Big City Shootings Up, Researchers Unsure Why

With shootings and homicides up in 27 of the nation’s largest cities, researchers are trying to come up with a reason, according to this story Richard Winton in today’s Los Angeles Times.  Winton reports that the authors of a new study by the non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice believe that the increase has been caused by either police social distancing during the pandemic, or the distrust of police resulting from the George Floyd killing, causing people to turn to “street justice.”

A story by Craig McCarthy in the New York Post noted that the study found a 53% increase in homicides over the summer in cities including Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.  New York City, which has seen a 40% increase in homicides, was not included in the study.  The study’s author, renown criminologist Richard Rosenfeld and  his research associate Ernesto Lopez, also noted a 14% increase in aggravated assaults, and an 11% increase in car thefts.   That is just a fraction of the increase in Los Angeles which saw an over 57% increase in vehicle thefts between April and June.   For decades, most renowned criminologists have been flummoxed by the causes of increased crime.

Because the communities with the highest crime rates are minority neighborhoods, most of these experts have concluded that poverty, and racial bias in education, employment, job opportunities, policing and the criminal justice system are the causes.  Over those decades, a few renegade academics including James Q. Wilson, George Kelling and more recently Barry Latzer,  have advanced an alternative to the woke consensus, presenting exhaustive data-grounded research indicating that the primary drivers of crime, and particularly violent crime are culture and consequences.

The consequences component helps explain why crime is increasing in cities and states which, in the name of racial justice, have been sharply reducing the penalties for all but the most violent offenses, released tens of thousands of criminals from jails and prisons due to sentence reductions or to protect them from the virus, and actually eliminated bail in New York and California, freeing  suspects for crimes like burglary, drug dealing, bank robbery and car theft hours after arrest.  The cultural component, jumpstarted during the Obama administration (‘If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon“),  tells young black males that they are the victims of systemic racism, that police are their enemy, that they will never receive justice or be treated fairly within the current system, and that committing crime is an acceptable response to this bias.

The scumbag who tried to assassinate the two police officers in Los Angeles last month, did not ambush them because of the death of George Floyd.  He hated cops and knew that among the gang members he associates with and many in the Black Lives Matter movement, killing cops is cool.   The fact that he had a long felony record for crimes that a decade ago would have put him in prison, but was allowed to run free, steal a Mercedes after shooting the owner, and then shoot two police officers, is testament to California’s ignorance-based sentencing reforms.   These are the people driving up big city homicide and assault rates.  They are preying upon the innocent because politicians, the national media and race-baiting groups have given them an excuse to do so, and because they do not fear the consequences.