The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/crime-trends/)
As New York City and Chicago reported significant drops in crime, the vice president of a St. Louis community outreach program warned that unless crime was addressed the city”s reputation would decline to a level “never seen before.”
The city says 236 people were killed in the first six months of 2019, a seven percent decline, but the Chicago Sun-Times counts more murders than the police do.
A study found that the number of homicides per robbery or assault has risen by more than 50 percent over the past eight years — from 23 homicides per 1,000 incidents to 36. St. Louis homicides remain proportionately higher than in comparably sized cities.
Two days after an especially violent weekend pushed Baltimore’s homicide total over 150, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said Baltimore’s “culture of violence simply has to change.” He is requiring officers to spend more time in 120 “micro-zones” with high violence totals.
The per-capita violent crime rate in Denver grew nine percent between 2017 and 2018, while most large cities in the U.S. saw a decline. Violent crime is down so far this year, which the police department attributes to new crime prevention efforts.
The NYU Brennan Center for Justice reports an 8 percent decline in murder rates in America’s 30 largest cities, in a final estimate of 2018 crime figures that contradict assertions of a “crime wave.”
The mean reduction was 73 months or just over 29 percent, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Calling Chicago’s most violent weekend this year “despicable,” police Superintendent Eddie Johnson stuck to the department’s usual explanation for what went wrong, blaming the flow of illegal guns and a lenient criminal justice system.
A new theory suggests that the arrival of mobile phones made holding territory less important, which reduced intergang conflict and lowered profits from drug sales. The phone factor joins many other theories for the decline of violence.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson planned a press conference on Monday to discuss the crime wave. Over Memorial Day weekend, 41 people were shot and seven killed in Chicago gun violence.