Victims:
George Giguere.
Leon Taylor and his wife Beatrice Taylor
Reetpaul Singh Rana
Rosemarie Boyd
Garrett Benson
☛TS Humboldt County homicide: 2008
According to records kept by the Humboldt County Coroner's Office, since 1980, there has been an average of 8.5 homicides per year in the county. That rate has fluctuated over the decades, but does not seem to indicate any particular trend.
The lowest number of homicides in Humboldt County in 28 years is four. That has occurred twice, once in 1998 and again in 2005.
Former county Coroner Frank Jager, newly elected Eureka city councilman, said that ultimately the homicide rate shows little change over the last 28 years.
”It's pretty steady,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “It seems to spike every few years.”
The highest number of homicides happened in 1982, when 22 people were killed at the hands of others.
Seems like a low rate. But:
Humboldt County has a population of 125,518 people, according to the 2000 U.S. census. Jager said given the number of people living in the county, the homicide rate seems high.
Marin County, located in the North San Francisco Bay Area, has an estimated population of 247,289, and the third highest mean personal income in the country. According to California Department of Justice information, in Marin County, between the years of 1997 and 2006, there was an average 2.5 homicides every year.
In neighboring Mendocino County, which in 2000 maintained a population of 86,265, there was an annual average of 5.8 homicides over the same 10-year period.
There are some risks to comparing those different numbers. Although the crimes are reported similarly to the DOJ, the time periods and populations are not the same. Additionally, Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen said problems arise when comparing averages of low numbers -- a spike one year can skew the entire average.
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