MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-08-02 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Murder Spike
|
Can this be contributed to a COVID-19 policy that locked everyone up in
there homes?
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wsj.com
Homicide Spike Hits Most Large U.S. Cities
Jon Hilsenrath
12-15 minutes
The murder rate is still low compared with previous decades, and other
types of serious crime have dropped in the past few months. But
researchers, police and some residents fear the homicide spike, if not
tamed, could threaten an urban renaissance spurred in part by more than
two decades of declining crime.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of crime statistics among the nation’s 50
largest cities found that reported homicides were up 24% so far this
year, to 3,612. Shootings and gun violence also rose, even though many
other violent crimes such as robbery fell.
Police, researchers, mayors and community leaders see a confluence of
forces at work in the homicide spike. Institutions that keep city
communities safe have been destabilized by lockdown and protests against
police. Lockdowns and recession also mean tensions are running high and
streets have been emptied of eyes and ears on their communities.
Some cities with long-running crime problems saw their numbers rise,
including Philadelphia, Detroit and Memphis, Tenn. Chicago, the
worst-hit, has tallied more than one of every eight homicides.
Less-violent places have been struck as well, such as Omaha, Neb., and
Phoenix. In all, 36 of the 50 cities studied saw homicide rise at
double-digit rates, representing all regions of the country.
“I was surprised at the consistency of the increase across all of the
different cities,” said Jens Ludwig, a University of Chicago professor
and director of its Crime Lab, which researches crime, after examining
the Journal data.
Rap Sheets
Homicide is rising in most big U.S. cities, with wide geographic spread,
while other crimes are falling.
Percentage change in total homicides compared with previous year in 15
of the largest cities in the U.S.
Total number of homicides so far this year in 15 of the largest cities
in the U.S.
Note: Data as of July 27 (Dallas); July 26 (Charlotte, Chicago, Fort
Worth, Jacksonville and Philadelphia); July 19 (New York); July 18 (Los
Angeles); July 8 (Houston); July 6 (Columbus); June 30 (Austin, San
Antonio, San Diego and San Jose); May 31 (Phoenix)
Source: WSJ analysis of cities' police departments data
Police and academics who study crime have long debated why homicide
rates rise or fall, citing variables including demographics,
incarceration rates, drug epidemics, the economy and policing. That
debate has been thrown a new curve: fallout from the pandemic. Moreover
it is complicated by the fact that other kinds of crime are falling.
Reported robberies were down 11% among the 41 largest cities that made
robbery data available.
One explanation for the divergence between homicide and other crime
might reside in what is known as “routine activity theory,” which holds
that crime is a function of three factors: The supply of offenders, the
supply of victims and the intervention between the two by society’s
guardians—including police, schools and churches.
Police in many departments said robberies, burglaries and rapes are down
so far this year because more people stayed home during Covid-19
lockdowns, leaving fewer prospective victims on the streets, in bars or
other public places. Burglars weren’t likely to break into homes filled
with people under lockdown, they say.
Homicides, on the other hand, are up because violent criminals have been
emboldened by the sidelining of police, courts, schools, churches and an
array of other social institutions by the reckoning with police and the
pandemic, say analysts and law enforcement officials in several cities.
Anecdotally, many police departments point to a rising tide of gang
violence, in which rival groups of mainly young offenders battle over
control of neighborhoods, catching rivals and innocents in the process.
Schools let out young adults in March because of the pandemic and
after-school activities largely stopped. Churches and other social
institutions were restrained for the sake of social distancing. Police
first were hit by coronavirus and then blowback in the neighborhoods
they patrol after the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a Black
man, while in police custody.
“Gangs are built around structure and lack thereof,” said Jeff La Blue,
a spokesman for the Fresno police department. “With schools being closed
and a lot of different businesses being closed, the people that normally
would have been involved in positive structures in their lives aren’t
there.” He noted shootings and stabbings have soared in his community.
“Nerves are high. People are short on money.”
Candles burn in front of a memorial for 10-year-old Lena Nunez, who was
killed by a stray bullet in June while watching television with her
brother in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood.
Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Some researchers say the upward trend in murder might be evidence of a
fraying of the social order. “Everything that society does that might
shape public safety was turned upside-down during the pandemic,” Mr.
Ludwig said.
Police say homicide increases are hitting low-income, mostly Black and
Latino communities especially hard. The crime maps published by many
cities show homicides aren’t up in city centers where antipolice
protests are happening, but instead in low-income neighborhoods outside
of those city centers.
In Portland, for instance, the police department didn’t see any
homicides around protests in July, a department spokeswoman said.
Through June, its latest crime maps show, all of its homicides happened
east and south of the city center.
Mr. Ludwig studied maps of homicides in Chicago and found killings were
concentrated in the south and west, “the most disadvantaged
neighborhoods that were already suffering the most from long-standing
economic challenges and the coronavirus,” he said. The pace is
accelerating: Of 433 homicides in Chicago as of July 26, 106 were in the
previous 28 days.
Mr. Trump has blamed increased violence in U.S. cities on Democratic
Party leadership in hard-hit municipalities. His decision to send
federal agents into U.S. cities, he said, was to help fight violent crime.
In addition to sending federal agents to Portland to protect government
property from protesters, the White House said it is sending agents to
other cities including Detroit, Albuquerque, Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas
City and Cleveland as part of a program aimed at curbing violent crime.
The program, known as Operation LeGend, is named after LeGend Taliferro,
a boy who was killed in Kansas City this year.
Though many of America’s biggest cities are run by Democrats, the rise
in killings is a bipartisan problem. Homicides are rising at a
double-digit rate in most of the big cities run by Republicans,
including Miami, San Diego, Omaha, Tulsa, Okla., and Jacksonville, Fla.,
as well as in cities run by Democrats and in the two major cities run by
Independents: San Antonio and Las Vegas.
The Journal’s statistical analysis was based on individual police
department reports about crime in their cities. Some public-information
departments made data available. The University of Chicago’s Crime Lab
helped fill in some blanks and reviewed the Journal data.
Chicago police say conflict springs from tit-for-tat gang violence,
including drive-by shootings. In one recent attack on the city’s South
Side, shooters in a Chevrolet Malibu fired 60 times from a car, injuring
15 people attending the funeral of a man who himself had been killed in
a drive-by shooting days before, apparently in retaliation for an
earlier shooting, according to local reports. People at the latest
funeral returned gunfire.
Share your thoughts
What should be done to address the homicide spike in U.S. cities? Join
the conversation below.
The recession and coronavirus lockdowns are hurting programs aimed at
curbing the violence in Chicaco, said Eduardo Bocanegra, senior director
of READI Chicago, a mostly privately funded program that provides
employment and counseling services to men at risk of becoming, at turns,
victims of violence or attackers.
“Men in my program are being killed right now,” he said, noting that
five people in the program, which currently has about 220 people
enrolled, were killed in the five weeks from Memorial Day to July 4,
including one who was walking away from a confrontation.
State and city grants that he expected to come through were put on hold.
Mr. Bocanegra has cut staff from 120 to 100 and trimmed enrollment in
the program from 18 months to 12. It has gotten harder to place men in
the program into jobs, he said, and he worries it is only going to get
tougher to tap funds as organizations fight for scarce public and
philanthropic dollars.
Michael LiPetri, chief of crime control strategies at the New York
Police Department, said the city’s rise in homicide is worst in
Brooklyn, where shootings have broken out at large gatherings such as
barbecues in public parks and outdoor dice games.
The department is moving officers to Brooklyn from larceny units, where
the work has slowed. City policy has made it harder to keep the peace,
Mr. LiPetri said. He cited a city council decision in June that exposes
New York officers to criminal charges if they kneel on the chest or back
of suspects. Public anger at police is also an impediment, he said: “It
is impossible for a New York City police officer to break up those large
gatherings.”
New York, Detroit and Fresno officers all said the easing of bail
requirements in their states likely returned some dangerous criminals to
the streets.
Mayor Di Blasio has acknowledged police concerns about the new
restrictions on police tactics but in July said, “I believe we can make
it work.” In a statement to the Journal, the New York mayor’s office
added, “It’s a perfect storm out there. Not only are the courts not
fully open, but don’t fail to notice that there is a historic pandemic
and economic crisis right now.”
Police remove the body of a shooting victim on July 7 in the Brooklyn
borough of New York City.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Homicide this year is still far lower than it was in the past. In 1990,
for example, New York City alone had 2,262 murders, about equal to the
total number of killings in the nation’s largest 25 cities so far this year.
Between 1993 and 2018, violent crime in U.S. cities dropped 54%. After
2000, the pace of that decline in cities was faster than in suburbs and
rural communities, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics crime
victimization surveys.
It is hard to tell if the long-run trends that transformed many U.S.
cities for the better are now reversing, or if instead this will be a
spike. A great deal hangs on that question, experts say.
“If the city descends into the level of danger that we saw in the 1970s,
that will be a challenge for all of America,” said Edward Glaeser, an
urban economist at Harvard University.
Write to Jon Hilsenrath at jon.hilsenrath-at-wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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