FBI's 2020 crime report shows record increase: report
Project 21 co-chair Horace Cooper and former Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek join 'Fox News @ Night' to discuss the rise in violent crime across the U.S.
Black murders drastically shot up in 2020, when protests and riots in support of the Black Lives Matter and defund the police movements swept the nation and America dealt with the coronavirus and lockdowns. Social justice activists, however, have looked the other way, according to experts.
"BLM has no actual regard for Black lives at any stage of development. If BLM cared about Black people, its leaders and chapters would devote themselves to addressing the cultural issues that have led to generations of Black overrepresentation among murder victims and perpetrators," Dr. Carol Swain, retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, told Fox News Digital in an email Tuesday.
Leo Terrell, a civil rights attorney and Fox News contributor, told Fox News Digital, "those who allegedly cared about Black Americans looked the other way when it came to Black on Black crime in Democratic cities."
MASSIVE INCREASE IN BLACK AMERICANS MURDERED WAS RESULT OF DEFUND POLICE MOVEMENT: EXPERTS
Side-by-side image of Dr. Carol Swain and Leo Terrell (Fox News) (FOX NEWS)
Swain and Terrell were responding to FBI data reported in a recent Fox News Digital article showing Black murders increased by 32% in 2020 compared to 2019, and spiked by 43% that year when compared to the 10-year average of Black murders. Murders across the board spiked by nearly 30% that year, marking the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes.
Experts such as the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald argued that the skyrocketing murders were attributable to the BLM protests and riots that summer, as well as the calls that echoed across the nation calling for police departments to be defunded. Mac Donald argued that the "spike was not at all related to COVID," as other experts have posited.
Thousands of people across the country pledged their support for Black Lives Matter in 2020 and participated in large protests. The support spread to the most public echelons of America, with corporations vowing donations to social justice initiatives, athletes wearing BLM apparel at the stadium and celebrities rushing to publicly support and donate to BLM.
BLM SILENT WHEN CONFRONTED WITH DATA SHOWING MASSIVE 2020 SPIKE IN BLACK MURDERS VICTIMS
Swain said she agreed with experts "who have concluded that the spike in Black murders is traceable to the defund the police movement and criminal justice reforms that led to the early release of repeat offenders." She added that BLM’s vision of defunding the police is "part of a progressive utopian vision of a world without law enforcement," where Black Americans and "society as a whole" pay the price for "the Left’s utopian vision of a world."
A protester waves a Black Lives Matter flag during a demonstration on April 20, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Stanton Sharpe/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
"No thoughtful person can legitimately blame the pandemic and economic disparities for the rise in Black murders. The racial climate in the country coddles Black criminals while penalizing police officers who follow law enforcement procedures. We are witnessing the fruits of trial by media that have given us the Ferguson effect, the Floyd effect, and the Minneapolis effect," she said.
Hannah Meyers, director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute, previously told Fox News Digital that the spike in Black murders in 2020 follows a spiking violence pattern seen after the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray in the mid-2010s.
FBI DATA SHOWS LARGE INCREASE IN MURDERS IN 2020 NATIONWIDE
The pattern was coined the "Ferguson effect" in 2014, and gained widespread attention in 2016 after Mac Donald wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal arguing the effect is one "where the Black Lives Matter narrative about racist, homicidal cops has produced virulent hostility in the streets."
Terrell said he was "shocked and saddened" by the FBI data showing the skyrocketing murder rate among Black Americans in 2020. He said he was particularly shaken by the data showing Black Americans were disproportionately affected by the crimes compared to other demographics.
In 2019, at least 7,484 Black Americans were murdered. That number shot up to at least 9,941 murders in 2020. For White murders, FBI data show there were 7,043 White people murdered in 2020, meaning 2,898 more Black people were killed compared to Whites.
"As a lawyer the first question that popped in my mind was why the black murder rate was so high. I concluded that the Black Lives Matter movement after the George Floyd murder backfired on the black community," Terrell said.
He added that the protests from BLM and similar groups "covered up and ignored all the black on black crime occurring the last three years," noting "the sad part" about the spike in murders were Black politicians and White liberals who have "refused to accept their role" in the violence.
People watch as the American flag flies over a burning building during a riot protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake on August 24, 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Joshua Lott for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
For Terrell, the "principal causes for the high Black murder rate" come down to the defend the police movement, progressive prosecutors, and a "woke agenda."
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Black Lives Matter have not responded to Fox News Digital's multiple requests for comment on the data and experts' arguments on the murder spike.
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