UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 38, Page 3
August 1, 1996
Ford Foundation fellow; Prof. studying homicides, violence in Miami

     Ramiro Martinez is as comfortable in a homicide squad room as he
is in a college classroom.
     The UD assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice is a
serious student of violence, and the Ford Foundation has recognized
the importance of his work and awarded him a postdoctoral fellowship
for the 1996-97 academic year.
      Over the years, Martinez explained, there have been a number of
popular notions that illegal and legal immigration have had a negative
impact on violence in America.
     Reference often is made to the criminals who were mixed in with
the masses during the Cuban boatlift of 1980, when 125,000 refugees
arrived in Florida.
     Using police reports, immigration records and census bureau data,
Martinez had been involved in attempting to find a relationship
between immigration and the murder rate in Miami.
     The interest grew out of his doctoral dissertation topic, which
focuses on violent criminal behavior.
     A native of San Antonio, he received his bachelor's and master's
degrees in criminal justice and sociology from Southwest Texas State
University. After earning a doctorate from Ohio State University, he
joined the Delaware faculty as a lecturer in 1992.
     Martinez noticed that in the national criminal justice records,
little attention had been paid to the ethnic differences of criminals,
especially if they happened to be Hispanic (Latino).
     Oftentimes, he said, they were classified as "White" or "Other."
There were, he explained, definite racial categories for other groups,
but not Latinos. He also discovered that there had been little effort
to identify the extent and possible causes of crime related to
Hispanics-the country's third largest ethnic group.
     During the past year, Martinez has spent considerable time out in
the field in Miami, working with homicide detectives and reviewing
police arrest records from 1978-1995, most of which are stored in the
department's archives.
     Both the City of Miami Police Department and the Dade County
Medical Examiner's Office are interested in Martinez' findings.
     Martinez copies so much material that he said he ships his own
copy machine to the police offices when he is planning a visit. They
have limited copying capabilities, and the immense number of
reproductions he needs would tie up their machine for extended periods
of time.
     The criminologist said he is interested in determining if the
influx of a large number of immigrants has had an impact on homicides
in Miami, how criminals are identified as to race, culture and
ethnicity and what impact other factors-such as unemployment, poverty
and political issues-have on Latino social problems.
     While much of his research involves the examination of records
and reports, Martinez has gone on calls with detectives, checking out
certain crime scenes and interviewing active and retired police
officers.
     He has walked the street corners of such well-known urban
neighborhoods as Liberty City, Little Havana, Little Haiti and Coconut
Grove and gained a better insight into the underlying causes of some
violent crimes.
     "This project," Martinez said, "has become enormously satisfying
because of the fine professionals in the Miami Police Department
Homicide Unit. They are truly committed professionals who are
interested in helping educators learn more about Latino violence. It
is exciting for me that they have provided a unique opportunity to
conduct this very important piece of research."
     Both the University of Miami and Florida International University
have invited Martinez to use their facilities as a visiting scholar,
while on the Ford Foundation Fellowship.
     In May 1996, Martinez's article, "Latinos and Lethal Violence:
The Impact of Poverty and Inequality," was published in the research
journal Social Problems.
     That study stressed the need for addressing the link between
socioeconomic conditions and urban Latino homicide.
     Following his upcoming work that focuses on violent crime in
Miami, a city with an unusually high number of immigrant Latinos in
its population, Martinez is interested in conducting a study in a city
like Philadelphia or Washington, D.C., which has a distinct Latino
population but one that is more representative of other larger cities
throughout the U.S.
     The findings of such a study, he said, would be applicable and
useful to a larger number of urban areas.
                                                         -Ed Okonowicz