I focused on murders because the grandparent DID mention them, and because murder rate is much less exposed to reporting bias than other crimes.
I agree that murder is one of the crimes least likely to go unreported, but they are still subject to the same pressures (even if those pressures are less efficacious). I'd be interested to see, for instance, if the ratio of murders to missing people changes as you move up the socioeconomic ladder.
But there's another ratio - violent crimes per murder. If there's 100 assaults for every murder in wealthy white communities, and 100 assaults for every murder in poor black communities, that ALSO tells us something.
Murders are harder to skew. That means that you should focus MORE on those statistics, not less.
No. I didn't mention murders - is there a reason you're focused on them?
I'm saying that the same forces the put poor communities of color at risk for crime also likely disrupt the collection of statistics in more wealthy & powerful communities. This is important because both sides of the ratio matter. I believe there's more crime in vulnerable communities and I believe that we likely over-estimate how much more. This generates statistics that support the over-policing of poor communities.