Amid a left-wing campaign to “defund the police,” murder rates in the United States skyrocketed in 2020 by nearly 30 percent.
According to the FBI’s 2020 crime statistics, there were more than 1,277,696 violent crimes committed in the United States in 2020. While robbery and rape offenses fell in 2020 compared to 2019, murder and “nonnegligent manslaughter offenses” increased by 29.4 percent. Motor vehicle thefts have also increased by 11.8 percent since 2019.
“For the first time in four years, the estimated number of violent crimes in the nation increased when compared with the previous year’s statistics,” the FBI admitted in a press release.
The numbers, which indicate a national crime surge, come shortly after Democrat-led city councils in Austin, Los Angeles, D.C., Baltimore, and Minneapolis voted to divert funds away from law enforcement or cut budgets that would have allowed for more officers to patrol the streets. The cuts were initiated shortly after the “summer of rage” in 2020 following the death of George Floyd. It was during this time that thousands of people rioted in the streets, calling “all cops b-stards” and even saying they should die.
While property crimes technically dropped by 7.8 percent compared to 2019, the FBI noted that “collectively, victims of property crimes (excluding arson) suffered losses estimated at $17.5 billion in 2020.”
That number does not include arson, which plagued many of the nation’s cities in 2020 during the Floyd riots. According to estimates made during the peak of rioting, the first three weeks of violence in 2020, which included arson, cost an estimated $2 billion to recover. Other reports suggest looting costs in America’s 20 largest metropolitan areas exceeded $400 million from just the first weekend of rioting, looting, arson, and other crimes committed in the name of “racial justice.”
It was during this summer of rage that leftists latched onto the “defund the police” narrative. Soon after, law enforcement agencies around the nation began to suffer from understaffing during a period of heightened crime, especially in major metropolitan areas.
The FBI report notes that the total number of officers employed in the United States fell to 696,644 despite a larger number of agencies (13,377) reporting their staffing numbers. In 2019, a smaller number of law enforcement agencies (13,247) reported that they had 697,195 sworn officers.
