"For the second year in a row, Gov. Gavin Newsom is celebrating California's declining homicide rate while using it as a cudgel against his political foes. Your state's homicide rate is 117% higher than California's, he told a Missouri congressman who needled Newsom on social media last summer. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders caught his attention, too. Your homicide rate is literally DOUBLE California's, he wrote on social media addressing her."
"What's been clear for the last three years is that homicides are down in Los Angeles and San Francisco but also in Fresno, Oakland, Richmond and Lodi. California cities are seeing record-low homicide rates, Newsom said in his state of the state speech earlier this month. Oakland, the lowest since 1967; LA, the lowest since 1966; and San Francisco, the lowest since 1954."
"To put it in the language of crime researchers, the answer is multifactorial. Magnus Lofstrom, policy director of criminal justice at nonpartisan think tank the Public Policy Institute of California, said the spike of homicides during the pandemic may have been the result of disruptions in government activities: Schools were shut down, people were out of work, community-based programs for violence prevention and many basic public services were put on pause, Lofstrom said."
California experienced a surge in homicides during 2020 and 2021, rising 31% in 2020 to 5.5 per 100,000 and to about 6 per 100,000 in 2021. Homicides then declined: down 7% in 2022, 14% in 2023, and 12% in 2024, reaching 4.3 per 100,000 by the end of 2024. Declines occurred across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, Oakland, Richmond and Lodi, with several cities reporting their lowest homicide rates in decades. Researchers label the causes multifactorial; pandemic-era disruptions to schools, employment, violence-prevention programs and public services likely contributed to the earlier spike. California's population was about 20 million people.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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