Police Pin a Rise in Murders on an Unusual Suspect: Covid - The New York Times - 0 views
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In a normal year, Mr. Pryor would have been on the field, not on the streets,
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Oakland has seen a surge in gun violence, including six killings of juveniles since June and a 40 percent increase in homicides over all. To the south, in Los Angeles, the picture is equally bloody, with the city on pace to have more than 300 homicides for the first time since 2009.
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Criminologists studying the rise in the murder rate point to the effects the pandemic has had on everything from mental health to policing in a time of social distancing, with fewer officers able to perform the up-close-and-personal community outreach work that in normal times has helped mitigate violence.
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residents, particularly in communities of color, stopped turning to the police out of a lack of trust, leading to more disputes being settled violently.
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110,000 people in California bought guns this year because they were worried about the destabilizing effects of the pandemic. The number, based on a survey conducted over the summer, appears to be corroborated by the surge of firearm background checks this year, about 95,000 more than last year. And those are only the guns obtained through legal channels. Los Angeles has seen a 45 percent increase this year in the number of guns stolen from cars, some of which have later turned up in shootings.
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California’s relatively strict gun laws limit the carrying of firearms in public and ban assault weapons, among many other restrictions. Those laws are circumvented by bringing in guns from neighboring states with more permissive gun laws.