Data suggests number of murders reported in America rose by 4.3 percent since 2020, with vast majority of homicides committed using some type of firearm even as the tally excludes nation’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles.
The number of murders
reported in the United States rose last year, the federal investigation agency has said, but it warned that a change in its data collection
methods meant that its tally excluded the nation’s two largest
cities, New York and Los Angeles.
The FBI said on Wednesday its data suggested the number of murders
reported in the United States rose by 4.3 percent since 2020, with the
vast majority of those homicides committed using some type of
firearm.
The increase follows a 29.4 percent surge in the murder rate the
year before.
Although the new report shows that overall violent crime
decreased by about 1 percent in 2021 and the statistics are still
incomplete, experts said the bureau’s findings show that violent
crime remains a significant problem in America.
“Violent crime, and specifically gun crime, continues to be
a huge challenge for our nation,” former Houston Police Chief
Art Acevedo told reporters on a call organised by the
left-leaning Center for American Progress.
Justice Department officials told journalists on a Tuesday
conference call ahead of the full data set’s release that the
transition to a new method of data collection meant that just
52 percent of US law enforcement agencies had submitted their full
12-month 2021 crime data by the bureau’s March 2022 deadline.
The data does not include full reports from agencies
including the New York City Police Department, the Los Angeles
Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, the
San Francisco Police Department and Arizona’s Phoenix Police
Department.
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Republicans blame Biden administration
The increase, and the incomplete data, have already drawn
some criticism as Republicans increasingly focus their campaign
messaging on concerns about crime ahead of the November 8 midterm
elections, when they are favoured to win back control of at least
one chamber of Congress from President Joe Biden’s Democrats.
“Violent crime has surged in this country under the Biden
administration,” Republican US Representative Michael Burgess
of Texas said in a statement, adding that the new data is “very
concerning.”
A Reuters news agency/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday showed that
registered voters, including the key demographic group of
suburban women, believe Republicans are better suited to
addressing crime than Democrats.
This marks the first time the FBI and the Justice
Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics have fully
transitioned to a more detailed crime-reporting system, known as
the National Incident-Based Reporting System.
About 9,700 law enforcement agencies were not able to supply
full data sets by the March 2022 deadline for Wednesday’s
report.
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Gun violence
Department officials said they were able
to generate state-level estimates for about 40 of the 50 states, which covers about 65 percent of the US population.
Justice Department and FBI officials told reporters on
Tuesday that the new methodology for crime data collection will
include many new details on crimes that previously went
unreported.
These include data for drug offences, human
trafficking numbers, bribery, counterfeiting, and more detail on
things such as simple assault and intimidation offences.
“Even though it’s incomplete data and we cannot draw any
conclusions about national trends, we have to respond to the
concerns that people have about crime and violence,” said Insha
Rahman, vice president of advocacy for the Vera Institute.
She added that the report only underscores the need for evidence-based solutions to reduce gun violence and make communities safer.
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Source: Reuters
FBI’s ‘incomplete data’ shows surge in 2021 US murders
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