US shootings fire up divisions

The Labor Day holiday weekend saw a major rise in gun violence in several big US cities compared with the same period a year ago.

In August, New York had 242 shootings, more than twice the number for that month last year. The steep increase had pushed the city past 1,000 shootings by Labor Day.

Chicago has also seen an increase in shootings, continuing a trend for both cities that had been building since the start of the summer.

The New York Police Department reported 22 shooting incidents, with 28 victims and five homicides, during the three-day weekend.

Last year, on the same holiday, there were 16 reported gun incidents with 19 victims, the NYPD said.

In Chicago, 51 people were shot and 10 killed over the holiday, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told a news conference on Tuesday. That's 10 more victims and three more deaths than for the same three-day period last year.

For the year through July 26, New York witnessed 745 shooting incidents, according to a New York Times tally－a 73 percent increase from the same period in 2019.

Chicago reported 1,541 shooting incidents from Jan 1 to July 12－a figure 46 percent higher than for the same period last year.

Experts say that long holiday weekends－Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day－typically bring an increase in crime in general, as does the warm summer weather, when more people are in the streets. These factors can sometimes spark conflict, especially in areas where gangs are a problem.

Some elected New York officials have wondered aloud if the NYPD is engaged in a work slowdown to protest calls to "defund" the police amid other criticism. But police officials reject that idea, citing heightened demands on manpower.

'Very occupied'

"Obviously in June our cops were very occupied with the protests throughout the city," NYPD Chief Terence Monahan told the Times. As a result, he said, shootings "started to climb" in areas left unguarded.

Lockdowns brought in for the coronavirus could also be a factor.

Richard Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist, told the Times that across 20 major cities, the murder rate at the end of June was on average 37 percent higher than it was at the end of May.

The NYPD chief suggested that feuds might have worsened in lockdowns in areas where rival gangs could not avoid each other.

But as the Times noted, overall crime is down 5.3 percent this year in the 25 largest US cities compared to last year, with violent crime falling 2 percent. But the newspaper said homicides are up 16.1 percent. While property crime has dropped in 18 of the 25 cities, and nonlethal violent crime is down in 11, murders have risen in 20 of them.

Experts advise against drawing conclusions from the past few months because, nationwide, crime rates are at or near their lowest levels in decades.

In 1990, New York experienced 2,245 homicides. For 2019, that number was 319.

President Donald Trump, citing the spike in homicides, has painted Democratic-led cities as being out of control and blamed their leaders for the violent protests against police misconduct that have erupted since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.

As a result of the most recent protests－which followed the release last week of video showing the arrest of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York－the city's police chief and his entire command staff said they would leave their positions. The 41-year-old black man died several days later in police custody.

The release of the footage five months after Prude's death from suffocation has raised questions of a cover-up and turned Rochester, a city of 200,000 people, into the latest flashpoint in a summer of protests over racial injustice.

Reuters contributed to this story.