BILL KNIGHT

There’s some good news in the number of murders occurring in Peoria this year. Unfortunately, there’s been too little media attention to this — or such improvements nationwide.

Peoria Police Department crime analysts report that homicides are down 21% this year, and shooting homicides are down 36%. Responding to a Freedom of Information request, the PPD also said the City of Peoria has had 11 murders through early July.

Homicides in Peoria started dropping last year after more than doubling between 2020 and 2021. Peoria’s murder rate in 2021 was 29.4/100,000 and 25.8/100,000 in 2022. (As recently as 2016, the rate was 8.69/100,000, according to the research firm Macrotrends.)

One murder is one too many, naturally, but violent crime has fallen. City Councilman Charles Grayeb shares some perspective.

“When our citizens do not feel safe, doubters need to see why and address their concerns,” he said. “Thanks to the fine work of many of our community-based organizations and our anti-violence initiative efforts, children who could go either way may have just the little extra nudge to save them from a life of crime.”

This summer, criminal justice expert Jeff Asher analyzed data from 90+ U.S. cities for The Atlantic magazine and wrote that murder nationally has fallen some 12% thus far this year — “the largest decline ever.” Nevertheless, adds reporter Judd Legum in the Popular Information news service, “The precipitous decline in the murder rate has not merited any dedicated coverage in the nation’s largest newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press. It also has been rarely mentioned on cable news channels.”

U.S homicides increased about 30% between 2019 and 2020, according to the FBI.

During a national increase of homicides in 2020, Peoria showed a murder rate of 12.5/100,000 residents. (Chicago had a rate of 28.6/100,000 and St. Louis 88.1/100,000.)

According to a report released July 20 by the Council on Criminal Justice and other sources, the rise in murders in and after 2020 was the largest increase in modern history, but now the country is in the midst of one of its largest declines in homicides.

The national murder rate remains about 10% higher than 2019, which leads to likely correlations if not outright causes. Three factors probably contributed to changes in the incidence of violence: the COVID pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing social unrest, and — a proactive response — policy reforms such as better policing, anti-violence strategies and other prevention initiatives.

During the pandemic, people were much more isolated, and social services from economic assistance and drug-treatment programs to benefits at workplaces and schools were curtailed or gone.

After Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis — tragically mirroring the killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and others — countless Americans protested, some damaged property, and a sense of social cohesion as well as equal justice under the law diminished.

Throughout and continuing, politicians’ incessant howls about crime — usually without context yet often uncritically and dutifully repeated by news media — resulted in fear within communities or resentment from elsewhere. Of course, civic discourse has no “pro-crime” lobby, so it’s difficult for diligent leaders in local government or law enforcement to defend such attacks.

Maybe the positive news of improved murder statistics isn’t sensational enough for overworked media workers — much less social-media influencers and propagandists — to attract audiences that advertisers want to reach, or it’s not convenient for politicians who criticize law enforcement or incumbent officials. (WEEK-TV reporter Lizzie Seils on May 31 did air a 337-word story looking at homicides so far this year.)

Grayeb sympathizes with area journalists.

“Our local news outlets do a great job, but they are limited in coverage by their parent organizations,” he said.

The 2nd District Councilman adds that people shouldn’t just focus on murders anyway.

“If one concentrates on homicides only, one misses the bigger picture,” he said. “How many people are shot; how many Shotspotters do we have rattling the nerves of citizens in our densely populated urban areas? How many car thefts do we have, how many car entries do we have, how much recidivism do we have, how safe are our schools, what plans do we have to hold to account parents who are oblivious to where their children are? These are important indicators as well.”

Overall, however, Grayeb is hopeful.

“We are grappling with problems in our community,” he said. “But I believe in the strength of our people, both in Peoria and in our nation, to solve these problems.”