Science Talk

AnAmericanCitizen · Guest

March 9, 2007
Violent Crime in Cities Shows Sharp Surge
By KATE ZERNIKE
Violent crime rose by double-digit percentages in cities across the country over the
last two years, reversing the declines of the mid-to-late 1990s, according to a new
report by a prominent national law enforcement association.

While overall crime has been declining nationwide, police officials have been warning
of a rise in murder, robbery and gun assaults since late 2005, particularly in
midsize cities and the Midwest. Now, they say, two years of data indicates that the
spike is more than an aberration.

“There are pockets of crime in this country that are astounding,” said Chuck Wexler,
the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which is releasing the
report on Friday. “It’s gone under the radar screen, but it’s not if you’re living on
the north side of Minneapolis or the south side of Los Angeles or in Dorchester,
Mass.”

Local police departments blame several factors: the spread of methamphetamine use in
some Midwestern and Western cities, gangs, high poverty and a record number of people
being released from prison. But the biggest theme, they say, is easy access to guns
and a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them, particularly
among young people.

“There’s a mentality among some people that they’re living some really violent video
game,” said Chris Magnus, the police chief in Richmond, Calif., north of San
Francisco, where homicides rose 20 percent and gun assaults 65 percent from 2004 to
2006. “What’s disturbing is that you see that the blood’s real, the death’s real.”

The research forum surveyed 56 cities and sheriffs’ departments — as small as
Appleton Wis., about 100 miles northwest of Milwaukee, and as large as Chicago and
Houston. Over all, from 2004 to 2006, homicides increased 10 percent and robberies 12
percent.

Aggravated assault, which is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by a means
likely to produce severe injury or death, according to an F.B.I. Web site, increased
at a relatively modest 3 percent, but aggravated assaults with guns rose 10 percent.
And some cities saw far higher spikes.

Homicides increased 20 percent or more in cities including Boston, Cincinnati,
Cleveland, Hartford, Memphis and Orlando, Fla. Robberies went up more than 30 percent
in places including Detroit, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Milwaukee. Aggravated assaults
with guns were up more than 30 percent in cities like Boston, Sacramento, St. Louis
and Rochester.

Seventy-one percent of the cities surveyed had an increase in homicides, 80 percent
had an increase in robberies, and 67 percent reported an increase in aggravated
assaults with guns.

This study relies on numbers from cities, rather than yearly F.B.I. totals, which are
typically released in the fall. The group collected similar numbers last year, and
those numbers were largely borne out by the data from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.

Police chiefs say the trends in aggravated assaults are particularly alarming. They
are often considered a better gauge of violence than homicides; the difference
between the two is often poor marksmanship or good medical care.

“Had we not had some of the trauma rooms we have here in Rochester, our homicide
numbers would be higher,” said Mayor Robert Duffy, who served as a police chief for
seven years.

While murder rates hit 11-year highs in places like Boston, police officials note
that they are not seeing the highs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crack
cocaine fueled spikes, particularly in large cities. Some cities like Denver and
Washington had declines in homicides.

Still, the overall trend is mirrored in other places not covered by the report. New
York City, for example, which had enjoyed remarkable declines and seemed immune to
the rising murder rate elsewhere in 2005, reported a 10 percent increase in homicides
in 2006. In Chicago, which had been cited as another model of declining violence,
homicides rose 4 percent from 2004 to 2006.

Police officials say the violence tends to happen among young men in their late teens
and early to mid-20s. In some cases, it is random. But in many cases, it is among
people who know one another, or between gangs, as a way to settle disputes. Arguments
that 20 years ago would have led to fistfights, police chiefs say, now lead to guns.

“There’s really no rhyme or reason with these homicides,” said Edward Davis, the
police commissioner in Boston. “An incident will occur involving disrespect, a fight
over a girl. Then there’s a retaliation aspect where if someone shoots someone else;
their friends will come back and shoot at the people that did it.”

In Richmond, Chief Magnus said he would often go to the scene of a crime and discover
that 30 to 75 rounds had been fired. “It speaks to the level of anger, the
indiscriminate nature of the violence,” he said.

“I go to meetings, and you start talking to some of the people in the neighborhoods
about who’s been a victim of violence, and people can start reciting: ‘One of my sons
was killed, one of my nephews,’ ” he said. “It’s hard to find people who haven’t been
touched by this kind of violence.”

Many chiefs blame the federal government for reducing police programs that they say
helped cut crime in the 1990s. But they also say the problem is economic and social.
“We seem to be dealing with an awful lot of people who have zero conflict-resolution
skills,” Chief Magnus said.

In Rochester, Mr. Duffy said his city had the state’s highest dropout rate — half of
all students drop out— and the highest child poverty rate, with 40 percent of
children under 18 living below poverty level.

“There’s a direct correlation between the kids who drop out of our high schools who
get involved in selling drugs and who end up in homicides,” Mr. Duffy said.

As a police chief, Mr. Duffy brought in programs that had reduced crime in other
cities: a project cease-fire to end gun violence, a Compstat data collection program
to identify the areas of most stubborn crime. But it has not helped.

“We’re doing all the right things consistently, but we have not seen relief,” he
said. “It takes much more than law enforcement.”

Me · Guest

On Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:14:05 -0800, AnAmericanCitizen
<NoAmnesty@earthlink.net> wrote:

The Ghost In The Machine · Guest

In alt.politics.usa.misc, Me
<me@my.computer>
wrote
on Fri, 09 Mar 2007 22:24:10 -0500
<br84v25gd7hm2mevl8urnnlcsso0rmqb1l@4ax.com>:

Me · Guest

On Fri, 9 Mar 2007 20:11:53 -0800, The Ghost In The Machine
<ewill@sirius.tg00suus7038.net> wrote:

Solaris · Guest