© Reuters
Police crime scene South Side Chicago
Recently released figures show a shocking rise in murders across the US.
Experts warn there's not a single explanation, but agree the pandemic and social unrest were major factors. Will the bloodshed continue in 2021?
St Louis has just recorded its
most homicides in 50 years. In
Boston, killings have also shot up, with
a rise of 54 percent on 2019. Omaha has experienced an even more shocking increase, with
numbers doubling in 12 months. And then there's
Madison, the capital of Wisconsin,
topping the league table of American cities with an incredible 400 percent rise. Murder rates surged all over the US in 2020.
New York recorded 437 cases, up 39 percent, and Los Angeles 343, a 33-percent jump. After decades of stable or falling murder rates in most US cities and towns, the numbers are shocking. What lies behind them?
Speaking to RT.com, Emma E. Fridel, Assistant Professor at Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, explains:
"Cities often report seemingly high percentage increases in homicide, without providing context. Homicide is a relatively rare event, even in large cities. Percentages - especially percentages changes - are not stable when the denominator is a small number. An increase from one homicide to two, still a very low number, would be a whopping 100 percent increase. For example, some reports state Boston's murder rate skyrocketed by over 50 percent from 2019 to 2020. They failed to mention, however, that Boston only had 34 homicides in 2019, so that each additional murder in 2020 above 34 is an additional three percent increase."
That is the case in America's leader, Madison. It went from two to 10 homicides -
hence the massive 400% percentage rise on paper.
But the point remains: many more killings occurred in 2020 compared to 2019. Chicago saw 267 more, Milwaukee 93 and Houston had an additional 96. Clearly, the pandemic has played some sort of part, but what exactly is that? Obviously, it can't be separated from the general turmoil that America underwent in 2020.
Comment: A Chinese study of 10 MILLION people found no evidence of healthy people spreading coronavirus. But that's just one of many reasons why schools should be open: