Detailing "perfect storm" of factors that may account for increase in violent crime

CNN has this lengthy new piece about the modern violent crime increase under the headline "The US saw significant crime rise across major cities in 2020. And it's not letting up." Here is how it gets started:

Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.

Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw increases in at least one category of violent crimes in 2020, which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, according to a report produced by the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Raleigh, North Carolina, did not report increases in any of the violent crime categories.

It's nearly impossible to attribute any year-to-year change in violent crime statistics to any single factor, and homicides and shootings are an intensely local phenomenon that can spike for dozens of reasons. But the increase in homicide rates across the country is both historic and far-reaching, as were the pandemic and social movements that touched every part of society last year.

"The people in our communities are not desensitized to violence," said Ray Kelly, the lead community liaison for the Consent Decree Monitoring Team and the director of the Citizens Policing Project and lifelong resident of West Baltimore . "Every incidence of violence potentially destroys families, and we cannot confuse people's perseverance and willingness to survive as tolerance or complacency."

Experts point to a "perfect storm" of factors -- economic collapse, social anxiety because of a pandemic, de-policing in major cities after protests that called for abolition of police departments, shifts in police resources from neighborhoods to downtown areas because of those protests, and the release of criminal defendants pretrial or before sentences were completed to reduce risk of Covid-19 spread in jails -- all may have contributed to the spike in homicides.