The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/crime-trends/)
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.”
A four-year-old boy was killed while he was sleeping on Monday. “The amount of gunfire in the city is absolutely horrible,” said Police Chief Rick Smith.
Approaching the year’s halfway point, more people have been killed than during 2019, which had the highest homicide rate on record. Arnold Ventures has funded a controversial program to fly surveillance planes over the city.
“Too many times children are killed,” said Police Chief Fred Waller. “When is this gonna stop?”
In the last days of May and first week of June, there were more than 90 attempted or successful burglaries of gun stores, says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. More than 1,000 guns were stolen in that period. “It’s the biggest spike I have ever seen of gun store burglaries,” says one official.
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown called for other criminal justice entities to give his department “a little bit of help” in combating gun violence after a weekend that saw more than 100 people shot and several children murdered. Mayor Lori Lightfoot cited parts of the criminal justice system sidelined during the pandemic.
“You’re going to see accounting fraud, you’re going to see insider trading, you’re going to see all sorts of misrepresentations,” Bridget Rohde, former Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, told a University of Maryland panel.
“The mafia becomes almost like a benefactor–they behave like the Red Cross–for which a certain portion of society is grateful,” a roundtable of experts on Italian organized crime was told.
So warns the acting Comptroller of the Currency. Critics call fears “deeply unhelpful” and an unwarranted criticism of mask-wearing.
Reporters are being subjected to violence, harassment, and arrest in unprecedented numbers as they cover protests in over 100 cities across America, sparked by outrage over the killing of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.