Murder totals rose significantly in 25 of the nation’s 100 largest cities last year, says a New York Times analysis of new data compiled from police departments. The findings confirm a trend reported in a National Institute of Justice study. “The homicide increase in the nation’s large cities was real and nearly unprecedented,” wrote criminologist Richard Rosenfeld of the University of Missouri-St. Louis who looked at homicide data in 56 large cities.
The Times said half of the increase came from just seven cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, and Washington, D.C. Chicago had the most homicides — 488 in 2015 — far more than the 352 in New York City, which has three times as many people. Baltimore had the largest increase — 133 more than 2014 — and the second-highest rate in 2015, after St. Louis, which had 59 homicides per 100,000 residents. The number of cities where totals rose significantly was the largest since the height of violent crime in the early 1990s. New York Times