U.S. cities still trapped in record homicide spiral

Many cities of U.S, both large metropolises and medium-sized towns, registered in 2021 a record number of homicides, in a spiral of deaths that began last year in the middle of the pandemic and that the authorities are struggling to control.

The causes, according to experts consulted by AFP, are varied: the hit of the coronavirus and the multiple traumas it has caused, an economic recovery that has not benefited everyone and -especially- the abundance of firearms.

Philadelphia broke a dismal record dating back to 1990, with at least 535 homicides this year in a population of 1.5 million. The “city of brotherly love” surpassed New York and Los Angeles, the two largest metropolises in the United States.

“In Philadelphia, as in many major cities, we are poor,” says Dorothy Johnson-Speight, director of the NGO Mothers in Charge.

“We are talking about a poor educational system, housing problems, resources for families that need support … We have a high rate of food insecurity,” he explains.

After the death of her son, murdered at the age of 24 in an altercation over a parking space, she created in 2003 this association that fights against violence in this city in the northeast of the country, the cradle of American democracy.

The group, which organizes anger management sessions and supports families of homicide victims, had to limit its activities for several months due to the pandemic.

The absence of that support “raises the anger,” says Johnson-Speight. “When you don’t have a place to go or you don’t know how to handle it and you don’t have the support to do it, it tends to get worse.”

Mad at everything

The US capital, Washington (with at least 211 homicides), Albuquerque (100), Portland (at least 70), Richmond (80): “this country lost its head,” says David Thomas, professor of criminology at Florida Gulf University. Coast.

“People are just angry, against everything. And with that frustration, their stress management mechanisms seem to fail ”, adds this African-American professor.

Young people, particularly those from minorities, “get mad at each other, they take it to Facebook and then it ends in a shooting,” he explains.

Johnson-Speight also criticizes the influence of drill music, a hip-hop stream with bleak lyrics, brutally violent and originally from Chicago.

Young people identify with rappers who “show the different weapons available” in the market, while singing about who they are going to kill, he says.

But for Jeff Asher, a former CIA member and crime statistics analyst, as well as other specialists, the main cause of this wave of violence is the “great increase in the sale of weapons” since the pandemic began.

About 23 million weapons, a record, were sold in 2020, according to the specialized firm Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, which estimates a figure of 20 million for this year.

“Everybody has a gun,” says Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest and anti-violence activist in Chicago. “A weapon has now become the first line of defense or attack for many people. People on the street tell you: ‘I have to have a gun because everyone else has it.’

Distrust

Chicago, in the north of the country, has suffered from years of violence and corruption. This year it already exceeded 800 homicides, a record since 1994.

Most of the homicides are by reckoning and the victims are largely African-American, often children killed by stray bullets.

Father Pfleger denounces “the lack of involvement, listening and strategy of the authorities to fight violence”, as well as the actions of the police, with less than 50% of the investigations resolved in 2020.

“Solving a high percentage of the murders would increase the confidence of the community and would also remove the murderers from the streets,” says Asher in turn.

And it also points to “a growing distrust of the police” that may make “people more willing to take justice into their own hands”, an effect exacerbated after the murder of African-American George Floyd by a white agent in May 2020.

Sectors on the left want reforms that take funds away from the police (“Defund the police”) and transfer them to social programs.

But Pfleger proposes the deployment of teams to prevent violence in the streets, psychological support for the population and aid for professional training. “You can’t just tell someone to put down their gun and give them nothing in return,” he says.