We have taken down the YTD Murder Dashboard and users interested in understanding crime trends should visit the Real-Time Crime Index instead. The RTCI is a superior way of evaluating crime trends because it contains more agencies that are standardized by timeframe to enable a longer term view of trends. This enable a constant view of changing trends rather than relying on YTD counts – which are notoriously fickle early in the year – and being able to only compare this year with last.