Exhausted Cities Face Another Challenge: A Surge in Violence

In this July 5, 2020, file photo, an officer investigates the scene of a shooting in Chicago. Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: A surge in recent shootings has left dozens dead, including young children. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP, File)
In this July 5, 2020, file photo, an officer investigates the scene of a shooting in Chicago. Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: A surge in recent shootings has left dozens dead, including young children. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP, File)
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Exhausted Cities Face Another Challenge: A Surge in Violence

In this July 5, 2020, file photo, an officer investigates the scene of a shooting in Chicago. Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: A surge in recent shootings has left dozens dead, including young children. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP, File)
In this July 5, 2020, file photo, an officer investigates the scene of a shooting in Chicago. Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: A surge in recent shootings has left dozens dead, including young children. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP, File)

Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of George Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: a surge in shootings that has left dozens dead, including young children.

The spike defies easy explanation, experts say, pointing to the toxic mix of issues facing America in 2020: an unemployment rate not seen in a generation, a pandemic that has killed more than 130,000 people, stay-at-home orders, rising anger over police brutality, intense stress, even the weather.

"I think it´s just a perfect storm of distress in America," said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms after a weekend of bloodshed in her city.

Jerry Ratcliffe, a Temple University criminal justice professor and host of the "Reducing Crime" podcast, put it more bluntly: "Anybody who thinks they can disentangle all of this probably doesn´t know what they´re talking about."

President Donald Trump has seized on the violence for political gain, accusing Democrats of being weak and suggesting the crime wave is being driven by recent protests calling for racial justice, police reform, and drastic cuts in law enforcement funding.

"Law and order are the building blocks of the American dream, but if anarchy prevails, this dream comes crumbling down," White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said last week.

Police officials in New York City and elsewhere say the recent bloodshed has shown there are consequences to some reforms they see as misguided, particularly on bail reform, enacted before the protests happened but exacerbated by the moment.

Emboldened criminals feel "that the cops can´t do anything anymore, that no one likes the police, that they can get away with things, that it´s safe to carry a gun out on the street," New York Police Department Chief Terence Monahan said this week.

Monahan´s remarks came after a holiday weekend that saw a wave of shootings leaving 10 dead. Through Sunday, shootings were up more than 53% - to 585 - so far this year.

The recent spasm of violence was captured in a New York Post headline about a crime-ravaged city crying out for help. It was nearly identical to one that ran 30 years ago - when there were more than 2,000 murders a year. But crime has been declining for more than a decade - there were about 300 last year.

Crime has spiked in other major cities, too. In Dallas, violent crime increased more than 14% from April to June. In Philadelphia, homicides were up 20% for the week ending July 5 over last year at this time. In Atlanta, 31 people were shot over the weekend, five fatally, compared with seven shootings and one killing over the same week in 2019.

Some police unions say officers just aren´t doing their jobs over fear of being charged with crime.

Bottoms, a Democrat, lashed out after an 8-year-old girl was shot and killed near the Atlanta Wendy´s restaurant where Rayshard Brooks died three weeks earlier in a confrontation with police who were later charged criminally.

"That´s an important movement that´s happening," she said at a news conference. "But this random, wild, wild West shoot ´em up because you can has got to stop."

Trump's Georgia campaign arm claimed Atlanta was a "war zone" brought on after Bottoms "lost control of the city after what started out as peaceful protests, quickly turned violent. In a flurry of anti-police activity."

The Trump campaign also launched a $250,000 ad blitz Sunday on Facebook and Twitter, claiming "violent crime has EXPLODED" as protesters call for cuts to police departments across the country. The ad features video of an empty police station with a ringing phone that sends a caller to an answering machine, which says the estimated wait time for police help is five days.

The video ends by flashing the words, "You won´t be safe in Joe Biden´s America."

Biden´s campaign said the Trump approach was just another distraction from his "inaction and mismanagement" of the coronavirus crisis.

"While Donald Trump searches for the latest cultural issue to drive people apart and celebrates Independence Day with new, race-baiting rhetoric, Americans are contracting coronavirus at alarming rates, and there is still no coherent national plan to address it," said T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Trump's messaging went beyond the ad campaign. Donald Trump Jr. shared on Facebook a conservative-created meme of 11-year-old Davon McNeal, who was shot to death in Washington during a cookout over the weekend.

"Davon was murdered after a string of BLM (Black Lives Matter) violence on the Fourth of July," it read.

The shooting was not connected to Black Lives Matter, the movement behind many of the protests against police brutality. The boy had been at a family-oriented anti-violence cookout Saturday, but he left to get a phone charger from his aunt's house when he was struck by gunmen in a sedan.

Tracie Keesee, a longtime police official in Denver and New York who co-founded the Center for Policing Equity, said it's important to get answers on what is driving the crime, whether it's drugs, domestic violence or poverty. She cautioned against broad-stroke generalizations.

"You have to get into the numbers," she said.

Reform advocates say blaming a spike on the necessary push for police reform ignores the root causes of crime and the progress of the movement.

Government officials need to "be thoughtful and nuanced and contextual about these things," liberal New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson told radio station WNYC this week.

To link the shootings to reforms, Johnson added, gives "an inaccurate picture of what criminal justice reform is about and is just demonizing the moment that we´re in and not talking about what brought us here today."

Like New York, Chicago had already seen an increase in homicides and shootings in the first part of the year. But while the violence tapered off in New York under stay-at-home orders, shootings in Chicago remained steady, likely because of gang warfare, said Wesley Skogan, who studies crime at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Seventeen people were fatally shot in Chicago and 70 wounded, one of the bloodiest holiday weekends in memory there.

Gangs "are not particularly deterred by the risks of being out there," Skogan said. "Of all the things they are likely to be worried about, COVID is way down the list."



Trump Envoy Arrives in Kyiv as US Pledges Patriot Missiles to Ukraine

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
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Trump Envoy Arrives in Kyiv as US Pledges Patriot Missiles to Ukraine

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shakes hands with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, during their meeting in Rome, Italy, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

US President Donald Trump´s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kyiv on Monday, a senior Ukrainian official said, as anticipation grew over a possible shift in the Trump administration´s policy on the more than three-year war.

Trump last week teased that he would make a "major statement" on Russia on Monday. Trump made quickly stopping the war one of his diplomatic priorities, and he has increasingly expressed frustration about Russian President Vladimir Putin´s unbudging stance on US-led peace efforts.

Trump has long boasted of his friendly relationship with Putin and after taking office in January repeatedly said that Russia was more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal. At the same time, Trump accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war and called him a "dictator without elections”, AFP said.

But Russia´s relentless onslaught against civilian areas of Ukraine wore down Trump´s patience. In April, Trump urged Putin to "STOP!" launching deadly barrages on Kyiv, and the following month said in a social media post that the Russian leader " has gone absolutely CRAZY!" as the bombardments continued.

"I am very disappointed with President Putin, I thought he was somebody that meant what he said," Trump said late Sunday. "He´ll talk so beautifully and then he´ll bomb people at night. We don´t like that."

Trump confirmed the US is sending Ukraine badly needed US-made Patriot air defense missiles to help it fend off Russia´s intensifying aerial attacks.

Trump said that the European Union will pay the US for the "various pieces of very sophisticated" weaponry it is sending.

However, the EU is not allowed under its treaties to buy weapons. EU member countries are buying and sending weapons to Ukraine, just as NATO member countries are buying and sending weapons. EU countries set up the European Peace Facility so that countries which supply arms to Ukraine could be refunded to backfill their own stocks.

Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles that Ukraine's air defenses are struggling to counter. June brought the highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said Thursday. Russia launched 10 times more drones and missiles in June than in the same month last year, it said.

That has happened at the same time as Russia's bigger army is making a new effort to drive back Ukrainian defenders on parts of the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line.

A top ally of Trump, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Sunday that the conflict is nearing an inflection point as Trump shows growing interest in helping Ukraine fight back against Russia's full-scale invasion. It´s a cause that Trump had previously dismissed as being a waste of US taxpayer money.

"In the coming days, you´ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves," Graham said on CBS´ "Face the Nation." He added: "One of the biggest miscalculations (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there´s going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table."

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin´s envoy for international investment, dismissed what he said were efforts to drive a wedge between Moscow and Washington.

"Constructive dialogue between Russia and the United States is more effective than doomed-to-fail attempts at pressure," Dmitriev said in a post on Telegram. "This dialogue will continue, despite titanic efforts to disrupt it by all possible means."

"Equal dialogue, mutual respect, realism and economic cooperation are the foundations of global security," he added, echoing comments by Putin.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was due in Washington on Monday and Tuesday. He planned to hold talks with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as members of Congress.

Talks during Kellogg´s visit to Kyiv will cover "defense, strengthening security, weapons, sanctions, protection of our people and enhancing cooperation between Ukraine and the United States," said the head of Ukraine´s presidential office, Andrii Yermak.

"Russia does not want a cease fire. Peace through strength is President Donald Trump´s principle, and we support this approach," Yermak said.

Russian troops conducted a combined aerial strike at Shostka, in the northern Sumy region of Ukraine, using glide bombs and drones early Monday morning, killing two people, the regional prosecutor´s office said. Four others were injured, including a 7-year-old, it said.

Overnight from Sunday to Monday, Russia fired four S-300/400 missiles and 136 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the air force said. It said that 61 drones were intercepted and 47 more were either jammed or lost from radars mid-flight.

The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its air defenses downed 11 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions on the border with Ukraine, as well as over the annexed Crimea and the Black Sea.