{"id":93775,"date":"2023-06-21T11:15:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T16:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93775"},"modified":"2023-06-21T11:15:03","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T16:15:03","slug":"93775","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93775","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Big-City Murder Rate Is Falling and the Reasons Won\u2019t Surprise You.<\/a><\/p>\n

Violent crime \u2014 specifically, the murder rate \u2014 spiked in 2020 and has been coming down gradually ever since. Now, in 2023, the number of murders in the United States has dropped precipitously. Jeff Asher published a piece in\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Atlantic<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0revealing that \u201c[m]urder is down about 12 percent year-to-date in more than 90 cities that have released data for 2023, compared with data as of the same date in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is defunding the police actually working? Is the prevailing policy of prosecutors giving out light sentences to hardened thugs leading to a \u201ccome to Jesus\u201d moment for criminals and causing them to reform?<\/p>\n

Not hardly. In the wake of the sky-high violent crime rates from 2020, big-city mayors hired more cops, and many departments reinstituted \u201caggressive policing methods\u201d to deal with the out-of-control shootings and murders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible that police departments have returned to some of the proactive work that they curtailed during the COVID pandemic and after George Floyd, activities that may be inhibiting some gun violence,\u201d Jerry Ratcliffe, a criminal-justice professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, told Asher.<\/p>\n

Many cities have used federal COVID-relief money to\u00a0hire more police<\/a>\u00a0officers, and there\u00a0is some evidence<\/a>\u2014albeit preliminary\u2014that adding police officers helps to reduce homicide, while also leading to more arrests for low-level offenses. We do not yet know how successful agencies have been at growing their ranks or whether more police officers are resulting in fewer shootings. Murder is down in Chicago, New Orleans, and New York, for example, but\u00a0Chicago\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0number of police officers is virtually unchanged from last summer, while\u00a0New Orleans<\/a>\u2019s is down more than 8 percent and\u00a0New York<\/a>\u00a0has roughly 2 percent fewer officers.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More police and more aggressive tactics resulting in fewer murders? Whoda thunk it? Duh.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In fact, the decline in the number of murders is not uniform across the country\u2019s big cities. Some locations like New York and Los Angeles have seen a double-digit drop in murders this year so far while other cities have seen a much more modest decrease.<\/p>\n

Judd Legum of\u00a0Popular Information<\/a>\u00a0is demanding the media cover the decline in murders as extensively as they covered the spike in 2020-21.<\/p>\n

The precipitous decline in the murder rate, however, has not merited any dedicated coverage in the nation\u2019s largest newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press. It also has been\u00a0rarely mentioned<\/a>\u00a0on cable news channels.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In many large cities, the decline in the murder rate, year-to-date, is even more pronounced. Year-to-date murders have declined 40% in Minneapolis, 28% in Atlanta, 26% in Los Angeles, 20% in Philadelphia, and 18% in Baltimore. But local coverage of these declines has been sparse or nonexistent.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Legum apparently isn\u2019t familiar with the economics of the news business. \u201cIf it bleeds, it leads\u201d also refers to crime stats. News consumers aren\u2019t very interested in reading about the declining number of murders. But big scary headlines and TV news stories about an increase in the number of killings mean a lot more eyeballs and a jump in ad revenue for the outlet.<\/p>\n

Certainly, there\u2019s more to the decline in murders and violent crime in big cities beyond a larger police presence and aggressive, proactive policing strategies. But for a city suffering from a spike in murders and other violent crimes, it\u2019s a damn fine place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Big-City Murder Rate Is Falling and the Reasons Won\u2019t Surprise You. Violent crime \u2014 specifically, the murder rate \u2014 spiked in 2020 and has been coming down gradually ever since. Now, in 2023, the number of murders in the United States has dropped precipitously. Jeff Asher published a piece in\u00a0The\u00a0Atlantic\u00a0\u00a0revealing that \u201c[m]urder is down … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93776,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93775\/revisions\/93776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}