I assume that everyone knows homicide rates rose substantially in 2020 over prior years. Why did this happen? It seems clear that the anti-police agitation associated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa, and encouraged by almost all Democratic Party politicians, played the decisive role. Steve Sailer has charted the numbers. The homicide rate was flat until the hysteria that surrounded the death of George Floyd, most likely from the fentanyl overdose that he had taken:
Sailer addresses the theory that 2020’s murder spree was the result of lockdowns ordered, mostly, by liberal governors:
It’s easy to come up with a lot of theories about the effect of coronavirus on murder, but the weird thing is that you can’t see them having much tangible effect through Memorial Day.
Memorial Day, of course, saw the fentanyl-assisted death of George Floyd (purple vertical line). By the time of the riots of the following weekend, the Great Murder Surge of 2020 was underway. The worst day for murders in 2020 prior to Memorial Day was 18, but 37 were murdered on Sunday, May 31, a day of massive Mostly Peaceful Protests.
Further, it seems that subsequent BLM-driven news stories led to more murders:
[T]he change in cumulative murders plateaued at this new high level through mid-June.
But a second national surge began about six days after the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta on June 12 after he stole a cop’s tazer and shot it at him.
By the Fourth of July, murders were up 23%, and by July 21, they were up 27%.
Then murders plateaued again until a third rise began about a week after the police shooting of the armed Jacob Blake in a domestic dispute in Kenosha on August 23.
For these 19 cities for which CCS has day by day data through the end of September, they ended the third quarter cumulatively up 30%.
The net effect of the pro-crime, anti-law enforcement propaganda disseminated by BLM, Antifa and most Democratic Party politicians was the biggest one-year increase in the homicide rate ever:
Nationally, the largest ever one year increase in homicides was murderous 1968, when Martin Luther King’s assassination set off riots, at 12.7% followed by 2015 during the First BLM Era, when murders went up 12.1%. So, 2020 was the worst year for increase in homicides over the 60 years for which we have reliable data.
Black Lives Matter, Antifa and the Democratic Party bear the principal responsibility for the murderous violence that afflicted 2020. What do you think the chances are that there will be any accountability?
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