Ormstown murder, a sidelight
A woman was murdered this week in Ormstown, and her father has been arrested. The reason I’m posting this story is secondary. In this La Presse piece, a neighbour is quoted as saying how quiet and peaceful the town usually is, then “Ça arrive à Montréal d’habitude, ce genre d’affaires là !”
I keep track of incidents on a Google map, and have been struck this year by a pattern. If you activate two layers – island homicides and off-island homicides – you’ll notice that men have been getting killed in the city, while women get killed in the suburbs. I don’t know whether this is a persistent pattern – a lot of the city homicides are seemingly gang‑related – or just a matter of chance this year. But Mme Ormstown was making an unfair generalization.
Chris 11:27 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
>“Ça arrive à Montréal d’habitude, ce genre d’affaires là !”
Well she’s not wrong, is she? But the reason is likely simply due to there being way more people in Montreal. Per capita, it’s probably similar everywhere.
Nicholas 11:32 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
Also of note is there are as many murders on-island as off-island (11). The idea that cities are dangerous is pervasive, and based on faulty statistics (though it depends on the city). So far this year Ormstown has had 50x the murder rate of Montreal Island, but that’s just an artifact of murders being rare events that must be whole numbers and Ormstown having 1/500th the population. If the rates were the same, Ormstown would go 15 more years without a murder, and people would feel safe there even though the rate is the same. But all the other small towns would, on average, get their share of murders until it looped around.
Humans are just bad at statistics, news doesn’t help, and this person probably rarely goes into the city and believes everything in the JdM.
Kate, as to your point, maybe it’s a trend, I’d believe it though would love a study. But it’s also long been true that if you’re not in a gang the most likely way you’ll get murdered is by your family or someone you know. (To be fair, I guess gangs are also family, in a way.)