Alan: As you review the above graph, keep in mind that the population of the United States in 1995 was 266 million, 20% less than it is today. When we consider the absolute numbers in the chart above, and then take into account the relative increase in population that has taken place in the 20 years since, the precipitous decline in crime has been frankly flabbergasting. Yet, Trump, a fascist at heart, knows what all fascists know:
Trump: “You’re wrong. Murders are up [in New York].”
Trump was responding to Clinton's claim that crimes, including murders, have dropped under Mayor Bill de Blasio. He is half right. There were 19 more murders in 2015 than in 2014, de Blasio's first year in office. But 2014 saw a record low number of murders.
Alan: In New York City, "homicides fell in the first three months of 2016 to 68 from 85 in the same period last year."
That's an astonishing decline of 20%.
Great work Mayor de Blasio.
Great work Mayor de Blasio.
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http://paxonbothhouses.
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http://paxonbothhouses.
Homicide Rates Jump in Many Major U.S. Cities, New Data Shows.
Alan: But the rate is down in New York City and the national rate is precipitously lower than it was in the early 1990s.
WASHINGTON — Experts cannot agree on what to call a recent rise in homicides, much less its cause, but new data on Friday that showed a sharp spike in homicide rates in more than 20 cities rekindled debate over whether it was time for alarm.
The data showed particularly significant increases in homicides in six cities in the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year — Chicago, Dallas, Jacksonville, Fla., Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Memphis. But almost as many cities reported a notable decline in recent months.
New York saw a 25 percent drop, while Las Vegas’s homicide total nearly doubled.
Law enforcement officials struggled to explain the numbers and differed over their significance.
The heroin epidemic, a resurgence in gang violence and economic factors in some cities were all offered as explanations, but the most contentious theory came from an agency that usually does not worry much about local crime: the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The agency’s director, James Comey, has linked rising crime to less aggressive policing — the “viral video effect,” he called it this week, rejecting the more racially charged “Ferguson effect.” His theory, however, found little support from the White House, law enforcement groups, criminologists or even the group that gave him the new data on Friday.
Mr. Comey said that a string of videos that went viral on the Internet had led some officers to become reluctant to confront suspects. He conceded that he was operating off anecdotal evidence, but such reluctance, he said, could be contributing to the increase in homicides in some cities — an increase that he said left him deeply worried.
“Something is happening,” he said on Wednesday.
But the White House pushed back again on Friday. The White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said that the increase in homicides in some cities was a concern and that the administration had already taken steps to address it, including a roundup by the Marshals Service last year of some 8,000 fugitives.
But he said that “this is not a widespread phenomenon, at least based on what we know now.”
Regarding Mr. Comey’s theory, Mr. Earnest said: “This administration makes policy decisions that are rooted in evidence, that are rooted in science. We can’t make broad, sweeping policy decisions, or draw conclusions based on anecdotal evidence. That’s irresponsible and ultimately counterproductive.”
Murders and most other types of crime have dropped since an alarming peak in the early 1990s and are now near historic lows. Criminologists said that while a rise in homicides in some cities in 2015 and early this year was potentially worrisome, it was far too early to draw any conclusions.
“A lot of observers are winning Olympic medals for jumping to conclusions,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a criminologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said the uptick represented essentially a blip in so short a time, and he said it was a reflection of how low the crime rates had dropped.
“What’s basically happening is these cities are becoming victims of their own success,” said Professor Fox. The crime rate “can’t go to zero, and when you hit really low numbers, it can only go up.”
Mr. Fox said Mr. Comey’s idea of a “viral video effect” was contradicted by the many cities that had decreases in homicides, even as police videos continued to emerge.
“A statement like that from the director doesn’t help,” he said. “It takes a very hot issue and pours even more fuel on it, and it takes a politically charged issue and ramps up the debate. I think calmer heads should prevail.”
The idea of a “Ferguson effect” — named for the Missouri city where the police shooting of an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, in 2014 prompted widespread protests — was first cited by the police chief in St. Louis, D. Samuel Dotson III. It took hold in the popular lexicon after a Wall Street Journal column a year ago blamed the phenomenon for the spike in crime.
Document: U.S. Homicide Rates Rise in Early 2016
Some proponents of the theory said the string of police confrontations and widely seen videos that followed the Ferguson shooting had made some officers reluctant to aggressively police their districts.
But the name itself generated a backlash from critics who saw it as blaming the protesters in Ferguson for the rising crime and justifying police misconduct in officers’ confrontations with the public.
New labels for the theory — descriptions less tied to the Ferguson controversy — began to replace it. New York’s police commissioner, William J. Bratton, took to calling it the “YouTube effect.”
Asked what he would call it, Mr. Fox of Northeastern did not hide his skepticism. “The Chicken Little response to Ferguson,” he said.
Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who had studied claims of a police stand-down, found that an increase in homicides in St. Louis had actually begun before Mr. Brown’s death, suggesting that other factors were driving the rise.
But he said homicide rates last year indicated that the public focus on police use-of-force incidents might have had some role in the increase in homicides, whether it is because of “de-policing” — a slowdown by officers — or soured police relations with residents. More information, he said, is needed to know for sure.
Darrel W. Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, which released the data on Friday, said that the rising homicide rate in some cities was cause for concern but that “it’s not something people should be overly alarmed about.”
As for Mr. Comey’s suggestion of a “viral video effect,” he said: “I’m not there yet. I don’t believe so. You may have some who do that, but police officers don’t get into the business to not do the work they’ve been hired to do. They do it well.”
In Chicago, the rise in shootings and homicides — homicides were up 56 percent from last year as of early May — has become an urgent matter.
The homicide rate has slowed since earlier in the year, and police officials over the last month say they have seen hopeful signs, with upticks in gun recoveries, investigative stops and murder arrests. Still, more than 50 people were shot in Chicago last weekend, making it among the most violent weekends in months.
At the other end of the spectrum was New York City, where homicides fell in the first three months of the year to 68 from 85 in the same period last year.
Dermot Shea, the city’s deputy police commissioner of operations, said the force had blended several strategies, including the use of data, technology and collaborating with the community.
“We believe that we are not at the end, we are closer to the beginning,” he said this month. “It is exciting to see, really, how low we can push this crime down.”
Perhaps the brightest trend, however, came in Milwaukee, where homicides were down about 35 percent as of this week, after surging 70 percent last year.
“It’s far too soon to claim grand success,” the city’s police chief, Edward A. Flynn, said, noting that nonfatal shootings were about where they were a year ago. “We’re guarded. We believe we’re having an impact.”
Chief Flynn said the bad publicity for the police nationwide had certainly put his officers “on the defensive” in dealing with the public. But he said that dynamic had changed. “They’re back in the game right now,” he said.
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