A rise in homicides and other violent crimes in major cities across the U.S. in the first months of 2016 is reigniting a debate over whether law enforcement may have slacked off or become less aggressive.
Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis and Las Vegas are among major cities reporting a notable uptick in homicides — but more than half of the police departments that reported first-quarter crime statistics also experienced increases in rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults and nonfatal shootings
After more than a decade of downward-trending crime rates across the country, the fact that homicides have begun to increase in some cities but not others is worrisome to law enforcement who are struggling to explain why, said Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum.
“It’s almost like an early warning system,” Mr. Wexler said. “And you have a number of cities who are asking the same question: What is the common denominator?”
FBI Director James B. Comey, after being briefed on the crime statistics last week, revived a controversial assessment that the crime uptick might be due to police becoming less aggressive in their duties as officers fear they may become the subject of the next “viral video
The numbers are not only going up, they are continuing to go up in many of those cities faster than they were going up last year,” Mr. Comey told reporters during a roundtable discussion at FBI headquarters last week. “I don’t know what the answer is, but holy cow, do we have a problem.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/15/homicides-violent-crimes-spike-in-us-cities-as-pol/
