U.S. Murders Increased 10.8% in 2015 The figures, released by the FBI, could stoke worries that the trend of falling crime rates may be ending By Devlin Barrett
http://www.wsj.com/articles/murders-in-the-u-s-rose-in-2015-1474897888
Murders in the U.S. jumped 10.8% in 2015, according to figures released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation—a sharp increase that could fuel concerns that the nation’s two-decade trend of falling crime may be ending.
The figures had been expected to rise, after preliminary data released earlier this year indicated violent crime and murders were climbing. But the double-digit increase in murders dwarfed any of the past 20 years, in which the biggest one-year jump was 3.7% in 2005.
In 2014, the FBI recorded violent crimes of all types narrowly falling, by 0.2%. In 2015, the number of violent crimes rose 3.9%, though the number of property crimes fell 2.6%, the FBI said.
Members of minority and poor communities may be more reluctant to talk to police and help them solve crimes, part of the “Ferguson effect”—a term used by law-enforcement officials referring to the aftermath of the killing of an unarmed, black 18-year-old man in Ferguson, Mo., by a policeman in 2014.
Some law-enforcement officials, including FBI Director James Comey, have said that since the Ferguson shooting and protests, some officers may be more reluctant to get out of their patrol cars and engage in the kind of difficult work that reduces street crime, out of fear they may be videotaped and criticized publicly.
“This rise is concentrated in certain large cities where police-community tensions have been notable,’’ said Mr. Rosenfeld, citing Cleveland, Baltimore, and St. Louis as examples. The increase isn’t spread evenly around America, he pointed out, but centered on big cities with large black populations.
In all, there were 15,696 instances of murder and nonnegligence manslaughter in the U.S. last year, the FBI said.
Early figures for 2016 indicate murders may still be rising.
A report by the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that for the first half of 2016, murders rose in 29 of the nation’s biggest cities while they fell in 22 others. Overall, homicides rose 15% in 2016’s first half in those 51 cities compared with the same period the year before, the group said.
While Baltimore and Washington, D.C., are seeing their murder numbers fall back down this year, Chicago has seen a tremendous jump, to 316 homicides in the first half of 2016 compared with 211 in the same period of 2015.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivered an emotional speech on crime last Thursday, and Chicago police officials have announced an increase of nearly 1,000 officers over two years.
The crime rise in such a short period of time eliminates possible causes like economic struggles or changing demographics, Mr. Rosenfeld said.
Beyond that, the new figures show a growing racial disparity in who gets killed in America.
Nationally, the murder of black Americans outpaces that of whites—7,039 African-Americans were killed last year, compared with 5,854 whites, according to the data. The races of the remaining victims is unknown because not all police departments report it.
Across the U.S., 13% of Americans identify solely as African-American and 77% identify solely as white.
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