Homicides in America drastically increased in 2020: report

This is the "highest annual increase in more than 50 years," writes The Economist. Chicago's murder rate increased by 56 percent, New York City 45 percent, San Francisco and the Bay Area 36 percent, Washington, DC, 19 percent. Rural counties and small towns also so a rise in homicide, according to FBI data. The national increase in homicides is close to 25 percent, meaning that in many ways this is not merely a local problem for America's big cities, but a national phenomenon. And these numbers show no sign of subsiding. Already in 2021, the murder rate in Chicago is up by 11 percent.

Prior to this year, American cities had been remarkably safe. The period was called the "great crime decline," and "the violent crime rate was cut nearly in half from 1993 to 2019." In New York City, that marks the beginning of Rudy Giuliani's term as mayor, during which he worked diligently to reduce crime and make the city's streets safe. After Giuliani came three terms of mayoralty with Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg built on the crime reduction left by Giuliani and worked hard on quality of life issues. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took over in 2014, has not continued either of these trends.

While arrests in the Big Apple sharply declined over the summer months, that same July to September period was the most fatal period in the city this year. In total, there was a decrease in the arrest rate in New York by 35 percent. In Chicago, the increase in carjackings spurred some to call for the banning of violent video games, not the reopening of the economy. In New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said crime was up because people were stealing food to feed their families.

John Roman, a criminologist at NORC, at the University of Chicago, said "It's like 20 years of crime decline and violence decline has just disappeared." And for Roman, the cause is pretty clear. "The recipe for violence in any city in the world is dense clusters of young men with nothing to do."

Nothing to do, of course, is the definition of 2020 America under these pandemic rules that shuttered businesses, left people out of work, out of school, and idling under the weight of a pandemic that has near a 99 percent survival rate. Young people, specifically, are not particularly at rick from COVID.

To top it off, people got more broke. Congress sent out cash payments in May, and then intentionally stalled the process of payouts until they could get President Trump out of office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitted that holding up stimulus payments until Trump was out of office was intentional. A small check went out to come in December, but was not received by everyone who qualified, meaning that for those who didn't get it the amount will simply be a tax deduction. A new round of checks, for $1,400, have begun going out.

Meanwhile, gun sales surged, alcohol and drug use rose across the board, and overdose deaths increased across the US. The Economist reports that gun sales were up by 65 percent for some calibers, alcohol sales were up 25 percent.

The increase began after the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. Murder had already been high, but once protests and riots began, police resources were diverted to those events, leaving communities that had previously been policed with a vacuum. It was filled with violence. Chicago saw 42 people murdered between May 27, which was the Wednesday following Floyd's death, to June 2. No week period in Chicago had been that grim since 2001.

Two mass shootings, the kind that make national news and seem to have bizarre, ideological motivations, have begun again, and these gain the attention of national press and politicians. Both the recent mass shootings, one in Georgia where eight people were shot, and another in Colorado that took the lives of ten, led federal leaders to call for more gun control.

However, the drastic uptick in violence has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and national media. The massive waves of homicide have not garnered national attention.