. Yes, that number is a great improvement over the same date during the past three years, but, if you open the website, you’ll see that, for other than the last three years, it is a higher to date total than any of the other years listed, going back through 2007. More, 358 is higher than the entire year totals for 2008 through 2019.

Oh, that “*Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2021” footnote? That’s wrong; it’s the annual percentage change compared to the same day in the previous year, 2022, not 2021, a sloppiness I reported back on April 27^th, and something I reported to the Police Department vis Twitter back then; it still hasn’t been corrected.

So, how do the numbers work out? Hallowe’en was the 304^th day of the year, which means Philly has been seeing 1.1776 homicides per day, which, multiplied by 365 days in the year, yields 429.84 total murders for 2023. That’s certainly a great improvement over the past three years, but, assuming 430 homicides for the year, 2023 will still be higher than any year since 1995, other, of course, than the last three. And, if the number winds up 430, it will mean that the triumvirate of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw^[1]Miss Outlaw resigned as of September 22^nd to take a lower-level job with the Port Authority of New York, because she knew she was toast in Philadelphia. will have averaged slightly more than 500 homicides per year, 501.75 to be exact, during their four years together. For that number to drop below 500 would require the city to see only 422 killings this year, possible but improbable.