Homicides in US rose nearly 30% in 2020

The year 2020 was a deadly one in the United States — not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic but because the country suffered its largest number of homicides since 1960, when such national records were first kept.

Homicides rose by 29.4 percent in 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) released Monday.

There were 21,570 homicides reported in 2020, an increase of 4,901.

The violent crime rate rose 5.6 percent last year compared with 2019, while the property crime rate fell 8.1 percent, according to the report.

"The rise in homicides coincided with the pandemic last summer, and also the outbreak of widespread protests against police violence after George Floyd was murdered … neither of which was anticipated," Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, told The Wall Street Journal.

Diminished relations between law enforcement and black communities after high-profile police killings, such as that of Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis, also was pointed to by observers.

Some politicians and law-enforcement officials have said that a police pullback has been a factor in increased crime in cities such as Portland, Oregon, with a population around 653,000, which has seen a large rise in homicides, the Journal reported.

Also mentioned was stress brought on by pandemic-related lockdowns and job losses, along with a shutdown of the court system.

On the positive side, crimes such as burglary and theft decreased, and robbery fell by 9.3 percent.

The burglary decline was likely a result of more people working from home during the pandemic, making their homes less of a mark for break-ins. And with fewer people out and about in cities, would-be robbers had fewer targets.

Of the 18,619 federal, state, county, city, university and college, and tribal agencies eligible to participate in the UCR Program, 15,897 agencies submitted data in 2020.

In 2020, there were an estimated 1,277,696 violent crimes in the United States. The estimated volume of rape offenses decreased 12 percent, while the estimated number of aggravated assault offenses rose 12.1 percent, the FBI said.

Nationwide, there were 6,452,038 property crimes. Burglaries dropped 7.4 percent, larceny-thefts decreased 10.6 percent, while motor-vehicle thefts rose 11.8 percent.

Major cities such as New York, Chicago and New Orleans, Louisiana, did not submit their data from last year.

The FBI report revealed that more than three-quarters (77 percent) of the murders reported last year were committed with a firearm. The data also show that the gun crimes behind much of the increase is among a relatively small number of people in communities where retaliatory shootings are more common.

The majority of homicide victims and offenders were between the ages of 20 and 29, and homicides began to escalate in the summer of 2020, the report said.

A report earlier this year found that gun sales hit a record level in 2020, with nearly 23 million firearms bought legally, up 65 percent from 2019.

Several midsize cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico; Des Moines, Iowa; Indianapolis, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Syracuse, New York recorded their highest homicide numbers ever, according to the report.

"People are desperate, and they don't have a lot of options, so they turn toward violence as a way to solve things," Enrique Cardiel, a community organizer and health worker in the neighborhood with the most homicides in Albuquerque told the Times.

The US' three largest cities saw homicides increase in 2020, but they were significantly below record levels.

New York City recorded about 500 homicides in 2020, compared with 319 in 2019; in 1990, there were more than 2,200 slayings in New York.

There were 351 homicides last year in Los Angeles, compared with 258 in 2019; the city's record is 1,010 in 1980.

Chicago had 771 homicides last year, compared with about 500 in 2019 and 939 in 1992.

According to data only from the cities that participated, of the people slain in 2020, at least 9,913 were black; 7,029 were white; 497 were from other races; and 315 were of unknown race. There were at least 14,146 men killed and 3,573 women.

Still, the homicide rate at 6.5 per 100,000 people was about 40 percent below the peak in the 1980s and the 1990s, the FBI data show.

"This is a country where everybody is suffering a little post-COVID traumatic syndrome and not knowing what is going to happen," Peter Winograd, a professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico who works as a consultant for the Albuquerque Police Department, told the Times.

"The distrust of police, the low morale among police, the fact that the police are being less proactive because they are legitimately worried about being backed up by their superiors" were contributing factors, he said.