In addition to the investments, Garland unveiled plans to deploy federal resources and prosecutors to cities disproportionately affected by violent crime, including St. Louis, Missouri; Jackson, Mississippi; and Hartford, Connecticut. He said the targeted deployments aim to support local law enforcement agencies and enhance collaboration in tackling crime hotspots.
In the wake of the horrific mass shooting that took place in Sacramento, California, over the last week, politicians and media pundits have rushed to their soapboxes to proclaim, once again, that guns are the root of all evil and the cause of the recent violent crime wave that has gripped our nation.
Eleven fewer homicides were reported in Los Angeles during the first month of 2022 than during the same period in 2021, a drop of nearly 17%, Police Chief Michel Moore said today. Overall violent crime, however, increased 3.5%, Moore told the Los Angeles Police Commission.
The nonprofit legal organization committed to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals also noted that Black people are more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder when the victim is White. Among Black people exonerated of murder convictions, approximately 31 percent were wrongly convicted of killing White people. However, only 15 percent of homicides by Black people involve White victims, the National Registry of Exonerations reported.
Gun violence spiked across the country in 2020, the most violent year in decades. 19,000 were killed in shootings, the highest death toll in 20 years (and that does not include gun suicides). Mass shootings — defined as four or more shot in an incident — also rose drastically to over 600.
Homicides were down 8.2 percent, violent crime was down 4.5 percent and property crime was down 1.8 percent.
Despite the high temperatures and sweltering heat plaguing South Los Angeles, an overflow crowd of community residents, activists, gang interventionists and law enforcement packed into Hamilton United Methodist Church on Sunday, Sept. 12 to discuss the recent surge in homicides in South Los Angeles. The emergency meeting, organized by 8th District Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson and co-chaired by U. S Rep. Karen Bass and 9th District Councilman Curren Price, was called after statistics revealed that gang-related homicides and violent crime had risen sharply during the month of August with 39 reported deaths, the most homicides since July 2009. Nearly half of