Seattle led the pack among cities with spiking murder rates, logging a 74.1 percent increase in murders between 2019 and 2020, Statista reported.
Five more major cities saw more than a 50 percent increase in their murder rates, including New Orleans (61.7 percent), Atlanta (57.9 percent), Chicago (55.5 percent), Boston (54.1 percent), and Portland (51.5 percent).
These trends held throughout the nation.
Final national murder update of 2020:
Murder up 36.7% in 57 agencies with data through at least September (though most have data through November). Murder up in 51 of 57, 37 of 58 agencies reporting murder up more than 30%.
Spreadsheet here: https://t.co/vEhKHuFNrY pic.twitter.com/5HgVmwGmDS
— Jeff Asher (@Crimealytics) December 29, 2020
The nearly 37 percent increase translates to nearly 2,000 murders, from 5,194 in 2019 to 7,101 in 2020.
More than 19,000 people died from firearm-related homicide and suicide in 2020, the most since the drug, murder, and crime epidemic of the 1990s, The Gun Violence Archive reported.
These alarming increases came while America’s leaders locked its citizens inside, prevented them from attending church, going to work, exercising at the gym, or sharing holidays with loved ones.
At the same time, Democrat politicians in major cities allowed Antifa and Black Lives Matter to terrorize citizens, burn down businesses, and annex parts of cities. Their governance led to anarchy.
Despite deteriorating conditions inside America’s cities, Democratic mayors and city council members agreed with Antifa and BLM’s calls to defund the police, providing a further moral boost to anarchists, arsonists, agitators, vandals — and murderers.
New York City’s homicide rate jumped 39.2 percent in 2020. The city reported 437 homicides, up from 314 in 2019.
Mayor Bill de Blasio attributed the spike “in part, to the coronavirus and to the fact that people are cooped up.”
“It’s certainly related to the fact that the criminal justice system is on pause and that’s causing a lot of problems,” he said, referring to the city’s decision to release criminals so that they do not catch COVID-19, which acts like a common cold in the vast majority of cases.
