Violent crime rose by double-digit percentages in cities across the country over the past two years, reversing the declines of the mid- to late 1990s, according to a new report by a prominent national law enforcement association. While overall crime has been declining nationwide, police have been warning of a rise in murder, robbery and gun assaults since late 2005, particularly in midsize cities and in the Midwest. Now, they say, two years of data indicate the spike is more than an aberration.
"There are pockets of crime in this country that are astounding," said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which is releasing the report today. "It's gone under the radar screen, but it's not if you're living on the north side of Minneapolis or the south side of Los Angeles or in Dorchester, Mass." Local police departments blame a number of factors: the spread of methamphetamine use in some Midwestern and Western cities, gangs, high rates of poverty and a record number of people being released from prison.
But the biggest theme, they say, is easy access to guns and a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them, particularly among young people. "There's a mentality among some people that they're living some really violent video game," said Chris Magnus, the police chief in Richmond, Calif., where homicides rose 20percent and gun assaults 65percent from 2004 to 2006.
"What's disturbing is that you see that the blood's real, the death's real." The research forum surveyed 56 cities and sheriffs' departments - as small as Appleton, Wis., and as large as Chicago and Houston.
Overall, from 2004 to 2006, homicides rose 10percent and robberies 12percent. Aggravated assaults increased at a relatively modest 3percent, but aggravated assaults with guns rose 10percent. And some cities saw higher spikes.
Homicides increased 20percent or more in cities including Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Hartford, Memphis and Orlando, Fla. Robberies went up more than 30percent in places including Detroit, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Milwaukee.
Aggravated assaults with guns were up more than 30percent in cities such as Boston, Sacramento, St. Louis and Rochester. Seventy-one percent of the cities surveyed had an increase in homicides, 80percent had an increase in robberies, and 67percent reported an increase in aggravated assaults with guns.
The police research forum study relies on numbers from the cities rather than yearly FBI totals, which are typically released in the fall. The group collected similar numbers last year, and those numbers were largely borne out by the data from the FBI. Police chiefs say the trends in aggravated assaults are particularly alarming.
They are often considered a better gauge of violence than homicides; the difference between the two is often poor marksmanship or good medical care. "Had we not had some of the trauma rooms we have here in Rochester, our homicide numbers would be higher," said Robert Duffy, who served as police chief for seven years before becoming mayor two years ago. While the murder rates have hit 11-year highs in places such as Boston, police officials note that they are not seeing the highs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crack fueled spikes in homicides, particularly in large cities.
Some cities such as Denver and Washington had declines in homicides. Still, the overall trend is mirrored in other places not covered by the report. New York City, for example, which had enjoyed remarkable declines and seemed immune to the rising murder rate elsewhere in 2005, reported a 10 percent increase in homicides in 2006.
In Chicago, which had been cited as another model of declining violence, homicides rose 4 percent from 2004 to 2006. Police officials say the violence tends to happen among young men in their late teens and early to mid-20s. In some cases, it is random.
But in many cases, it is among people who know one another, or between gangs, as a way to settle disputes. Many chiefs blame the federal government for cutting back on police programs that they say helped reduce crime in the 1990s. But they also say the problem is economic and social.
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