A Surge in Shootings

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2020

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Gun violence is on the rise in New York City. By the end of July, there had been more shootings in 2020 than in all of 2019. Shootings have risen in other metropolises, too, including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver and Houston. Several theories have been advanced about why. Experts on crime say the coronavirus outbreak has deepened the endemic problems that often underlie gun violence, including poverty, unemployment, housing instability and hunger. Police leaders also cite budget cuts and a political climate that has made officers reluctant to carry out arrests because of what they see as unfair scrutiny of their conduct. Today, we look at how the various diagnoses could influence activists’ calls for the police to be defunded. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: “Right now, communities are being held hostage by the cops and the robbers at the same time,” a City Council member from Queens said. The summertime surge in shootings is unlike anything New York has seen in two decades. The summer usually brings with it an increase in violent crime. Across the U.S., as many states emerge from lockdown, the increase has been steeper than usual.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily.
0:10.6	Today, in major cities across the US, gun violence is surging, just as activists are calling
0:19.7	to defund the police. My colleague, Ashley Southhall, on how that is playing out in New York City.
0:28.8	It's Monday, August 24th.
0:35.6	Ashley, what has been the story of crime in New York City up until this moment?
0:41.6	So around the 70s and 80s, we saw crime start to really rise in New York. And we went through
0:48.4	the drug war, the crack epidemic. And in the 90s, we saw crime sort of peak all across the United
0:55.7	States, but especially in New York. And there were thousands of murders each year. And even more
1:02.3	shootings. But as the 90s were on and into the 2000s, the crime rate in this country is continuing to
1:08.8	fall. The FBI reported today that violent crime felt 5.5 percent last year. That's three years
1:15.2	in a row now. We saw a crime decline. And there was a strong decline for years to the point where we
1:20.5	were having just hundreds of murders a year. The NYPD says there have been 289 murders this year.
1:26.9	That's down from a peak of more than 221990. Crime in New York City, dropping yet again, this time
1:33.7	to levels not seen since Harry Truman was president. Police admitted it's probably the worst kept
1:38.7	secret in the city that New York is now the safest big city in America. And the question was,
1:43.5	when was New York going to reach bottom? Breaking news on this Sunday night. Crime is up across
1:51.6	the city. That's according to the latest numbers released by the NYPD this time. The NYPD now having
1:57.3	to adapt to a noticeable rise in crime since the beginning of the year. At the beginning of the
2:02.8	year, we started to see crime rise over several categories. Then in June, we see it really take off.
2:11.5	It has been a violent weekend in New York City. The NYPD investigating a spree of shootings on
2:17.2	this first official weekend of summer. More than a dozen people were shot between Friday night and
2:22.4	Saturday morning. And in July, the trend seems to just accelerate. Nine victims fatally shot
	...

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