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In the Wake of COVID-19 Lockdowns, a Troubling Surge in Homicides

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- It started with an afternoon stop at a gas station. Two customers began exchanging angry stares near the pumps outside -- and no one can explain exactly why.That led to an argument, and it escalated quickly as one of them pulled a gun and they struggled over it, according to police.'There's too many shootings. Please don't do this,' the wife of one of the men pleaded, stepping between them.But by the time the fight was over at the station on Kansas City's East Side late last month, the all-too-familiar crackle of gunfire pierced the humid air, leaving another person dead in what has been an exceedingly bloody summer.The onset of warm weather nearly always brings with it a spike in violent crime, but with much of the country emerging from weeks of lockdown from the coronavirus, the increase this year has been much steeper than usual.Across 20 major cities, the murder rate at the end of June was on average 37% higher than it was at the end of May, according to Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The increase over the same period a year ago was just 6%.In few places has the bloodshed been more devastating than in Kansas City, where the city is on pace to shatter its record for homicides in a year. Much of it has involved incidents of random, angry violence like the conflict at the gas station -- disputes between strangers that left someone dead, or killings that simply cannot be explained. They have claimed the lives of a pregnant woman pushing a stroller, a 4-year-old boy asleep in his grandmother's home and a teenage girl sitting in a car.They have also prompted a much-debated intervention from the federal government, an operation named after the 4-year-old Kansas City boy, LeGend Taliferro, that has sent federal law enforcement agents to at least six cities in an attempt to intervene.'We're surrounded by murder, and it's almost like your number is up,' said Erica Mosby, whose niece, Diamon Eichelburger, 20,

·KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It started with an afternoon stop at a gas station. Two customers began exchanging angry stares near the pumps outside — and no one can explain exactly why.

The onset of warm weather nearly always brings with it a spike in violent crime, but with much of the country emerging from weeks of lockdown from the coronavirus, the increase this year has been much steeper than usual. “We’re surrounded by murder, and it’s almost like your number is up,” said Erica Mosby, whose niece, Diamon Eichelburger, 20, was the pregnant victim pushing the stroller in Kansas City. “It’s terrible.”Nationally, crime remains at or near a generational low, and experts caution against drawing conclusions from just a few months.

Some experts have pointed to the pandemic’s destabilization of community institutions, or theorized that people with a propensity for violence may have been less likely to heed stay-at-home orders. But in city after city, crime overall is down, including all types of major crime except murder, aggravated assault and in some places, car theft.

Much of the violence in Kansas City has had little rhyme or reason, often stemming from petty arguments that boil over. “People have gotten to the point where they just don’t give a damn,” he said. “I don’t care about me. I certainly don’t care about you. And so I can go shoot your house or shoot you right on the spot because you talked to me crazy, you looked at me crazy.”

The man now charged with murder in the case is a meatpacking worker, Isaac Knighten, 40, who devotes much of his time to mentoring Black men and boys, including teaching conflict resolution through Alpha Male Nation, a mentoring organization his brother started. His wife said he had turned his life around after serving time on drug charges from more than a decade ago.

Knighten’s lawyer, Dan Ross, said his client, who has been charged with second-degree murder, was defending himself. Surveillance footage shows that Knighten attempted to walk away from the dispute at least six times, but McCray kept coming after him, the lawyer said. Garrison oversees Operation LeGend, a surge of some 200 federal agents into Kansas City in an effort to help stem the violence. It has been met with suspicion and street protests, in part because the operation coincided with a militaristic federal intervention on the streets of Portland, Oregon, that was widely criticized for inflaming tensions there.

 

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The fallout from our CV19 response is beyond words. Belarus, India, China, Hong Kong... famines throughout the world, dictators empowered by the CV19 response to imprison, torture & kill, the Turks incursion into the Mediterranean, elections subverted & this is only the beginning

thanks to fearmongering by leftist propaganda rags like yahoo

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