FBI report expected to show violent crime
rise in some U.S. cities
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[September 26, 2016]
By Julia Harte
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Violent crime in
certain big U.S. cities in 2015 likely increased over 2014, although the
overall crime rate has remained far below peak levels of the early
1990s, experts said, in advance of the FBI's annual crime report to be
released later on Monday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's report was expected to show a
one-year increase in homicides and other violent crimes in cities
including Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., based on already
published crime statistics.
Coming on the day of the first presidential campaign debate between
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the report could
"be turned into political football," said Robert Smith, a research
fellow at Harvard Law School, in a teleconference on Friday with other
crime experts.
A rise in violent crime in U.S. cities since 2014 has already been
revealed in preliminary 2015 figures released by the FBI in January.
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A recent U.S. Justice Department-funded study examined the nation's 56
largest cities and found 16.8 percent more murders last year over 2014.
Trump last week praised aggressive policing tactics, including the
"stop-and-frisk" approach.
Clinton has pushed for stricter gun control to help curb violence and
has called for the development of national guidelines on the use of
force by police officers.
FBI Director James Comey warned last year that violent crime in the
United States might rise because increased scrutiny of policing tactics
had created a "chill wind" that discouraged police officers from
aggressively fighting crime.
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Phone banks dedicated to the Federal Bureau of Investigation are
shown during a tour of the Multi-Agency Communications Center (MACC)
at an undisclosed location in the Chicago suburbs May 17, 2012.
REUTERS/Frank Polich
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Increased crime has been concentrated in segregated and impoverished
neighborhoods of big cities. Experts said in such areas crime can
best be fought through better community policing and alternatives to
incarceration for nonviolent crime.
"We’re just beginning to see a shift in mentality in law enforcement
from a warrior mentality ... to a guardian mentality," said Carter
Stewart, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of Ohio, on
the teleconference. "I don't want us as a country to go backwards."
In Chicago, 54 more people were murdered in 2015 than the year
before, a 13 percent jump in the city's murder rate, according to an
April study by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice.
(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Matthew Lewis)
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