Mena: This outrageous that 343 people were killed in Baltimore in 2017. 550 peopple were killed in Chicago in 2017. In other big cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta and Washington DC hundred of people have also been killed in gun violence. Because there is no civil war in the USA this large number of people are not suppose to die of gun violence in a peaceful country.
The majority of people that dies in gun violence in the USA are Black people. Drug dealing and gang fighting are the reason for the high rate of murders in USA. Poverty and unemployment are the real cause of high rate of killings in major US cities. Young people who cant find a good job to feed themselves and pay the bills become drug dealers or join drug selling gangs.
I think the solution is for USA banks, corporations and governments who has invested hundred of billions of dollars in China, India, Mexico, EU to create jobs should also invest billions of dollars in the USA inner cities to create decent jobs that will eliminate poverty and the large number of killings.
BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore has set a new per-capita homicide record as gunmen killed for drugs, cash, payback - or no apparent reason at all.
A surge of homicides in the starkly divided city resulted in 343 killings in 2017, bringing the annual homicide rate to its highest ever - roughly 56 killings per 100,000 people. Baltimore, which has shrunk over decades, currently has about 615,000 inhabitants.
"Not only is it disheartening, it's painful," Mayor Catherine Pugh told The Associated Press during the final days of 2017, her first year in office.
The main reasons are the subject of endless interpretation. Some attribute the increase to more illegal guns, the fallout of the opioid epidemic, or systemic failures like unequal justice and a scarcity of decent opportunities for many citizens. The tourism-focused Inner Harbor and prosperous neighborhoods such as Canton and Mount Vernon are a world away from large sections of the city hobbled by generational poverty.
Others blame police, accusing them of taking a hands-off approach to fighting crime since six officers were charged in connection with the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a black man whose fatal spinal cord injury in police custody triggered massive protests that year and the city's worst riots in decades.
"The conventional wisdom, or widely agreed upon speculation, suggests that the great increase in murders is happening partly because the police have withdrawn from aggressively addressing crime in the city's many poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods," said Donald Norris, professor emeritus of public policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Even as arrests have declined to their lowest level in years, police say their officers are working hard in a tough environment. They note the overwhelming majority of Baltimore's crime has long been linked to gangs, drugs and illegal guns.
"The vast majority of our kids and residents of this city aren't into criminal activity like this. It's that same revolving group of bad guys that are wreaking havoc for people's families," said T.J. Smith, the chief police spokesman whose own younger brother was the city's 173rd homicide victim in 2017.
Baltimore's homicide rate started to surge after Gray's death in 2015, a year when the city saw over 340 slayings. There's been a depressingly steady march of killings since.
Violent crime rates in Baltimore have been notoriously high for decades and some locals sardonically refer to their city as "Bodymore" due to the annual body count. But prior to 2015, Baltimore's killings had generally been on the decline. Before rates in recent years eclipsed it, Baltimore's homicide rate had peaked with 353 killings in 1993, or some 49 killings per 100,000 people. Baltimore had over 700,000 inhabitants back then, making the per-capita rate lower than in 2017.
Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, described Baltimore as a place "where there is an urgent need to make sure that neighborhoods do not continue to fall apart and the population doesn't give up on the city."
Pugh, who took office as mayor in December 2016, said her year-old administration is focused on reducing crime, boosting police recruits, and improving long-neglected neighborhoods. She told attendees at a candlelight vigil she hosted for victims of violence that "this will become the safest city in America."
Attending the vigil were Norman and Yvonne Armstrong, who struggled for words to describe their heartache since losing their son, Shawn, to gun violence. The working family man, a 31-year-old father of three, was fatally shot at a Baltimore carwash in September. His murder is unsolved.
"The kids out there with guns don't care about anything," said Norman Armstrong, the pain of grief etched on his face.
Among the names behind the 2017 numbers is Jonathan Tobash, a 19-year-old college student who embodied the best hopes of his Baltimore community. Police say the sophomore at Morgan State University was shot to death Dec. 18 after stumbling onto a robbery in progress outside a convenience store near his family's home.
Ericka Alston-Buck, who founded the Kids Safe Zone community center in the rough Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, said concentrated poverty must be addressed and a measure of healing has to take place in order to truly tackle high rates of violence in Baltimore.
"Hurt people hurt people. No one's doing anything to close those holes in their souls," she said. "As long as no one does that, nothing is going to change."
Chicago police count fewer murders in 2017, but still 650 people were killed
CNN)Chicago saw nearly a 16% decline in murders in 2017 from the previous year, according to statistics released in the early hours of New Year's Day.
The city recorded 650 murders in 2017, a drop from 771 murders in 2016 -- which had been the deadliest year in nearly two decades. The Chicago Police Department attributed the decrease in murders and shootings to "hard work by officers, adding more sworn personnel, investing in new technology to drive our smart policing strategy, and increasing partnerships." In 2017, the city had 2,785 shooting incidents and 3,457 shooting victims, which was a decrease from the 3,550 shooting incidents and 4,349 shooting victims in 2016, according to the newly released statistics. With Chicago, it's all murder, murder, murder ... but why? With Chicago, it's all murder, murder, murder ... but why? "I am proud of the progress our officers made in reducing gun violence all across the city in 2017, but none of us are satisfied," said Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson in a statement. "In 2018, we are going to work to build on the progress we made last year -- to reduce gun violence, to save lives and to find justice for victims." Police said that total citywide crime complaints had fallen by 2% and that they had made 27% more gun arrests in 2017. Although the number of killings are down from 2016, the murders were still above most annual tallies in Chicago for the past decade. The number of yearly homicides in Chicago had hovered between 400 and just about 500, between 2007 and 2015. Chicago has been a frequent target of criticism for President Donald Trump, who has talked and tweeted about the failure to fight gun violence there. Chicago police tout 14% homicide drop, and concede there's more to do Chicago police tout 14% homicide drop, and concede there's more to do In 2017, more than 1,100 new police officers were hired and the entire department was trained on a revised use of force policy, according to Chicago police. All officers on regular beat patrol wear body cameras. Johnson said in early December that certain investments, including technology, have helped police tackle crime. That included the use of "strategic decision support centers" in neighborhoods that have struggled with violence, he said. The centers use predictive crime software that helps police commanders decide where to deploy officers. They also provide "additional cameras, gunshot detection systems, and mobile phones to officers in the field who receive real-time notifications and intelligence data at their fingertips," Chicago police say on its website. US homicide rate spiked nearly 8% in 2016, FBI report finds US homicide rate spiked nearly 8% in 2016, FBI report finds The first two districts equipped with strategic decision support centers saw respectively a 43% and 26% reduction in shootings, according to police. Despite its reputation, Chicago didn't have the nation's highest per-capita (murders per 100,000 people) homicide rate in 2015. Thirteen large cities -- population 250,000 or more -- had higher murder rates. Atlanta, Washington, Oakland, Memphis and Kansas City, for instance, all have higher violent crime rates. But Chicago's numerical murder rate has been higher than that of the country's two larger cities, Los Angeles and New York. Johnson had said that his officers know there is more to do.
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