Thread: BIG CITY MURDERS JUMP MORE THAN 10%

Big-city murders jump more than 10 pct. By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 9, 6:32 AM ET



WASHINGTON - The murder rate jumped by more than 10 percent among dozens of large U.S. cities since 2004, a study shows in the latest sign of the end of a national lull in violent crime.

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Robberies also spiked, as did felony assaults and attacks with guns, according to the report to be released Friday by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law enforcement think tank.

FBI data similarly has shown a rise in violent crime — if not as dramatic — since 2004. The Justice Department says crime was historically low that year.

"Two years worth of double-digit increases in violent crime demonstrates an unmistakable change in the extent and the nature of crime in America," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the nonprofit think tank that is funded in part by the Justice Department, as well as corporations and private foundations.

"There are those that say this is a statistical blip, an aberration," Wexler said. "After two years, this is no aberration."

The report surveyed crime rates in 56 large U.S. metropolitan areas including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Washington. It did not include violent crime rates in New York, the nation's largest city, which did not participate in the voluntary survey. An advance copy of the report, titled "Violent Crime in America: 24 Months of Alarming Trends," was obtained by The Associated Press.

The report compared crime statistics from 2004, 2005 and 2006 and tracked how much they had changed over the 24 months beginning Jan. 1, 2005.

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd called the department "concerned about the increase in violent crime in some cities and towns" as was reported in FBI data released last fall. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has asked Congress to spend $200 million next year to help cities and regions combat gangs, illicit drugs and gun offenses. "The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring the safety of every Amrican city and town," Boyd said.

The forum's study found:

_Forty of the 56 surveyed police departments, or 71 percent, saw homicide rates increase since 2004. That translated into an overall 10.2 percent jump in murders. Between 2005 and 2006, the increase in murders was much lower: 2.8 percent.

_Robberies rose among the cities by 6 percent since 2005 and 12 percent since 2004. Between 75 and 80 percent of the departments surveyed saw a spike in robberies.

_Felony assaults dipped slightly, by 2 percent, between 2005 and 2006, but rose slightly, by 3 percent, since 2004.

_Gun assaults saw a 1 percent boost from 2005 but spiked by nearly 10 percent during the 24-month period.

The Justice Department has been keeping a close eye on crime rates after seeing a 2.2 percent rise nationwide in rapes, murder, robbery, aggravated assault and other violence in 2005 — the first increase since 2001.

Last fall, mayors and police chiefs reported seeing recent spikes in violent crime, calling for greater support from federal law enforcement agencies that have been distracted by counterterror missions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070309/ap_ ... ime_cities

Interesting that they don't mention illegal alien crime as the major source of this rise.

Here's a related article:



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.”


http://link.toolbot.com/nytimes.com/68254

You cannot tell me there is not a DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN THE INCREASE IN VIOLENT CRIME AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.

DEPORT AND THE CRIME WILL IMMEDIATELY GO DOWN.

I agree CC. Does the increase in crime (per-capita) correlate with the number of illegal immigrants?

I need to study this a bit but I dont' have time right now.

You can download the report here.

http://www.policeforum.org/

Dixie

Thanks Dixie.

Last fall, mayors and police chiefs reported seeing recent spikes in violent crime, calling for greater support from federal law enforcement agencies

Could they mean ICE??

There is a direct corrolation between rising crime and illegal aliens. Also the gang factor which is spiraling out of control also contributes to the rise in crime. The fact that these people are arrested over and over and not deported also contributes to the rise in crime. Our courtrooms are full of illegal aliens that have committed crimes in this country and are out on bail to commit even more crimes and then flee. There are murders daily in sections of Boston and other cities and the police departments do nothing to curb this violence. All they cry for is more overtime yet even with getting that they are not effective in reducing crime in our cities. The number of illegal aliens in the state of MA has risen steadily in the past 5 years and many crimes are committed by this group that is not deported even when they are arrested for crimes.