As the United States witnesses a startling rise in crime all across the country, one crime in particular has seen an alarming surge over the last two years: Carjackings across America’s biggest cities, with some investigators claiming that juvenile suspects may be the ones behind many such crimes.
Fox News reports that the city of Minneapolis has seen a 530 percent increase in carjackings over the last two years. In 2021, there were a total of 655 carjackings in the city, an increase of 63 percent from 2020. In neighboring Saint Paul, there were 101 carjackings in 2021, an increase of 38 percent from the previous year. In Minneapolis, police say that juveniles accounted for at least 56 percent of all suspects; Saint Paul authorities came to a similar assessment.
On the East Coast, Philadelphia saw over 750 carjackings in 2021 alone, while New York City faced 510 such incidents; these represent increases of 34 percent and 56 percent, respectively. In Philadelphia, out of the 160 criminals charged with carjacking in the year 2021, 45 percent of the suspects, 72 in total, were juveniles.
Addressing the alarming trend of minors being responsible in the majority of cases, J.C. Dampier, director of the Minneapolis chapter of the youth outreach group Man Up Club, said that “kids are joyriding in cars, taking cars, and those things start to happen because there is no one holding them accountable.”
“I wish they could all have a place that they could have someone, they can go, and vent, to be able to open up to, like, a therapist or counselor, someone that could hold them accountable or someone that they could talk with,” Dampier continued.
Another group dedicated to solving the problem is Sandy Hook Promise, led by CEO and co-founder Mark Barden. Barden, whose 7-year-old son Daniel was killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2013, said that his organization aims to identify and directly address early signs of violence in certain people. The group’s “Know the Signs” program has been held in over 15,000 schools nationwide and has seen over 14 million participants.
“They understand that they have been given this, this tool with which they can help themselves and they can help their peers by telling a trusted adult that I’m concerned about somebody,” Barden explained. “We know that they work and for us, it’s just the challenge is getting that to more students.”
The massive surge in crime over the last two years, from carjackings to lootings, is directly attributed to the race riots that burned numerous cities across America during the summer of 2020, committed by the far-left domestic terrorist organizations Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Minneapolis was the epicenter of these riots after George Floyd, a black man with a criminal history, died of a fentanyl overdose while in police custody, sparking backlash against police in Minneapolis and around the country for alleged “systemic racism” and “police brutality.”
Many governors and mayors who were members of the Democratic Party largely allowed the riots to happen, due to their party agreeing politically with the rioters. As such, numerous laws were subsequently passed to ease the criminal penalties on such crimes, as well as to reduce bail for most criminals, as well as reduce maximum possible sentences.