Progressive policies remained at the forefront of rising crime rates in major cities across the country throughout 2022 and, while areas like New York and Chicago received a great deal of attention, a surprising list of smaller cities have suffered the brunt of this trend.
Democratic Mayors like Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. and Eric Adams of New York along with soft-on-crime district attorneys like George Gascón of Los Angeles, Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg and the recalled Chesa Boudin of San Francisco were the epitome of urban failure. But, after reviewing crime statistics nationwide, Fox News compiled a list of overlooked locales hit just as bad or worse.
By way of example, along with “at least 19 small- to medium-sized cities and towns” in New Mexico where violent crime has tended to exceed the national average throughout the late 2010s, Albuquerque hit a new high water mark of 117 homicides this year with a population of roughly 565,000. The latest spike for the previous record of 81 continued a trend from 2014 to 2020 where homicide rates climbed by 167 percent.
Comparable in size, Nashville, Tennessee with just under 700,000 people saw an overall increase in violent crime of 4.07 percent between 2020 and 2021, according to the Metro Nashville Police, and out of the 8,583 reported violent crimes, the largest increases were attributed to aggravated assaults and rapes. Meanwhile, with help from the FBI’s leader of most violent metro area in 2020, Memphis with a city record of 346 homicides in 2021, the Volunteer State was fourth on the list for violent crime rates at 675 per 100,000 people behind Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana.
The national average was 396 in 2021.
As a reminder, the FBI’s crime reports are not as comprehensive as they once were after a new voluntary opt-in system was adopted that saw only 9,881 of 18,818 law enforcement agencies submitting their statistics to the National Incident-Based Reporting System earlier this year.
FBI conveniently won’t be reporting quarterly crime stats because not enough agencies turned in data https://t.co/ImQRkd12AG
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) March 22, 2022
Perhaps the least surprising inclusion on the list was New Orleans. However, the fact that it surpassed St. Louis, Missouri this year as the murder capital of the United States could not be overlooked.
That title was bestowed after the home to Mardi Gras surpassed the 2021 homicide rate with a 44 percent increase year-to-date in September. Though seeming to slow down, the total at just over 250 for the year saw a homicide rate of 78 percent higher for the year compared to 2021 and 141 percent higher compared to 2019.
“Action must be taken NOW,” former head of the NYPD’s patrol division Fausto Pichardo said in a statement after he was hired as a consultant by the city of New Orleans to help with crime, “if there is ever a chance to save the city and bring the reputation of being a city where tourists can come to party and celebrate and not become victims.”
Smaller cities rounding off the list from Fox News included Anchorage, Alaska with less than 300,000 people and Asheville, North Carolina with a mere 90,000. For the latter, the police department’s statistics showed violent crime had climbed 31 percent to cap off the last decade and that it was almost double the national average.
Part of the increase was attributed to attrition in the workforce as officers sought alternative employment following the violent protests of Black Lives Matter and the defund the police movement in the wake of the death of George Floyd in 2020. As reported earlier, though many Democratic politicians have distanced themselves from the movement, puppet masters like George Soros have never stopped funding the organizers behind the protests to further the progressive agenda.
Lastly, as President Joe Biden’s administration has continued to address the border crisis going so far as to claim it is not open, the influx of deadly drugs pouring in stretched all the way to the land of the midnight sun with overdoses in Alaskans aged 15 to 24 increasing by 25 percent and those 25 to 34 by nearly 200 percent between 2020 and 2021.
“The cartels have a pipeline up the West Coast through, through California, into Washington state and obviously into Alaska. So, we’re seeing growing addiction,” said retired DEA agent Derek Maltz.
During the first quarter of 2022, over 1,200 grams of fentanyl were reportedly seized, more than double that from all of 2021. Though not as dramatic as double, an increase in assaults also occurred in Anchorage throughout 2022, reaching 2,574 in the first nine months compared to 2,404 according to the Anchorage Police Department.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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