Who got killed in California in 2016, and why

Every year the California Department of Justice takes a long look at homicides, and the latest report offers mixed news. Killings around the state jumped 3.7 percent from 2015 to 2016, but were down 14.5 percent from a decade ago.

Overall, 1,930 people were slain last year, translating to 4.9 victims per 100,000 state residents. The new report contained some insight into who killed whom — and why. Among the findings:

Guns do the job:

Seventy-two percent of 2016 killings in which the weapon was known were done with a firearm, typically a handgun.

Disputes unseat gangs as top motive:

Thirty-two percent of killings with a known motive were traced to an “unspecified argument”; 31 percent were seen as gang-related; 8 percent were a result of domestic violence; and 7 percent stemmed from robberies, rapes or burglaries. Gangs had been cited as the top motivator for homicides in 2015.

Men dominate the booking logs:

Eighty-nine percent of those arrested for murder were male. Nearly 52 percent of those arrested were ages 18 to 29.

Most victims are male and nonwhite:

More than 83 percent of those killed were male. In cases where a victim’s race was known, 43 percent were Latino, while 30 percent were black and 19 percent were white.

Age varies:

Latino and black victims tended to be younger, with more than 45 percent between 18 and 29. White victims were older, on average, with 56 percent over 40.

Domestic violence cuts along gender lines:

Males (39 percent) were more likely than females (14 percent) to be killed by a stranger. But women were far more likely than men to be slain by a spouse (21 percent for women, compared with less than 1 percent for men). While 49 percent of female victims were killed in their own home, the biggest proportion of male victims (43 percent) lost their lives on a street or sidewalk.

When women are killed in California, domestic violence is the leading cause by far. At least 80 women were slain by domestic abusers in 2016, accounting for 38 percent of the killings of women in which the motive was known. For male victims, the number was 1.6 percent.

BY THE NUMBERS: Violent crime up in CA, according to FBI reports

Death Row grows:

Executions have been on hold in California since 2006, but people are still being given the death penalty. In 2016, there were nine such sentences, after 14 the year before. All of the defendants were men and three-quarters of them were sentenced in Southern California. The high year for death sentences was 1999, with 42.

Just one death penalty was handed down in the Bay Area last year. The defendant was Darnell Williams Jr., who killed 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine in 2013 by spraying bullets into a sleepover party in Oakland’s Dimond neighborhood and then gunned down a 22-year-old man during a robbery two months later in Berkeley.

Six officers were killed:

Six police officers, five men and one woman, were slain in the line of duty last year in California, the highest number in at least a decade. All were killed with guns. In the last 10 years, 37 officers in the state have been killed violently on the job.

Police killings:

The Department of Justice reported that police killed 102 people statewide in 2015, down from 130 the year before, suggesting that a national focus on such cases might be making a difference, at least in California. All but three of those killed were men. Forty-six percent were Latino, 30 percent were white and 19 percent were black.

The state figures, however, do not appear to be comprehensive: A national database created by the Washington Post identified 138 people who were shot to death by California police in 2016, down from the newspaper’s count of 188 the year before.

— Demian Bulwa, dbulwa@sfchronicle.com

Homicide in California

To read the state Department of Justice report on killings in 2016: https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/resources/publications