The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/crime-trends/)
Advances in vehicle anti-theft technology have contributed to the increase in stolen wheels. “It’s far easier to jack up a car and steal the tires and the rims than it is to steal the entire car,” said Mark Wagenschutz of Help Eliminate Auto Thefts (HEAT).
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh named a new director of criminal justice and released an updated plan she said will stem Baltimore’s persistent violence. Councilman Brandon Scott said the city still needs an anticrime plan “with accountability and goals and measurable targets.”
Mayor Catherine Pugh is scheduled to announce a new anticrime plan today. Police Commissioner Kevin Davis is reconstituting drug and gun squads. A symbol of the crime wave, Wadell Tate, 97, was bludgeoned to death in his rowhouse just a few weeks ago.
Mirroring President Trump’s anticrime rhetoric, several Republican governors are sending in state troopers to combat violence in big cities. Democratic St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson favors the idea but some residents are dubious.
Police on a road rage task force in Arlington have written nearly 600 citations in the past six weeks following a fatal shooting that began as a traffic dispute on June 25. A police official says encounters between motorists have increased in frequency and severity.
An anti-violence campaign in Baltimore is branded with a plaintive plea: “Nobody kill anybody.” But the rate of murder in Baltimore, Detroit and St. Louis continued unabated in the first half of 2017.
An 18th-century theory used by sports bettors, gamblers and even weather forecasters could help criminologists and policymakers uncover crimes that are unrecorded in official statistics, claims a British researcher.
In his inaugural address in January, President Trump vowed that “American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” But gun deaths and firearms injuries have increased so far in 2017, according to tallies by the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.
As the city trudges toward a record number of homicides this year, more than 150 cops previously assigned to special operations units have been redeployed in uniform.
The city once labeled “Paradise Lost” as drug-driven murder spiked to 300 a year in the 1980s had just 26 homicides in the first six months this year. Police and community leaders cite several reasons, including a citizenry fed-up with gun violence that has grown more willing to engage with law enforcers.