One-Third Of The 2016 Spike In U.S. Homicides Came From Just 5 Chicago Neighborhoods

Authored by Thomas Lifson of American Thinker,

The full evil of the anti-cop hysteria pushed by left wing groups like #BlackLivesMatter will take many years to be understood, in no small part because of political and media support for the notion that racism on the part of cops is the sole cause for disproportionate numbers of black perpetrators in our crime statistics.

But every now and then, a statistic appears that cannot be easily dismissed. Jared Sichel of The Daily Signal brings one such figure to our attention.

Murders in the U.S. rose nearly 9% last year, and one-third of that increase came from just a few neighborhoods in Chicago, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the FBI’s annual 2016 publication, Crime in the United States.

 

While violent crime (homicide, rape, assault, and robbery) also rose nationwide from 2015 to 2016 — over 4% — the data show the increase was not uniform, but rather concentrated in cities like Chicago and Baltimore.

(Chart per HeyJackAss!)

Other big cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, DC, saw meaningful declines in violence. So there is no broad trend, but rather local factors that must be accounted for. For instance:

Interestingly, the paper’s neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis claimed that areas where homicides spiked had a “lighter street presence by police following officers’ high-profile killings of young black men.” (snip)

 

In Baltimore, violent crime rates were going down until 2015, when police officers “pulled back from a more proactive approach” following widespread city riots after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who suffered a severe spinal injury while being transported in a police van on April 1, 2015, and died one week later.

But for the real statistical weight affecting overall crime stats, one has to look at Chicago, where the police have been under severe restrictions and where gang activity is out of control:

In Chicago last year, homicides jumped to 771, 58% higher than in 2015, and more than the number of murders in Los Angeles and New York combined. Half of that increase, the analysis showed, came from just five neighborhoods, and is largely attributable to gang warfare. In a “roughly four-mile radius of West Garfield Park,” for example, there are at least 30 gangs. (snip)

 

In Chicago, as in Baltimore, police became less proactive following protests against the fatal 2014 shooting of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, by a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with first-degree murder.

 

A FiveThirtyEight analysis found that in Chicago and other cities with high-profile deaths of black men involving police officers, a “pullback in policing was accompanied by a sharp increase in gun violence.”

All the anti-cop self-righteousness in the world won’t save one victim from gang violence. The BLM protestors, along the with hands up-don’t shoot crowd have been enablers of horrific violence that mostly is claiming black lives. Progressive politics often involves sacrificing the powerless for the purported greater good, even as the poseurs claim to be their righteous protectors.

Baltimore Murder Rate Surges Again In 2017 (Now Tied With Venezuela); Here"s How Your City Fared...

Once again this year, the Brennan Center for Justice has analyzed violent crime stats from the 30 largest cities in America to provide some insight on national trends.  Not surprisingly, this year"s report has is full of more bad news for the residents of cities like Baltimore and Chicago that have experienced devastating spikes in homicides over the past two years.

Looking at homicides per capita in 2017, Baltimore is clearly the most dangerous large city in the U.S. with a murder rate that is more than 4x the average of other large cities and some 40% higher than the second most dangerous city of Detroit.  To put things in perspective, the murder rate in Baltimore is now exactly tied with Venezuela at 57.2 murders per 100,000 residents.

Of course, as our readers are undoubtedly aware, high violent crime rates in cities like Baltimore and Chicago are hardly a new phenomenon.  Therefore, we decided to take a look at year-over-year changes in murder rates by city and made some interesting discoveries.  While Charlotte saw the biggest YoY spike, cities like San Francisco and Seattle, both of which are experiencing tech-induced economic booms, were also at the top of the list.

Finally, and not surprisingly, in terms of total homicides, the city of Chicago is still the big "winner" in 2017 with nearly double the number of murders of Baltimore.

Of course, as the Brennan Center notes, it"s not all bad news as aggregate crime in the nation"s top 30 cities declined 2.7%...

The overall crime rate in the 30 largest cities in 2017 is estimated to decline slightly from the previous year, falling by 2.7 percent. If this trend holds, crime rates will remain near historic lows.

 

The violent crime rate will also decrease slightly, by 1.1 percent, essentially remaining stable. Violent crime remains near the bottom of the nation’s 30-year downward trend.

 

The 2017 murder rate in the 30 largest cities is estimated to decline by 5.6 percent. Large decreases this year in Chicago and Detroit, as well as small decreases in other cities, contributed to this decline. The murder rate in Chicago — which increased significantly in 2015 and 2016 — is projected to decline by 11.9 percent in 2017. It remains 62.4 percent above 2014 levels. The murder rate in Detroit is estimated to fall by 9.8 percent. New York City’s murder rate will also decline again, to 3.3 killings per 100,000 people.

Conclusion: "What the hell is going on in Chicago"...and Baltimore and Detroit and Memphis and San Francisco and Seattle and....

Trump on crime in Chicago: "What the hell is going on in Chicago? What the hell is happening there?" pic.twitter.com/HMTANkGYSz

— Axios (@axios) December 15, 2017

Here is the full report from the Brennan Center for Justice:

"Deadliest Year Ever" - Baltimore Eclipses 2016 Homicide Total

As of 11:20am ET. Thursday morning, the wave of violent crime continued in Baltimore with the death of a 21-year old man by gunfire.

The significance of this latest death in Baltimore’s urban war zone, is that total homicides in 2017 have now topped 2016 levels at 319, and there is still one month to go. 

Homicides in Baltimore have averaged 29 per month, which could indicate Baltimore is now on track for the deadliest year ever to be recorded. The all-time per-capita record was set back in 2015, with 344 homicides, said Fox News.

Throughout the year, we have pointed out Baltimore’s rapid deterioration into chaos (see: America’s Urban War Zone: Baltimore Doubles Chicago’s Homicide Rate In 2017).

 Baltimore is on track to exceed 400 homicides in 2017 for the first time in the city’s history and has more than doubled Chicago’s homicide rate on a per capita basis. 

Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh has called the city’s gun violence “out of control.” Earlier this year she begged the Federal Government for help as 2017 murders soar to a 20-year high.

“I’m calling on all the assistance we can possibly get because I can’t imagine going into our summer months with our crime rate where it is today, what that’s going to look like by the end of the summer,” says Mayor Catherine Pugh.

 

“Murder is out of control,” says Pugh.

 

“We are looking for all the help that we can get,” she says.

The most recent flare up to draw national attention was the November execution of Sean Suiter, an 18-year veteran of the force, who was fatally shot while on active duty. Shortly after, we reported on the 4-5 day lockdown of one West Baltimore neighborhood by police was described as ‘Martial Law’.

15 @BaltimorePolice vehicles on Schroeder alone and dozens more on surrounding blocks. All the officers are just sitting in their cars. pic.twitter.com/M9zCCltdzK

— Baltimore BLOC (@BmoreBloc) November 19, 2017

Death and despair in Baltimore comes at no surprise since the city has been run by democratic controlled leadership for over 50-years. As the death toll Skyrockets, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan has had enough and said this week that he will be issuing his own crime-fighting strategy, per CBS:WJZ.

Gov. Hogan said no need for the National Guard but ‘will reveal his own plan to stop the violence in Baltimore as soon as next week’. Back in 2015, Hogan declared a state of emergency during the Baltimore riots, where he called in the National guard to restore order in the city.

Developments in the next 30-days for Baltimore will be critical in determining government’s next step in tackling the urban war zone for the 2018 timeframe. As expected, the city is projected to further deteriorate this month and record the most homicides ever. Now it’s Hogan’s turn to offer a crime-fighting plan and what we’ve seen before… He isn’t afraid to use the National Guard.

Baltimore is an urban war zone - it should be treated like one.

Baltimore Chaos - Ceasefire In "Violence-Plagued" City Starts Today

Via StockBoardAsset.com,

A ceasefire between Baltimore “gang leaders, drug dealers and others linked to the violence” has been agreed on and will come into effect on Friday.

This is an act of desperation from a community that is currently experiencing a homicide rate doubled of Chicago’s and a murder count higher than NYC. The ceasefire aims to stop the killings for at-least 72-hours, starting on August 04-06.

The slogan selected by organizers gets right to the point: “Nobody kill anybody”.

Violent crime in Baltimore has flourished over the past few years, due to the “Ferguson Effect”, along with the death of “Freddie Gray” that triggered Baltimore’s April 2015 riots.

According to the Economist, Baltimore may see more than 400 murders this year. This would indicate 2017 will be the deadliest year ever on record.

August homicides are already in full-swing leading up to the ceasefire.

Yearly data projects many more months of violent crime for the city.

Mapping out the 208 homicides across Baltimore City looks like battleship.

If nothing else comes from the ceasefire, such gestures were a first step in helping residents feel that they were regaining control of neighborhoods, said Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins-Baltimore Collaborative for Violence Reduction.

“Even if it ends up being only one day without a shooting, that’s going to be good for the city,” Crifasi said.

Conclusion

It’s highly unlikely that Baltimore “gang leaders, drug dealers and others linked to the violence”  will take a 72-hour loss in profits and give up their corner where drugs are peddled from.

Baltimore is a chaotic war zone and it’s time we start treating it like one.

Homicides In These 4 Cities Are Spiking To The Highest Levels In 20 Years

Over the past year we"ve frequently written about the alarming homicide rates in Chicago (see "Chicago Violence Worst In 20 Years: "Not Seen This Level Of Disrespect For Police Ever"").  But, the Wall Street Journal recently conducted an analysis of homicide data since 1985, for the 35 largest cities in the United States, and found that Chicago isn"t the only place where violent crime is surging.  As it turns out, murder rates are also spiking in Baltimore, Milwaukee and Memphis, all of which have in the past two years approached or exceeded the records set a quarter-century ago, when cities across the country were plagued by gang wars and a booming crack trade.

In fact, according to the WSJ analysis, 27 of the country’s 35 largest cities saw per capita homicide rates rise since 2014.

Murders in Chicago last year rose to their highest rate since 1996, with 27.8 homicides for every 100,000 residents, based on police and the latest census data. Memphis equaled its highest rate last year in a Federal Bureau of Investigation database that goes back to 1985, at 32 murders per 100,000 residents.

The pace has continued in some of these places in the first seven weeks this year, with 47 people killed in Baltimore, putting the city on track for one of the highest annual rates since at least 1970.

In Chicago, there were 330 shootings so far as of Friday, compared with 324 over the same period last year. And in Milwaukee, 17 people have been killed, compared with nine at this point last year.

Meanwhile, on a per capita basis, homicides rates in Baltimore and Memphis actually exceeded Chicago in 2016 with Milwaukee not far behind.

Baffled public policy "experts" have struggled to pin down a specific reason for the recent surge in violent crime attributing the spikes to everything from bad policing to increased drug trafficking to highly publicized police shootings of black men. 

The homicide surge doesn’t directly correlate to the size of the police force. Baltimore has more officers per 10,000 residents than New York, for instance. And Milwaukee and Memphis are among the 10 cities that have the most officers per population.

Meanwhile, the four cities with rising crime share elevated rates of poverty and unemployment—but the levels are similar to Philadelphia’s, where the violent crime rate is its lowest in three decades.

“It’s likely that local drug markets are playing an important role,” said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The other issue, he said, could be “the withdrawal of some local communities [from cooperating with police] and police disengagement.”

The murder surge in Baltimore, Chicago and Milwaukee followed highly publicized police killings of black men.

Of course, one of the last efforts of the Obama Department of Justice was to label the Chicago police department as nothing more than a bunch of racist, hate-mongering bullies who routinely resort to the use of "deadly force" in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution....which must be the reason for the rising crime there.

And while we"re on the topic, here are the latest stats on Chicago"s violent crime patterns courtesy of HeyJackAss!.

Daily homicide rates have seemingly increased in recent weeks along with warmer temperatures...

...while YTD homicides are tracking almost exactly inline with the violent 2016 levels.

Of course the majority of homicides continue to be concentrated in just a handful of neighborhoods...