The United States is living through a violent crime
surge. Unlike we've seen in decades, more than a dozen
major cities in this country said annual homicide
records in 2021. And while crime across the board
hasn't hit the levels we saw in the 90s, it is not
insignificant and it's certainly headed the wrong
direction. Push alerts from local news stations on your
phone or neighborhood. Absolute Tell us it's bad. It
feels bad, but we want to be clear right tonight.
Really understand the magnitude here possible solutio
as well. Usually justice correspondent Jamal And
investigates in our Newsy tonight focus as the nation
enters its third year fighting, Covid, there's anothe
widespread problem. The US can' seem to get a handle
on a gun violence and some experts say there's a
connection. We had a very violent weekend in Milwauk
There's a swell of, of guns being pumped into
communities like ours. The rapid nature of the
incidents of homicide are so overwhelming that the
detectives cannot get ahead of it. Since 2019, there's
been two full years of record breaking gun violence
across the country. In big cities like Chicago
philadelphia and Atlanta and smaller ones too like
Richmond Virginia in Rochester new york. At least nine
major cities across the country set new one year
homicide records in 2021. It's easier to get a gun and
it's about groceries in our neighborhood. Um, Very easy
very accessible. In Chicago murders were up 4%, but
over a two year window homicides soared by 61 Compared
to 2019, believe it or not. People who don't live in
this environment, it's a jungle literally it's a
concrete jungle like um and you got to be your hair has
to be on the swivel all the time. Lamar johnson who
runs an anti violence youth organization on Chicago's
south side partly blames COVID for the spike saying
intervention efforts to reduce killings were hobbled by
virus restrictions. COVID habit The gunman is still
continuing so you're still losing friends and family
gun buys, you still going to funerals, we're still
dealing with trauma. COVID literally stopped that
because we're so interpersonal community led vio
intervention organizations acro the country had to
scramble to adapt their program to a post covid world
COVID-19 in this pandemic has just been the perfect
storm for um you know really reinjuring and re
traumatizing. Already traumatized communities. Kyle
fisher is the policy director for the Health Allianc
for Violence intervention and works as an emergency
room physician. He's seen COVID and gun violence up
close we have a lack of social services with
interruptions in uh being able to get aid and resources.
We have the social isolation from having to quaran
think about things as simple as like the Y.M.C.A. Where
people go to uh you know play basketball and meet u
with friends. Those were things that were shut down. So
not only did we increase risk factors for violence but
we saw that some of these protective factors that h
keep people safe were also disrupted by um, By the
pandemic. We don't know the national murder rate for
2021 yet, but for 2020, it rose 30%, the largest single
year increase since 1905. This stark rise in homicides
is an abrupt change on the national level Where murder
has been trending downward for more than 30 years.
While homicide investigations can vary widely from
county to county, the national clearance rate has bee
moving in the wrong direction. The Council on Crimi
Justice reported that homicide clearance rates have
been declining for a decade. In 2020, the most recent
year available. The rate was 50% black people that year,
made up a little more than half of the victims. Now
chance some of the other reasons cited by
criminologists for this histori rise in gun violence.
Our covid restrictions taking officers off the streets,
plus record retirement and staffing shortages. A
proliferation of guns across th country, as well as a
general mistrust of police can lead to those community
members not being willing to work with officers to help
bring down that clearance rate. Okay, we're gonna talk
about more of that in a second. But I want to ask you,
I don't know if this data covers it all because ther
are other crimes out there that are suffered by
communities, You know, the carjackings, the robberies,
the assaults. What are those looking like Well, you
know, if you look at the FBI's numbers, there's two
major trends, violent crime as we mentioned, has been
going up. Property crime generally has been going down
except for one major exception. And you said it, that's
carjackings. Carjackings have b through the roof in
a lot of places. I want to give you some numbers in
Minneapolis, a 500 plus percent increase. You've got
100 And 26% increase in New Orleans, 38% increase in
Oakland. Uh, and that can also be viewed through the
lens of the pandemic. You know, a lot of these are
committed by juveniles, juvenil who are either not in
school or lost connection with school entirely during
the when things went remote. And so again, COVID having
a huge impact on this issue in so many different ways
Jamal Andress with the data and the impacts on
communities tonight.