Posted on 06/24/2006 7:03:13 PM PDT by 1066AD
The Sunday Times June 25, 2006
Murder wave hits US ‘exburbs’ Tony Allen-Mills, New York
THERE were five teenagers in the car rolling quietly through the muggy night an hour before dawn in central New Orleans. By the time the police caught up with them last weekend, they were all dead — riddled with bullets in the worst outbreak of gun violence since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city last year.
An apparent ambush by unknown gunmen in an area still recovering from Katrina’s flooding has delivered a sharp jolt to what many criminologists are describing as complacency about violent crime.
As more than 100 reservist military police and 60 state troopers were sent to reinforce the police last week, New Orleans was emerging as a blood-spattered symbol of an alarming trend in US criminality.
The city that briefly enjoyed a zero murder rate in the wake of the evacuations forced by Katrina is on the way to regaining its status as America’s most dangerous city, even though its population has halved.
After 54 murders this year, New Orleans has become one of the deadliest examples of a rising murder rate that is defying the trends of the past decade and fuelling concern about a crime wave that appears to be spreading to smaller cities and states with little experience of serious gun violence.
From Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, cities that rarely make a dent on the FBI’s annual statistical surveys are recording sharp jumps in violent crime.
Researchers are re-examining the factors that may be influencing crime, among them the migration of middle-class populations to the “exurbs”, or distant suburbs, often with weak police forces unable to handle the influx and little experience of urban crime.
Experts say they do not fully understand why murders shot up 10% or more last year in cities such as Buffalo, in New York state, Memphis, in Tennessee, and Little Rock, in Arkansas. But they believe that the distractions of fighting terrorism and a possible migration of criminals chased out of the bigger cities may have contributed to a jump of 5% in America’s overall murder rate last year — the biggest rise in a single year since 1991.
“These are not the bad old days yet,” said Professor Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. “But I don’t think it’s a blip on the radar screen either. I think it’s the beginning of a trend and we could see a whole new crime wave.”
For more than a decade American police chiefs have been “sticking their chests out” while claiming credit for falling crime rates, noted Professor Peter Scharf, a criminologist at the University of New Orleans. US crime-fighting techniques such as zero tolerance, computerised analysis and focused deployment of resources have been used around the globe.
Some cities continue to record significant falls in crime — notably New York, where the number of murders dropped again last year to 539 compared with 2,245 in 1990 — and the trend has been reinforced by long prison sentences that keep potential killers off the streets.
Yet police in San Antonio, Texas, have been scratching their heads over the causes of a dramatic 70% increase in the murder rate this year. Traditionally peaceful states such as New Hampshire, Iowa and Kansas are also experiencing violence unknown a decade ago.
In some cities, rises in the murder rate have been linked to the arrival of Katrina evacuees. Yet FBI officials shied away from blaming any single factor for increases elsewhere.
“Our large cities seem to be doing something right,” said Regina Schofield, an assistant attorney-general in the justice department. “We need to find out what’s going on in the smaller cities.”
One official acknowledged that some communities were “less prepared” to deal with the activities of criminal gangs displaced from bigger cities. Richard Hertling of the justice department said he had heard of experienced criminals moving out of California, which has a “three strikes and you’re out” law for repeat offenders, and setting up operations in Nevada, Oregon and Arizona.
Officials are also concerned about the release of thousands of prisoners arrested during the 1980s war on drugs who have now served their sentences.
Several criminologists argue that US officials have been distracted by terrorism since the September 11 attacks and that the government is complacent about ordinary crime. “We’ve been resting on our laurels,” said Levin.
Researchers are re-examining potential crime-breeding factors, from the role of abortions in poor communities — theoretically preventing criminals being born — to the spread of more lethal weapons.
“In West Side Story [the musical] they fought with switchblades,” said Scharf. “Now you might as well be in Falluja. When you give kids automatic weapons nothing good is going to happen.”
You found the main (though not only) reason.
My tagline says it all.
Those aren't exurbs.
Notice, no mention of illegals, just the usual suspects. As far as New Orleans, they are in denial.
The shooting he referenced in New Orleans was in the heart of the city. Not exactly the exburbs, either.
It was not for the lack of trying. As I remember there were people still shooting, they just were not shooting at anything close enough to hit.
The article hints that Katrina evacuees are the problem.
Besides, the article says the big city murder rate is going down especially in NYC (lots of illegals there) and going up in the burbs (katrina people finding new ground).
NO was the US murder capital before Katrina.
You have no facts to back this up. How do you explain the decline of crime in the cities like NYC. I doubt bloomberg is chasing the illegals out to Buffalo.
I was thinking the same thing: illegal immigrants. Since they're illegal, no one really knows how many there are, but the crimes they commit are like shadows cast on the wall as they pass by. I could be wrong, but that's the thought that passed through my head reading this article.
You have no facts to back this up. How do you explain the decline of crime in the cities like NYC. I doubt bloomberg is chasing the illegals out to Buffalo.
The illegal problem isn't as bad in NYC because:
A)Many of the jobs are union and illegals can't get them.
B)Cost of living is beyond minimal pay.
C)There are clear channels through which immigrants, both legal and illegal, immigrants pass.
The crime rate has gone done because of programs enacted under Rudy and continued under Bloomberg. Also, the NYPD is an excellent, well-equipped police force.
Jack Levin
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
Hardly. Those factores were there last year and the year before. They aren't the cause of the increase in violent crime this year.
For Texas and many of the states surrounding Louisiana one new factor is the influx of hardened criminals from New Orleans who have shot up the crime rate in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Another factor is that the young criminals who were sentenced to at least 25 years in prison without parole beginning under President Reagan are now starting to be set free at the end of their sentences.
I think that it builds over time though.
Where-ever the Blacks males are is where you'll find the crimes.
Those darn "teenagers" with their be-bop music and hepped-up hot rods.
San Antonio has a much lower rate than Philly. Philly's murders are not caused by illegal immigrants.
I have yet to read any ACCURATE accounts of murders being committed with automatic weapons.
And FWIW, I don't think New Orleans is anywhere close to the murders and attempted murders in Detroit so far this year.
After FL passed the nation's first shall issue CCW law in 1987 the FL murder rate dropped by 27% (IIRC) within 5 years. The MSM will never ever tell you anything like that, but a number of other states have also experienced dramatic reductions in crime rates after enacting shall issue CCW laws. Criminals tend to be more wary about choosing victims when they don't know which ordinary looking man or woman is carrying a gun and which one isn't.
I recognized that factoid the first day of my first visit there over 40 years ago.
N.O. is a festering boil on the anus of the US, and it's only getting worse. The last time I was there, not by my own choice btw, I couldn't believe it could have lowered itself any deeper into the sewer than the last time I was there before that, but it had.
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