CHICAGO (AP) – Police departments across the country that have spent years boasting about plummeting crime numbers are now scrambling to confront something many agencies have not seen in decades: more bloodshed.
Houston, St. Louis, New Orleans and Baltimore have all seen significant spikes in the number of homicides this year. The totals are up in New York and Chicago, too.
In Los Angeles, the number of slayings dropped slightly, but the number of shooting victims jumped more than 18 percent. And in Milwaukee, a homicide on Wednesday put the total for the year at 84 – just two fewer than happened in all of 2014.
Peter Scharf is a professor at Louisiana State University who tracks homicides in New Orleans. He says New Orleans is in “scary territory.”