KANSAS CITY, Mo. – It started with a lunch stop at a gas station. Two customers started exchanging angry stars at the pumps outside – and no one can explain exactly why.
That led to an argument, and it escalated rapidly when one of them pulled out a gun and they fought over it, according to police.
“There are too many shootings. Please do not do this, ”pleaded the wife of one of the men and stepped in between.
But by the time the fight broke out last month at the station on the East Side of Kansas City, the all-too-familiar smell of gunfire had passed through the humid air, killing another person in a very bloody summer.
The onset of hot weather almost always brings a spike in violent crime, but with much of the country emerging from weeks of coronavirus confinement, the increase this year has been much steeper than normal.
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, according to Richard Rosenfeld, a forensic scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The increase over the same period a year ago was just 6 percent.
In a few places, the devastation has been more devastating than in Kansas City, where the city is on track to break its record for homicides in a year. Many of these have involved incidents of random, angry violence, such as the conflict at the gas station – disputes between strangers who have killed someone, or murders that simply cannot be explained. They claimed the life of a pregnant woman who pushed a pram, a 4-year-old boy asleep in his grandmother’s house and a teenage girl sitting in a car.
They have also called for much-discussed intervention by the federal government, an operation named after the 4-year-old Kansas City boy, LeGend Taliferro, who has sent federal lawmakers to at least six cities in an attempt to intervene .
“We’re surrounded by murder, and it’s almost like your number goes up,” said Erica Mosby, whose niece, Diamon Eichelburger, 20, was the heavy victim who shook the stroller in Kansas City. “It’s awful.”
Nationwide, crime remains on or with a generational partner, and experts continue to draw caution against conclusions drawn in just a few months.
But President Trump has used the increasing murder numbers to portray cities with democratic leadership as out of control and to accuse the protests against police brutality that erupted after the assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
“Extreme politicians have taken part in this crusade against policemen and inexplicably devastated our lawless heroes,” Mr Trump said during a White House news conference last month to announce Operation LeGend. He added that “the attempt to shut down police in their own communities has led to a shocking explosion of shootings, murders, murders.”
Criminologists dispute the president’s suggestion that the increase is linked to any withdrawal by the police in response to criticism or tensions, and fluctuations in the crime rate are notoriously difficult to explain. In many cities, homicides had increased before the pandemic, and a sharp decline in arrests coincided with the onset of social distance, as measured by mobile phone records, according to a database compiled by David Abrams, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania law school.
Some experts have pointed to the destabilization of the pandemic of community institutions, or theoretically that people with a penchant for violence may have been less likely to follow orders of staying home. But in city after city, crime is generally down, including all kinds of major crime except murder, aggravated assault and in some places, car theft.
In New York, where homicides rose by 30 percent last year, city and police officials have tried to blame a new law that leaves many suspects free without restraint, as well as coronavirus. related mass release of people from prison. But evidence shows that a sharp decline in gun arrests in early mid-May was a more likely cause. Police officials in several cities have said the protests break down officers’ duty to fight crime or criminals.
In Detroit, Chief James Craig said violence has spiked, but has begun to decline over the past two weekends. “We have not relaxed our enforcement position like some cities,” he said.
In Kansas City, murderers have been on a rapid upward trajectory since the moment a 41-year-old man named Earl Finch III was kicked in a broad daylight on Jan. 5, the first murder of the year. Even the lockon of the coronavirus did not slow down the violence, although it has, as in other cities, escalated even further in the nasal recurrence.
After six new deaths over the weekend, 122 people were killed this year, compared to 90 by the same time last year. The city is well on its way to overcoming its grim record of 153 murders in 1993. And by the end of July, the city had agreed to the number of non-fatal shootings – about 490 – that it had in the past.
Much of the violence in Kansas City has not had much rhyme or reason, often arising from petty arguments over cooking.
The short fuses could indicate calm and anger, said criminologists and law enforcement officials. Police have this year attributed about 30 of the murder cases to arguments, some involving people with no serious criminal history. Economic difficulties also appeared to be a factor in some of the killings. Only 15 were related as drugs. In almost 50 cases, the police have not yet determined a motive.
Although differences in matters such as education and employment have long plagued the East Side of Kansas City, a predominantly black part of the city that has the highest murder rate in the city, city leaders said this year was an extra sense of despair. .
Pastor Darren Faulkner, who runs a program that provides social support to those most at risk of violence, is said to have made the last wave of black people police killings leave many of his clients feeling hopeless in a system in which they will never bloom.
“People have arrived at the point where they just don’t give a damn,” he said. ‘I do not care. I certainly do not like you. And that I can shoot your house or shoot you right on the spot because you talked crazy with me, you saw me crazy. “
Spontaneous, one-on-one steaks have replaced federal feeds as a driver of shootings, May said. Greg Volker of the Kansas City Police Department.
“If people could settle an argument without having to shoot hats, violence would decrease,” he said.
Another atypical trend this year is that in several cases the gunmen and victims were not otherwise involved in criminal activity, Major Volker said, pointing to the shooting at the gas station in July.
The man now charged with murder in the case is a meat pack worker, Isaac Knighten, 40, who spends much of his time mentoring Black men and boys, including learning conflict resolution through Alpha Male Nation , a mentoring organization started by his brother. His wife said he had turned his life around after spending time on drug charges more than a decade ago.
After Mr. Knighten had a brief, hostile exchange with the other man in the parking lot, the man, Jayvon McCray, 28, pulled out a gun and the men began fighting, according to police.
Mr Knighten’s wife, Shaynan, said in an interview that she had to get her five children out of the car and walk to a nearby family. She and Mrs. McCray both came between the men and urged them to counsel him, according to police.
Mr. Knighten eventually pulled a gun out of his car and fatally shot Mr. McCray, who told police it turned out to no longer hold a gun.
Mr Knighten’s lawyer, Dan Ross, said his client, who is accused of second-degree murder, was defending himself. Surveillance shows that Mr Knighten tried to walk away from the dispute at least six times, but Mr McCray remained behind him, the lawyer said.
Another contributing factor to violence this year, Major Volker said, was the impact of the coronavirus stay-at-home order on the drug trade. Some dealers lost their regular buyers, so they sold to people they did not know – people who might have intended to rob them. The result has been an uptick in drug robberies and shootings, especially in late March and early April.
The real-life killing spree in Kansas City came in May and June, with 44 murders combined, more than twice as many in the same months last year.
“I’m sure there will be years of academic study on what causes the 2020 peak,” said Tim Garrison, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. ‘I’m sure the lockdown didn’t help. If you already have a stressful economic situation and you put a lot of people out of work, and a lot of teenagers are out of school, it is a volatile situation. “
Mr. Garrison oversees Operation LeGend, an uprising of about 200 federal agents in Kansas City in an effort to help curb violence. It has been met with suspicion and protests on the streets, in part because the operation coincided with a militaristic federal intervention on the streets of Portland that was widely criticized for tense tensions there.
Mr. Garrison said trained federal investigators have defiled existing task forces, seized dozens of guns, brought in suspects on existing warrants and helped arrest a dozen suspected killers.
Jean Peters Baker, the Jackson County prosecutor, said that in the murder cases she has received so far from Operation LeGend, the federal agents did not appear to be contributing the forensic investigative skills that the federal authorities had promised.
Mr. Garrison pointed to a more recent arrest by the U.S. Marshals Service, and said federal investigators had linked a firearm in the suspect’s possession to four other shootings.
The operation has expanded to seven other cities, only one of which has seen an increase in homicides in the past year. Some officials have welcomed the help, while others have promised federal agents to check on civil rights violations.
The federal operation represents the latest in a string of efforts that Kansas City has made to try to bring its violence under control over the years. Homicides fell to a near record low of 80 in 2014, following the start of a joint federal-local operation known as the Kansas City No Violence Alliance. But murders began to tick back in subsequent years, and police withdrew from the program. The department plans to launch a new effort in September to target the most persistent street perpetrators.
Charron Powell, LeGend’s mother, said she gave permission for her son’s name in the federal operation because she wanted the fight against violence to be his legacy. She called the killing “senseless” and said those responsible had too few consequences.
“It can not work,” she said, noting the opposition that Operation LeGend has opposed from many in the city. Yet she said, “it’s good that they’re trying – they’re trying something.”
John Eligon reported from Kansas City, Mo., and Shaila Dewan and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reported from New York. Ashley Southall contributed reporting from New York. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
