The FBI released final crime figures for 2020 today, and there were no surprises:
Murders were up by nearly 30%, clocking in at about 6.5 per 100,000. Meanwhile, violent crime in general was up by only a few percent, hitting 400 per 100,000. This remains something of a mystery since normally the two move up and down together.
The tricky question is why the US murder rate rose during Covid, when similar measures few in most OECD countries.
Changes in police behavior?
BLM related changes?
Something else?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57070883
I don’t think police prevent these murders. They just clean up the mess afterwards. The police are mostly useless when it comes to murder prevention.
Shooting victims not able to get timely enough ambulance or emergency department care due to COVID bed shortages?
Someone on this blog suggested tracking attempted murder rates in the last year plus, versus previous years, & if decline in failed homicide numbers matches increase in successful homicides.
I just saw an article showing a marked decrease in murder in the UK in 2020. It's probably due to the prevalence of knife attacks in the UK. When pubs are closed and people aren't out and about, it's less likely that people will get stabbed.
The US is so gun-filled, and guns allow you to commit family annihilations and drive by shootings with ease. You dont need to be near others in public to get a lot of murders here. We've not pnly had an increase in murders, we've also seen sn increase in mass shootings. The mixture of police pull backs and lack of community cooperation reduces the clearance rate, which encourages peoole to seek revenge.
Where i live carjackings also spiked. It would be interesting to see if that is true across the US.
Gangsters doing gang things. Lots of murders in my area are black teens and 20 somethings… with some crazy white people.
All the kids have guns now. They harass each other on social media then go after their enemies at night.
There does seem to be a lot of that in my town lately. Score settling goes on and on.
Murder is up in my county but majority of the murders were domestic violence 🙁
Too many guns in too many hands so instead of cuts and bruises we have murders.
Kind of like this one in Michigan. White kid… probably crazy.
WINDSOR TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WLNS/WOOD) — The three people who were killed near Dimondale last week were family members of the suspect who was arrested, authorities say. The Eaton County Sheriff’s Office did not release their names on Monday.
This is not preventable. But the kid had a gun so…
It's just reflecting how much conservatives really want to kill their neighbors.
I've always believed this was the rationale for the popularity of zombie flicks, of which we've been so inundated in recent decades. You get to shoot down, hack apart, burn your neighbors and friends ... and it's all good! You're the hero!
That is exactly it.
I've been trying for years to find some kind of demographic information on the audience for Walking Dead, but it seems to be a closely held secret.
Was it the COVID gun buying surge? I know people bought a lot of toilet paper. Did they also buy a lot of guns?
I say yes. Too many guns and nothing being done to prevent gun trafficking, little on gun safety and far to many roadblocks in place for us to be able to fix the problem.
Yes, gun sales were way up last year.
A surge in maskholism: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/26/2054464/-Texas-Male-Maskhole-Charged-With-Biting-Hospital-Security-Guard-s-Thumb-To-The-Bone
The murder rate is up, and coincidentally? "Mass" shootings are now on page 10 because they're just another "dog bites man" story. The surfeit of guns may be a factor, but when you look at their distribution, only a tiny, miniscule fraction of people in the US own guns anymore, and they've each got A LOT. And, contrary to popular belief, most of these gun nuts don't make a habit of shooting other people. Mainly targets, clay "pigeons", and every so often, game animals.
I've anecdotally attributed the increased murder rate to pandemic lockdowns, bringing families closer together, maybe too close for comfort. I've seen no actual evidence for this, though.
In short, you probably didn't even need to read this. My apologies!
Well in my neck of the woods murder by family member or housemate is way, way up 🙁 Guns in a household bring no good.
Mk I eyeballs and all but it looks like it went from “300” units to “400” - which isn’t a quarter but a third.
Hmmm. Can we disaggregate murders into crimes of passion vs crimes of calculation? I freely confess I don't know how to go about such a thing, but suspect you'd have to do a tedious state-by-state analysis of what counts as either in crimes of this type.
I expect violent crime was up along with murder .
What the statistics we have is REPORTED crime , not all crime . We only have numbers for a fraction of actual crime . Of course , the fraction for murder is always going to be very high although a bit less than 100%. For other violent crime , the fraction that is reported can vary from fairly high to quite low . Things like a home invasion with assault are going to have a high report rate. Domestic violence quite low.
The reporting rate of something like murder is always going to be high and not change much. So the reported murder increase is a good reflection of reality.
But not so for violent crime which lumps a number of things in one category. First , reporting rates can change due to changes in outside events and they likely went down last year. Second, violent crime that will likely have a higher reporting rate is possibly a lower percentage of total violent crime in 2020 vs 2019. So quite likely that total violent crime was up even if reported numbers were flat.
Consider two explanations. The George floyd/ blm/ antifa protests plus some political protests during the campaign and police defund movement. And the pandemic lockdown, frustration, being home and economic problems .
Re protests and police reaction. The protests did of course cause some direct violence and murders but that does not appear to be a big part of the increase . But it clearly did change police behavior. In cities where protests were widespread, the police were overwhelmed at times and just could not respond to other crimes . But more it changed their behavior to be less proactive and not do anything that might get THEM on TV. Wherher you agree or not , the general police perspective is that some of the protests and publicity were about normal good policing where a good officer could imagine doing the same thing .
And the protests also caused a drop in reporting of crime. Knowing that police were too busy and did not want to be proactive, many citizens just did not bother reporting a minor crime they might have in prior years . And some left wing victims even were reluctant to report crimes if the perpetrator was minority .
And pandemic related, you would expect that things like robberies with a higher report rate would be down if people staying home while domestic violence with low reporting rate went up.
So easy answer to why violent crime is not up while murders are is that violent crime really is up..
Don;t like the actual numbers? Rational thought will make up figures that are more to his liking.
And of course it's the BLM protests. Uppity Negroes protesting against our noble men in blue, what can you expect?
What figures are you possibly saying I made up?
And it is really not so much the " uppity Negroes " in blm marches that caused a decline in police activity . Most blacks at the protests were protesting against police actions which were at least arguably accurately perceived as unjustified and most police officers would not have felt the need to restrain from good police work due to that .
But the activity by the more ideological anarchist activists like antifa , almost entirely non black , and some support for that in the broader left wing community in some cities, plus support for defund the police, was much more of a factor. And that was probably less black than even their proportionate share of the population.
People like you are probably more to blame than the average black inner city resident.
Far more people go missing and are never seen again than official murders., i.e. our murder stats are complete crap because most stranger murders aren't included.
In NYC, the increase in homicides appears to involve primarily ghetto residents killing each other. A strong "no snitching" culture prevents reporting of assaults and rapes in those communities, but dead bodies have to be dealt with, so homicides do get reported. Meanwhile, with many fewer non-ghetto residents on the streets, in the subways, or even in the City at all, they are not available to be robbed, raped, or assaulted, so the number of victims who do report crimes is reduced.
Anecdotally in my city many murders lately are bar fights where the participants are kicked out and then while leaving the parking lot they start shooting each other.
So maybe pandemic induced too much alcohol? Stupid interpretation of the 2nd amendment. We should have Japan's, UK's or Canada's gun laws.
That cannot explain 2020 in any areas with pandemic restrictions where bars were closed . One thing that should have been lower in 2020 was bar fights.
What is concerning is that murders were still increasing over 2020 in early 2021 when covid restrictions were easing.
That would be more consistent for the 2020 increase being something not related to covid ( like more hesitant police in response to protests) being partially offset by pandemic effects reducing not increasing murders ( as seen in other nations ).
So as covid eases , we still see the increase caused by protests no longer offset.
They were easing, but the lag effect was still in play. On the other hand, murders have declined since total reopening July 1st.
I wonder if violent crime also spiked during the 1918-20 pandemic as well? Taking a look at that would tell us if the social strain of dealing with a public health crisis has something to do with it, or if there's some other factor at work (unemployment, easy access to firearms, etc.)
It should be pointed out that both violent crime and murder rates first rose in 2016 and have been rising since. Who became president that year?
It was Hillary, damn her!!! (and her little emails, too)
The Guardian’s take on one broad area in the nation: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/28/san-francisco-bay-area-gun-violence-murders-2020