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Monday, Jul 20, 2015 3:30 PM UTC
Worried about rising crime rates? Then it’s time to get the police under control
Violent crime has been decreasing for decades, but a recent surge shows why the police need to earn back our trust
Topics: Police, Crime, violent crime, police abuse, police violence, News, Politics News
Multiple cities across the United States are witnessing a spike in homicidal violence in 2015. This comes as major urban areas have seen record declines in the number of homicides after reaching record highs in the 1980s and ’90s due to the violence associated with the crack cocaine epidemic. As the violence spikes, city residents are wondering what is causing the violence and leading to a growth in homicides.
But national spikes in violence are not new. For instance in 1919, the United States was convulsed by a period known as the Red Summer. As Black soldiers were returning home from World War I, they were viewed with derision in their home country. Often times, labor was the flashpoint as Black workers were often leaving the South in droves during the Great Migration. The first flashpoint occurred in 1917 in East St. Louis where Black workers were brought in to break a strike of white workers at the Aluminum Ore Company.
In 1919, a crime wave of murder and mayhem broke out in more than 30 cities as whites attacked Black residents during a particularly bloody period. Rioting took place in cities ranging from San Francisco, Chicago, Omaha, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Memphis, and Washington DC. Mass lynchings and murder were carried out in Elaine, Arkansas, where Black sharecroppers were organizing a union to protect themselves from exploitation in the market. White farmers feared the economic prowess of Black farmers and killed 237 Black farmers, in Elaine and across Phillip County.
Fast forward: Starting in 1964, rioting erupted in urban areas in Black communities such as Harlem in New York City (1964), Philadelphia (1964), Watts in Los Angeles (1965), Chicago (1966), Omaha (1966), Cleveland (1966), Detroit (1967), and Newark (1967). The violence in Philly and Harlem started after incidents of police brutality, while in other cities poor economic conditions, high unemployment, and government policies such as urban renewal and highway displacement were cited as causal factors (by the National Commission on Urban Problems).
After Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, despair and disillusionment in Black communities turned to mass rioting in 110 cities in what has been called the Holy Week Uprising. The biggest eruptions of violence took place in Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, and Louisville. Many cities were occupied for some length of time by National Guard troops, which were sent to help quell the disturbances.
In the 1980s, violence in urban areas spiked due to the gang violence over drug turf, especially for the sale of crack cocaine in redlined, disinvested Black communities especially in large cities like Los Angeles and New York City. This continued through the 1990s when criminologists began to note a decline in violent crime all across the nation. We have been in that decline for most of the new millennium.
Although the level of homicides and violence are still well below the highs reached in the 1980s and 1990s, the nation is now the midst of another spike in violence. According to data published in USA Today, homicides numbers have increased in multiple cities — including Baltimore (up 38 percent), Chicago (up 15.8 percent), Dallas (up 28.3 percent), Milwaukee (up 104 percent), New Orleans (up 36.1 percent), Houston (up 42.5 percent), New York (up 11 percent), St. Louis (up 60.3 percent), and Washington DC (up 17.7 percent) — when compared to figures from 2014. Although homicides are down in cities such as Phoenix, San Diego, Indianapolis, and Los Angeles, the rate of violent crimes remains elevated in at least some of those cities.
With the uprisings we’ve witnessed in Ferguson and Baltimore, on the heels of urgent questions regarding police use of excessive force, along with the white supremacist terrorist attack in Charleston, one must wonder if indeed spikes in homicides in this country are not tied in some way to spikes in racial hostility. Many of the cities with the largest spikes in homicides also appear on sociologists Douglass Massey and Jonathan Tanmen’s list of hyper-segregated metropolitan areas in 2010 including Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago, and New York City. Furthermore, homicide rates are up in the precise moment when Black people’s trust in the police is in the midst of a years-long decline.
Of course, it’s important not to overstate the significance of such crime surges occurring over a relatively small window of time during what is otherwise a decades-long decrease in violent crime rates. However, the statistics still present a problem for police departments, who already face increased public scrutiny following a number of high-profile abuses, and will undoubtedly spur conversations across the country about the appropriate application of law enforcement. The question is: Can municipalities and police departments curb the spike in homicides before such violence begins to trend toward previous highs? In order to do so, city leaders and police departments must return to the most basic factor in addressing crime: Trust in the police.
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