Racial gap in rate of violence grew wider
Police found Alani Hutchins, 16, slain in a car in June. A stray bullet hit Michael Goodlow, 4, in the head on the Fourth of July. Someone shot Victrail Mora, 14, in the back of the head near the steps to his mother’s apartment Aug. 12.
At least 17 children have died violently in St. Louis this year, a tally that has shocked residents and underscored a widening racial crime disparity in that city and others amid the coronavirus pandemic. As the upward trajectory of crime continues, the gulf in the rate of violence between Black and white communities widened by 106 percent in the nation’s largest cities.
A Washington Post analysis of 27 cities showed the rolling rate of violent crime in majority-white neighborhoods fell by 30 percent while stay-at-home orders were in effect, dipping to its lowest point in two years. Once the orders were lifted, violent crime in those neighborhoods returned to prepandemic levels but stayed below average when compared with 2018 and 2019.
In majority-Black neighborhoods, the rate of violence remained relatively steady while stay-at-home orders were in effect but rose dramatically after orders were lifted, peaking at 133 crimes per 100,000 residents in July, the highest level in the past three years.
Crime in white and Black neighborhoods fluctuates from month to month, historically spiking in summer.
But this year, the rate of increase in Black neighborhoods has been most dramatic, peaking higher than 2018 and 2019 by about 10 and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, violent crime rates in predominantly Asian, Hispanic and white neighborhoods have fluttered beneath their recent summer peaks.
The analysis examined more than 800,000 crimes in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia and Seattle.
The crimes analyzed include homicide, sexual assault and rape, robbery, aggravated assault, arson, burglary, theft, auto theft and thefts from vehicles.
The analysis shows crime rates dropped in March after stay-athome orders were imposed to combat the pandemic. Rates flattened in April, but when orders began to lift in May, violent crime rose in majority-Black neighborhoods, surging past levels in 2018 and 2019.
Families wondering
The Post’s findings come as debate rages over policing, crime and unrest in the nation’s cities.
“There’s not just one pattern that’s really leading to divergent trends in cities,” said Patrick Sharkey, a Princeton University professor and criminologist. “You have the lockdowns, and then you have the response to the George Floyd incident and the proliferation of demonstrations against police brutality and racial justice, and the resulting response from police departments.”
Protesters and some big-city leaders have pushed for shifting funds away from police departments to services such as mental health and drug treatment, arguing that minority communities have been overpoliced for too long and that social services are a better way to address the root causes of crime.
The uptick in crime in Black neighborhoods has left some families wondering how much more they can take. Deeauna Mora, the aunt of Victrail Mora in St. Louis, said that when Victrail was shot and killed, the family already was grappling with the teen’s father, who is incarcerated, having contracted the coronavirus.
Deeauna Mora describes herself as a moderate Democrat who supports the Black Lives Matter movement but said she also was in favor of federal agents being deployed to St. Louis to help combat crime. She said local leaders haven’t done enough.
“He had dreams of going to college and being successful. They stripped that from him. He didn’t have a chance,” she said. “The way it’s looking, it’s not getting better. We are already dealing with COVID. To have to deal with that on top of losing someone so young and so close, it’s very shocking.”
Range of theories
As part of its analysis, the Post analyzed crime in 2018 and 2019 to see how current trends compare with recent years. The analysis found that the disparity between violent crime in white and Black neighborhoods is wider than it’s been at any time during that period.
Criminologists and police officials said pinpointing the causes of the divergence is difficult given the complexity of the forces driving crime, especially in a year of unprecedented upheaval. Still, they offered a range of theories.
Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of MissouriSt. Louis, said it’s possible that trends that emerged during the pandemic and after Floyd’s killing may have converged to leave Black neighborhoods more exposed to crime.
First, he said, minority communities may have suffered more from a decrease in proactive efforts to fight crime as departments shifted to battling the pandemic, instituted social distancing and quarantined sick officers. Rosenfeld surmised that Floyd’s death also might have led Black communities to report fewer crimes and participate less in investigations, leaving problems to fester.
“Those are communities that have already had a fraught relationship with police, and the alienation seems to have grown even more,” Rosenfeld said.
Other experts said Black neighborhoods could be home to more essential workers who were out and about, making them more vulnerable to street crime during the pandemic. White neighborhoods could have more office workers who are working from home, leaving them safer and making their homes less enticing targets for crime.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said it makes sense that public safety problems that arrived with the pandemic would fall most heavily on already struggling communities, just as the health effects of the coronavirus did.
“(When people have) lost their jobs, and when people, you know, lose hope, that’s when we start seeing the increase in assaults because people are just on pins and needles,” he said. “It’s an unprecedented era in modern history. You put all that together — that’s a lot for society to deal with. And I think when you add it all up, that’s (why) we’re seeing an increase.”
It’s also too early to know how the pandemic could affect crime in the long term, experts said. The pandemic is an exceptionally rare instance of entire societies being simultaneously shuttered, a scenario with little precedent for criminologists to study.
Matthew Ashby, a criminologist at University College London who has studied crime in the U.S. in the pandemic, said future studies using data still being collected could lead police departments and criminologists to understand how smaller-scale events — such as floods, hurricanes and protests — affect crime levels.
“It’s really hard to come up with national solutions or even statewide solutions for crime problems that are inherently very local,” he said. “Preventing crime is always about being specific about a particular type of crime and being local.”