The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/crime-statistics/)
January 1 is the deadline for police departments to use the National Incident-Based Reporting System. San Francisco, Phoenix, and many other cities won’t be able to abide by the deadline.
A new report by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice shows violent crime up this year in major U.S. cities. The FBI meanwhile reported a slight violent crime drop last year nationwide.
The annual crime victimization survey found a notable decline last year after several years of rising crime. This year’s results may differ markedly under changed conditions during the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a 7.5 percent increase in calls to the police to report domestic violence during March, April and May of this year, according to a report from the Council on Criminal Justice.
An ACLU study of 29 U.S. cities has found no correlation between the early release of detainees from the cities’ jails due to COVID-19 fears and any increase in crime in those cities between March and May.
Abolishing the police was not a majority opinion held by any group in a Gallup poll released Wednesday, regardless of race, age, or political affiliation. Forty-seven percent of overall respondents said funds should be shifted from police departments to social services.
Homicide rates fell in April and May in most large cities as part of a general decline in street crime caused by restrictions imposed to contain COVID-19, but a report from Arnold Ventures adds “there’s reason to think 2020 will be more violent than 2019.”
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is vowing to change police use-of-force policies and require that officers receive continuous training in how to deescalate situations before the consequences become fatal.
“The consequences of the larger-scale release of prisoners are now showing up in the arrest data,” said Michael LiPetri, chief of Crime Control Strategies for the New York Police Department.
COVID-19 forced the American Society of Criminology to end plans for its annual meeting, scheduled for Washington, D.C., in November. The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences already abandoned its convention in San Antonio.