Washington Post: "Why did murders surge in 2020?"

Science says that this [unnamed] guy's theory, which he keeps promoting, even though we've never deigned mention it, must be wrong. Not that we're going to mention his name.

From the Washington Post:

Why did murders surge in 2020? Research says economics, not activism.

New analysis from Brookings shows that the increase began not with the death of George Floyd but the erosion of employment.

December 17, 2024 at 3:53 p.m. EST

Column by Philip Bump

2020 was a tumultuous year, to put it mildly. …

Violent crime surged, with the number of murders committed in the United States spiking after decades of trending downward. Trump seized on this trend and on violent outbursts that followed some of the Floyd protests to suggest that booting him from office posed an unacceptable risk. But then, as now, one question went unanswered: Why? Why did murder start to rise in 2020 and why, during the last few years, did it start heading back down?

One theory — perhaps the most prominent theory — holds that the increase was an indirect response to the Floyd killing.

It’s so prominent that there’s no link to it.

Floyd’s death came at the hands of police in Minnesota, leading to the protesters’ focus on the role of police in communities. These protests, one version of the theory goes, prompted the police to be more wary in how they did their jobs, allowing more crime to occur.

New analysis from Brookings, though, offers a different and more complete explanation. It centers on the idea that the increase in murders has an economic, not a cultural cause.

A central part of the argument derives from the observation by researchers Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris that murders began to increase before Floyd was killed. Floyd’s death occurred on May 25, 2020. In the six weeks that preceded his death, murder was already increasing at a rate of 17 murders a week. It continued to increase at the same rate in the six weeks after he died, as well.

Murders always increase in the spring. Blacks die by homicide 22% more in June-August than in Dec-Feb, while Hispanics increase 18% and whites 7%.

Also there appears to have been a secular trend of increasing homicides even before the pandemic. Homicides went down after the Great Crash of 2008, then went up during the Ferguson Effect, then fell a bit in 2017 and a fair amount in 2018. But at some point in 2019 they started drifting up again, for who knows what reason.

Cherry picking. Why 6 weeks before and after?

Why not 10? After all, there were 10 weeks of covid close-downs before George Floyd’s death.

Or 2?

Let’s graph all the weeks of homicide victimizations and motor vehicle accident deaths the CDC posts online: from January 2018 to June 2024. And let’s break out non-Hispanic black deaths vs. non-Hispanic white deaths, since George Floyd was the beginning of what media used to call the “racial reckoning.”

The vertical green bar is the week ending March 14, 2020, the last one before the covid closure hammer started to come down. The red bar is the week ending Saturday, May 23, 2020, two days before George Floyd died on Memorial Day, May 25.

The black and blue lines are homicide victimizations.

I’m going to put the paywall here. Another 1,259 words beneath the break. C’mon, you know you want to subscribe.