Homicides in the US are surging in 2021 after jumping to 19,400 in 2020, on a wave of gun violence, sending criminologists searching for answers and local leaders and US policymakers.
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- “It really surged immediately after the murder of George Floyd,” said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, a non-partisan organization that advocates for reforms. “It’s sort of a perfect storm.”
- The numbers from major US cities are grim. Chicago, the US’s third-largest city, is on pace to have its worst murder rate in 25 years, with 649 people killed as of mid-October.
- In Houston, the US’s fourth-largest city, police have tracked 339 homicides so far this year, an increase over last year’s rate of killings.
- The nation’s capital, Washington, DC, with 183 killed so far this year, will surpass last year’s murder toll if killings continue at the same pace.
- The rising trend in homicides in 2021 holds in smaller cities, as well. The increases this year come on top of a 30 percent rise in murders across the US in 2020, officially reported by the FBI last month.
SOURCE: ALJAZEERA
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