imperial war blowback?
US facing wave of murders and gun violence By Jason Szep
ROXBURY, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Analicia Perry was kneeling to
light a candle at a makeshift shrine to her brother when she was shot
in the face and killed — four years to the day after her brother was
gunned down on the same spot.
The slaying of the 20-year-old mother — on a narrow street behind a
police station in Boston’s poor Roxbury district last month — is one
of the shocking examples of a rise in the murder rate across the
United States that is raising questions about whether police are
fighting terrorism at the expense of crime.
In a shift from trends of the past decade, violent crime is on the
rise, fueling criticism of Bush administration policies as a wave of
murders and shootings hits smaller cities and states with little
experience with serious urban violence.
From Kansas City, Missouri, to Indianapolis, Indiana, places that
rarely attract notice on annual FBI crime surveys are seeing
significant increases in murder. Boston, once a model city in
America’s battle against gun violence, is poised to eclipse last
year’s homicide tally, which was the worst in a decade.
Explanations vary — from softer gun laws to budget cuts, fewer
police on the beat, more people in poverty and simple complacency.
But many blame a national preoccupation with potential threats from
abroad.
“Since September 11, much of the resources that were distributed to
crime-fighting efforts in Boston and other major cities were
redistributed to fight terrorism,” said Jack Levin, director of the
Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University.
“The feds had supported after-school programs. They had supported
placing more police officers in crime hot spots in major cities.
These federal efforts were reduced,” he said.
VIOLENT CRIMES INCREASE
A 2005 Federal Bureau of Investigation crime report, issued last
month, showed violent crime increasing for the first time in four
years in 2005, up 2.5 percent from the year before, with medium-size
cities and the Midwest leading the way.
While New York, Los Angeles and Miami still are enjoying drops in
crime, smaller cities with populations of more than 500,000 are
raising the alarm, posting an 8.3 percent rise in violent crime in
2005. Nationwide, the murder rate rose 5 percent — the biggest rise
in a single year since 1991.
After dramatic declines in murder rates in the 1990s, some cities
dropped programs that emphasized prevention and controls on the
spread of guns, often citing budget cuts.
“The Bush administration has scaled back funding for federal cops
program,” said Jens Ludwig, a criminal justice expert at Georgetown
University. “From 1993 to 2000 we saw an impressive run-up in the
number of law enforcement people patrolling against crime. That has
really slowed down.”
Of the 57 murders in Kansas City this year, 45 involved guns. “When
things start getting out of control, people start shooting,” said
police Capt. Richard Lockhart.
Police in Indianapolis are clocking overtime after a dozen shootings
in less than a week at the start of August that began with a cab
driver gunned down. The city has had 71 murders this year, up from 51
a year ago.
WASHINGTON’S CRIME EMERGENCY
The police chief in Washington, D.C., declared a crime emergency in
July following the murder of a British political activist in the
exclusive Georgetown neighborhood and a spate of attacks on tourists
on the National Mall.
Several Midwest cities are on pace for a rise in murders this year,
including Cincinnati and Columbus in Ohio and Memphis, Tennessee.
“It isn’t gang or drug violence, it’s just people getting violent,”
said Mark Williams, an assistant district attorney in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. “A lot of them are minor disagreements and people using
guns to settle them.”
From the expiration of a federal ban on assault rifles to tougher
restrictions on databases that identify gun owners, gun laws have
weakened in the past five years, said Daniel Vice, an attorney with
the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence.
“The top five states with the highest gun death rates are five states
with incredibly weak gun laws,” he said, listing Louisiana, Alabama,
Alaska, New Mexico and Wyoming.
In Miami, while overall crime is down, the use of semi-automatic
weapons is growing.
“These things are dirt cheap,” Police Chief John Timoney told
Reuters, estimating the street price at $250 each. “We have seen
these assault weapons being used time and time again by drug gangs.”
(Additional reporting by Jane Sutton in Miami, Andrew Stern in
Chicago and Andy Sullivan in Washington)