Homicides up 22% in SJ in 2020

While local DA's refuse to prosecute lawbreakers, local progressives call for defunding the police, and SJ's Office of Cultural Affairs throws money at art that falsely maligns and incites violence against the police, guess what happens? Murders soar. San Jose's increase of 22% aligns with national trends. NPR reports.

New Orleans-based data consultant Jeff Asher studied crime rates in more than 50 cities and says the crime spikes aren't just happening in big cities. With the numbers of homicides spiking in many places, Asher expects the final statistics for 2020 to tell a startlingly grim story. "We're going to see, historically, the largest one-year rise in murder that we've ever seen," he says. 

Asher says it has been more than a half-century since the country saw a year-to-year murder rate that jumped nearly 13%.

Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, says there may be factors beyond pandemic-related economic and mental health issues at play. He is lead author of a new report from the Council on Criminal Justice, which focuses on the pandemic, social unrest and crime following George Floyd's killing by police in May. 

Rosenfeld says there has been some respite since property crimes took a nosedive as the pandemic began. 

"Burglaries were down. Larcenies were down. You know quarantines kept people at home and burglaries tend to avoid occupied households," he explained. "When the shops are closed, there's no shoplifting, so larceny is reduced." Rosenfeld says, the number of property crimes in 2020 was still much lower than the previous year, but homicides climbed significantly in 28 cities he studied — places such as St. Louis, Kansas City and Milwaukee. He also says the risk of homicide in neighborhoods often plagued by gun violence was much higher in 2020 than in 2019. 

The questions now are whether the big jump in murders is a one-year blip and what might push that back down. 

Spreadsheet of homicide incidents by U.S. City, 2020.

The whole NPR story.

Local activists call for defunding the police.

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Photo taken by Zach Frailey.