Whether it is due to the effect of President Trump or not, there is good news on the crime front: according to researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the violent crime rate for this year is projected to be roughly 1% above 2014’s violent crime rate, the lowest recorded since 1990.
Analyzing data from local police departments in America’s 30 largest cities, the researchers determined that the violent crime rate is projected to decrease slightly, by 0.6%. They attribute that to stabilization in Chicago, and declines in Washington, D.C.
The 2017 murder rate is projected to decline 2.5%; attributable to a 25.6% decline in Detroit, a plunge of 20.5% in Houston, and a 19.5% drop in New York City. The report argues that the 2017 murder rate is expected to be on par with that of 2009, but higher than the lowest recorded rate in 2013.
Some cities crime rate will rise, including Charlotte, where the murder rate doubled in the first six months of 2017 relative to 2016.
Even left-wing Vox admitted that the spike in the murder rate in 2015-16 might have occurred because police were prevented from doing their jobs:
Criminologists still aren’t sure why murder in particular appeared to spike so much in 2015 and 2016. Some argued that there might have been a “Ferguson effect,” named after the city that exploded into protests over the police shooting of Michael Brown: Due to protests against police brutality over the past few years, police were, the theory goes, scared off from doing proactive policing, emboldening criminals.
Other experts argued a different kind of Ferguson effect: The demonstrations over police led to elevated distrust in law enforcement, which makes it much harder for police to solve and prevent crimes.
In New York, where in August there were 21 fewer homicides than in August 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that the murder rate drop was attributable to the work by police, allowing, “Precision and neighborhood policing have brought us the safest August in history, with crime plummeting double digits.”