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NYTs- Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many U.S. Cities


Kilmer17

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/us/murder-rates-rising-sharply-in-many-us-cities.html?_r=0

 

MILWAUKEE — Cities across the nation are seeing a startling rise in murders after years of declines, and few places have witnessed a shift as precipitous as this city. With the summer not yet over, 104 people have been killed this year — after 86 homicides in all of 2014.

More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago. In New Orleans, 120 people had been killed by late August, compared with 98 during the same period a year earlier. In Baltimore, homicides had hit 215, up from 138 at the same point in 2014. In Washington, the toll was 105, compared with 73 people a year ago. And in St. Louis, 136 people had been killed this year, a 60 percent rise from the 85 murders the city had by the same time last year.

Law enforcement experts say disparate factors are at play in different cities, though no one is claiming to know for sure why murder rates are climbing. Some officials say intense national scrutiny of the use of force by the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals, though many experts dispute that theory.

 

 

 

Maybe this belongs in one of the Cop threads.  But it's a startling stat.  Might be meaningless.  But it might be a direct result of police giving up in certain areas of the cities.

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Maybe this belongs in one of the Cop threads.  But it's a startling stat.  Might be meaningless.  But it might be a direct result of police giving up in certain areas of the cities.

I agree with you. There's lots of possible explanations. (Including, I assume, the possibility that it's just normal variation.  Somehow, I suspect that every year, the death rate goes up in some cities.) 

 

And yes, it does bear watching. 

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Taken from the article:

 

 

Less debated is the sense among police officials that more young people are settling their disputes, including one started on Facebook, with guns.

 

Article also states that the crime uptick is more personal in nature, so perpetrators know the victim. 

 

In New Orleans, Michael S. Harrison, the police superintendent, said the city’s rise in homicides did not appear to reflect any increase in gang violence or robberies of strangers, but rather involved killings inside homes and cars by people who know their victims — particularly difficult crimes to predict or prevent.

 

 

 

 

In Milwaukee, most of the victims and the suspects in their killings are black men under 30, police data shows, who come from neighborhoods where foreclosures, joblessness and poverty are also high. Most involve guns and people — both victims and suspects — who have been arrested before. The most common motive in the slayings was not robbery or gang rivalry but an argument, according to the data.
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There is a wave of violence that is being created by people who simply don't care. There is no fear of repercussions because they don't have any hope. There is nothing to take away.

 

EDIT: We, as a society, missed the opportunity we had in the 90's to really effect social change. As usual, politics got in the way (both the donkeys and the elephants).

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I grew up in immense privilege as a child. I was spared from experiencing many of the pitfalls many of my peers - young, black children - had growing up in Washington and in the surrounding area, so this comes from a an outsider's perspective.

 

Whenever I read about stories like this and see that the victims, and perpetrators, are often young, black men, and whenever I find myself in a situation where I'm working with or spending time in predominantly black neighborhoods there's a term that keeps coming up in my head: nihilistic. There is a tragic level of disregard for everything, including self-preservation. It's tragic and I believe it is, in large part, due to a society that has either implicitly or explicitly said that their lives don't matter, but it just seems as if too many people simply do not care if they, or their neighbors, live or die.

 

Once again, this opinion comes from a place of religious, class and educational privilege, but that's what I've been picking up on.

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Grow up in a reality of nothing but liquor stores, lottery tickets, broken homes and gun worship and all the while the police function more as captors than protectors. How long would any of us last?

Certainly.  But how does that explain the increase?

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Facebook has certainly made me wanna shoot someone....there is a easy solution.

I believe this is the answer.  Used to be you didn't know about most people's foolishnesses.  Now it's public knowledge and beyond that it has an inclination towards being misrepresented, taken out of context or taken more strongly than it's meant. 

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Certainly.  But how does that explain the increase?

My initial response was rather simplistic, but i think it's a factor,, we have sop many guns in circulation now it only stands to reason that there will be more of them used to shoot at people, rob people, etc.

Other potential answers...

We live in a society in which ginning up ridiculous amounts of outrage over everything is what serves us as 'information' or 'news' these days. the main objective of the media seems to be to make us angry.. AND.. to assign blame as to why we're angry very definitively. You're angry because this is F'd up, and it's F'd up entirely because of THESE people.. (and the notion that example A might not even BE F'd up is not often considered, because we're so conditioned to believe "those" people are always F'ing things up and it's always their fault that i'm constantly angry.)

It's designed to provoke anger, fear and confusion.. throw in easy access to lethal weaponry... potential disasters everywhere.

Very stressful.

We have a mental health problem. This we've heard, and it's true, and part of it is being driven by the continual misinformation and anger inducing confusion machines serving as our media.

Very stressful

Our standards of jobs and what makes a productive person are changing, and we're not changing with them. Example.. manufacturing,, those jobs are gone gone gone.. and not just to overseas.. automation has put a lot of people out of work, and their skills do not translate to other areas easily.

we have been in the business of propping up dying industries because progress would put a LOT of people out of work. (Coal mining, for example. Everyone knows coal should be phased out and other methods of energy need to be implemented and developed.. but how many people are affected by this? People who are largely uneducated to begin a new career in a new industry.

Even if you have a job that is not from the last century.. you have been devalued. Corporations are more cut-throat than ever when it comes to what happens to their employees. How many of you know someone who has priced themselves out of a job simply by gaining seniority and experience?

(My sister has been working for Citi bank for over 25 years, she's risen far and done well. She just got fired. Reason? She's too expensive, so the position is eliminated and split among cheaper employees. Thanks? Nah,, get lost.)

Companies used to value employees, and employees used to have a sense of loyalty. now none of that exists. Loylaty is a sucker play, and the company is loyal to you until they can save 1 dollar, and then you're gone.

prices are going up. wages are not. People who live on the lower end of the spectrum simply can't afford to live regardless of how hard they work.

Very stressful.

Social media is a cesspool of propaganda. People are angry all the time, and they are manipulated into being angry all the time. People argue incessantly, violently, and while i can't say how much of that spills into actual violence, again, very stressful.

People have no security. If you're a republican, you're being convinced that liberals are destroying your country. If you're a democrat you're being convinced conservatives are destroying your country. If you're religious, you're being convinced atheists and other religions are trying to destroy yours, and if you're not religious, your conditioned to believe it's being forced on you because of a Christmas tree.

Everyone is conditioned to hate everyone. people hate cops, people hate people who hate cops..black lives mater, white lives matter,, its like a tug of war. All lives matter, except yours, because i will ****ing KILL you you dumbass liberal conservative holy-roller atheist ****!

Stress. It's all we have.

~Bang

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Grow up in a reality of nothing but liquor stores, lottery tickets, broken homes and gun worship and all the while the police function more as captors than protectors. How long would any of us last?

 

 

Certainly.  But how does that explain the increase?

Increased attention being paid to the above?

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How much of this comes from a culture of disconnection?  I know just about everyone in our neighborhood, and I go out of my way to introduce myself to people moving in to the neighborhood.  Decades ago, this would have been normal.  It's not unheard of these days, it's just not the expected behavior.

 

I saw the author of the book Bowling Alone giving a presentation years ago, and what he said has stuck with me since.  What is the best predictor of crime rates in a neighborhood?  He asked the audience and got all the seemingly obvious answers: wealth, education, religion, etc.  None of those were anywhere near as good a predictor of crime rates as the percentage of people who knew their neighbors' first names.  Think about that for a moment.

 

How many of us know more about posters on this board whom we have never met in person than we do about the people living next to us?  In the non fiction book, The Corner by the author of the hit show The Wire, there is a widow of a police officer living by a drug corner in Baltimore.  Despite being in a nasty part of town, she is never bothered.  Why?  When she goes out the pushers, yell out, "Here comes old lady X.  Put your @#$@% away."  They don't mug the people they know and who know them.

 

Now, think about hate crimes.  How many of these come from people who know the victims well, greet them every day, eat with them, etc?  Our likelihood to hate goes down with exposure, and our empathy and understanding increase.  However, we are becoming the culture of disconnection.  We are more likely to send a contribution to the sad story we see on social media than we are to help a neighbor whose car broke down...because we never interact with our neighbor. We are more likely to know about the sad viral story leading us to contribute for the healthcare of an anti ACA advocate who can't afford needed treatment due to the success of his political stance. 

 

What the heck is wrong with us? We are.  We who are sitting here reading this still not knowing the people physically near us are what is wrong.  We disconnected from real life in favor of screen time.  What a trade...

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For Denver, the "what explains the increase" is a simple question. The rental market. Denver's economy is exploding, the rental market and housing market are on fire. Home and rental prices have never been higher.

The metro rail recently expanded out to west Denver, and with it came money. Luxury lofts and apartments, starbucks, dog parks, etc. Most of denver's historically black neighborhoods on the west side are being gentrified and all the poor families from West Denver (crips) are being forced to move across town to east Denver (bloods territory).

So two rival gangs that have been separated by downtown Denver for decades are now living in close proximity to each other. East Denver has been a war zone this summer. Triple homicides galore. Denver mayor created a task force between the DA, city/state/local cops, and community leaders to help stop the killings.

Though Denver's economy and real estate market doing so well is a good thing for most, the poor are left with very few places they can afford to live. So, at least here in the mile-high, the excess of guns on the street or police budget cuts don't have anything to do with the increase of murders.

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Though Denver's economy and real estate market doing so well is a good thing for most, the poor are left with very few places they can afford to live. So, at least here in the mile-high, the excess of guns on the street or police budget cuts don't have anything to do with the increase of murders.

 

They got the Change but missed out on the Hope?

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