New York (AP) – Anthony Robinson had his little daughter by the hand when he was attacked. In early July, the 29-year-old was walking with the girl in the Bronx, New York, when suddenly a car stopped to his left.
A video released by the police shows an arm with a gun aimed at Robinson. A short time later he is dead. These are scenes like these that are currently occurring much more frequently in New York and in many other cities in the USA than in previous years – and are very worrying.
The causes of the wave of violence in the US east coast metropolis are puzzled. It is the third outbreak to preoccupy New York and other cities in the United States this year: first came the coronavirus, then the nationwide anger over racism and police violence – and now the number of shootings and murders is rising significantly. All developments could be related.
The numbers that have shocked many New Yorkers in recent weeks and are reminiscent of times long past are in any case clear: In June 2020, the number of incidents with gunshots in the eight million metropolis increased from 89 to the previous year 205 – an increase of 130 percent. The number of murders climbed by 30 percent with 39 deaths.
And the violence didn’t stop. On the weekend of Independence Day around July 4th alone, according to media reports, 64 people were hit by gunfire – ten of them died. Even so, the New York Police Department (NYPD) is still a long way from its darkest hours: 1990, when crime was out of control and there were 2,262 murders. In 2019, however, there were only 319.
The development in New York is not an isolated case in the USA. Similar trends exist in a number of other cities, particularly Chicago, which could hit the highest homicide rate in more than 20 years in 2020. Just a week ago, 15 people were injured, some seriously, in a shooting there. US President Donald Trump announced last week that he would be sending federal security forces to the metropolis and other parts of the country because of the “shocking explosion of killings”.
The government has already intervened in Portland, Oregon on the US west coast, where heavily armed security forces can currently be seen night after night, sometimes in camouflage uniforms. However, this is not about a rising crime rate. Protests against racism and police violence have been going on there since the violent death of the African American George Floyd in a police operation in late May. Many demonstrated peacefully, but in some cases there were also clashes with the local police. The city had expressly spoken out against the dispatch of emergency services, but now, from the point of view of observers, they are fueling the protests during night-time clashes – also with tear gas. A number of complaints were filed against the sometimes brutal actions of the militarized security forces.
New York has threatened to sue if federal security forces are deployed, saying it can handle the wave of violence in the city on its own. Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed the side effects of the corona pandemic for the increase in serious crimes. It is about the fact “that the judicial system is not working, that people have been tense for months,” he said. What the mayor did not mention, but the police did, is the sharp increase in the number of particularly vulnerable prison inmates due to the crisis, who were released early because of the virus that was rampant in the prison system.
“Currently the number of paroled people involved in shooting or murders is at a 15-year high,” the NYPD said. The police also share responsibility for the development of the city’s reforms, which among other things should reduce the number of inmates from the notorious Rikers Island prison – and therefore, according to the police, bring more criminals onto the streets.
There were also public demands for a restructuring of the police force. The New York City Council responded by transferring $ 1 billion of the NYPD’s $ 6 billion budget, along with a few thousand officials, to another agency. Since then, the 36,000 police officers and their boss Dermot Shea have been seething.
In a punctured internal police video, he described the local politicians as “cowards”: “They fail in every possible measure to be leaders and they stab at the men and women of this police department.” On the other hand, accusations came from the city council that the police might not be as effective as usual – also because officials felt unjustly in the pillory in view of the nationwide protests and cuts.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200728-99-948079 / 5
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