Murders Spiked in 2020 in Cities Across the United States

While various medium-sized cities have been rocked by record homicides, some large cities, while still recording high homicide rates, lagged well behind their worst years.

New York City had about 500 homicides in 2020, compared to 319 in 2019, but both numbers were well below the city’s worst year, 1990, when there were more than 2,200. Chicago had 771 murders last year, compared to about 500 in 2019 and 939 in 1992, one of the city’s most violent years. There were 351 murders in Los Angeles last year, up from 258 in 2019; his record is 1,010 in 1980.

In Des Moines, where the FBI said there was a record of 33 murders in 2020, up from 14 in 2019, Mayor Frank Cownie said the city faced killings due to illicit drug trafficking involving gangs of similar problems like the rest of the country disputes or domestic violence. He also noted that two crimes in the past year were particularly violent, with five deaths on both occasions. “This is a rarity in our community,” Cownie said in a statement.

The mayor said he was encouraged that there had only been seven murders this year, although it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what caused the decline.

The protests that erupted in Minneapolis after the police murder of George Floyd were also a major factor in 2020, although experts differ on the reasons. Some argue that the police, under close scrutiny and demoralized, have withdrawn from some aspects of crime prevention. Others focused on the public, suggesting that reduced respect for the police led more people to try to take control of the law.

“The distrust of the police, the low morale of the police, the fact that the police are less proactive because they are rightly concerned about being supported by their superiors,” said Winograd.

Police officers like Chief Medina also cited the prison’s revolving door created by the bail reform as a factor driving the violence, although critics of this hypothesis noted that violent crime has increased even in places where these changes have not occurred. They point to states like Tennessee, which are still debating reform of state and local security deposits; FBI numbers for Memphis show a record 289 murders in 2020, up from 190 a year earlier.