Lack Of Churches, Schools, Police Fueling Murder Wave In Major Cities

A new report from the Wall Street Journal confirms a wave of violent crime has swept major cities across the country, and is linked to closed churches, closed schools, and pilloried police departments.

The investigation, which was released Sunday, used crime data from police departments across the 50 largest U.S. cities. It found that nearly all are undergoing a severe rise in homicides. Thirty-six out of 50 of the cities are seeing double-digit increases in killings, for a nationwide toll of nearly 4,000 additional lives lost. The victims are disproportionately black and Latino.

The three largest cities, Democrat-run New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago saw rises of 24 percent, 14 percent, and more than 52 percent, respectively.

The findings are particularly striking considering killings were decreasing across major cities in April and May, suggesting the big increases are concentrated in the last two months. If the surge continues, then, the rate of growth for the year will end up being much higher across the board.