Gang activity cited for jump in U.S. homicides

Gang activity cited for jump in U.S. homicides

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The nation's violent-crime rate increased in 2005 for the first time in five years, the FBI said Monday in a report that reflected in part what crime analysts say is a resurgence in gang activity, particularly in the Midwest.

READ THE REPORT: Full data on spike

Of the four crime categories that make up the FBI's violent-crime index — murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — only rape declined in the national figures.

In some cities, the increase in violence has led to crime rates that are in line with those posted in the years before the historically low rates that began in the mid-1990s.

The reported jump in homicides — nearly 5% nationwide — was the largest annual increase in the past 15 years. Some of the biggest increases were in Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Omaha, St. Louis and other Midwestern cities.

Oklahoma City police cited fighting among rival gangs as a major factor in the jump in homicides there, from 39 in 2004 to 54 last year. As a result, police Sgt. Paco Balderrama says, the department is beefing up its anti-gang units: "We're working gangs every night."

Gangs from the East and West coasts "are branching out to smaller cities, where there is still money to be made and turf to be ruled," says James Alan Fox, criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

In Omaha, homicides jumped from 20 in 2004 to 31 in 2005. Police Chief Thomas Warren said the city averaged 30-32 homicides a year before a low point in 2004. Despite the rise in homicides, the city recorded an overall decline in violent crime in 2005, a development Warren attributes to the city's aggressive stance against the "ongoing and persistent problem" with criminal gangs.

The FBI report also is renewing the debate over whether the U.S. government's dropping of an ambitious police-hiring program — along with many law enforcement agencies' new emphasis on preventing terrorism — have made crime prevention more difficult.

"This should be a loud wake-up call for the country to get back to doing what worked in the 1990s," Fox says. "When you look back at the 1990s, we were expanding police forces and pouring more money into after-school programs. Now, we're seeing just the reverse."

Fox was referring in part to the Bush administration's phasing out of a Clinton-era program aimed at putting 100,000 new cops on U.S. streets. Police chiefs nationwide have called for renewing the program to offset local cutbacks.

Despite the popularity of the Community Oriented Policing Services program among police and crime analysts, a USA TODAY review of the program last year found little evidence that it was a big factor in reducing crime.

Justice Department officials cautioned against reading too much into the FBI report. "The crime rate is so low in some communities that relatively modest increases can result in what appear to be fairly stark increases," says Richard Hertling, deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy.