Crime rises as police fight other threats

By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - After a night of dancing, Chiara Levin was shot in the head by a stray bullet from a gunfight as she sat in a Cadillac sport utility vehicle. Hours later she was dead.

The killing of the 22-year-old Kentucky native, who recently graduated university with honors, in a tough neighborhood in Boston's Dorchester district on March 24 sparked weeks of outcry in a city where the murder rate neared a 10-year high last year.

Like Boston, many U.S. cities are struggling to stem a wave of violent crime and murder that has raised questions of whether police are fighting terrorism at the expense of street crime, and whether a widening wealth gap feeds the problem.

"We're at a tipping point in violent crime in many cities," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law enforcement think tank that released data in March showing the murder rate rising by more than 10 percent in dozens of big U.S. cities since 2004.

"What we're seeing over the past 24 months is a new volatility. In some big cities violent crime and murder are up. Some are seeing a reduction. It's a dramatic shift from the past 10 years when it was mostly all decreases," he said.

Criminologists are worried. Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows murders and shootings hitting smaller cities and states with little experience of serious urban violence. The last similar period of volatility was right before the big crime wave of the 1980s and 1990s.

Explanations vary -- from softer gun laws to budget cuts, fewer police on the beat, more people in poverty, expanding gang violence and simple complacency. But many blame a national preoccupation with potential threats from overseas since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"Since 9/11, police obligations have increased substantially above and beyond decreasing street crime," Jens Ludwig, a criminal justice expert at Georgetown University.

"So even if police resources were held constant, there is this growing obligation on their part, so the resources available to fight street crime have gone down."

POLICE ON THE BEAT

Some police departments have seen staff reduced as police officers fight in Iraq, while resources that could be used to fight street crime get channeled into security at airports and other transit points seen as vulnerable after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University, said many U.S. cities cut programs that emphasized prevention, community-oriented policing and controls on the spread of guns, often citing budget cuts. Boston is now reviving some of those ideas.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick announced on May 10 a $15 million anti-crime plan to add more police as Boston grapples with 22 murders reported this year, on pace with last year's tally, which was one murder shy of a 10-year high hit in 2005.

Boston stands out because it was seen as a national leader in halting violent crime in the late 1990s, when politicians basked in what became known as the "Boston Miracle". Homicides collapsed 77 percent from 1990 to 1997 and the city went for almost two years without a homicide against anybody under 18.

"The violent crime rate started to rise again nationwide during the recession of 2001 and 2002, when many state governments, local city governments and the Feds cut back on their crime-fighting efforts," said Levin.