Although most of the violent riots following the death of George Floyd seem to have subsided, a select few are still ongoing in America’s biggest cities, and have contributed to an increase in homicide rates.
In Chicago, 18 homicides occurred on Sunday, May 31st. This marked the single deadliest day in Chicago’s history since the city first started recording such data 59 years ago. Starting from 1961, the previous record for the deadliest day in Chicago was 13 homicides on August 4th, 1991.
Over the course of the entire final weekend of May, there were at least 73 recorded incidents to which the police responded, with 92 people shot and 27 deaths.
There were similarly grim results in recent days out of the city of Los Angeles, where the LAPD reported a 250 percent increase in murders over the course of the first week of June. In the same time span, there was a 56 percent increase in the number of gunshot victims in the city.
The turnaround comes after a comparatively peaceful month of April, which saw a 23 percent decrease in overall crime after mandated lockdowns due to the coronavirus. But the riots in Los Angeles, as part of the broader national trend, seem to have reversed that good fortune.