Violence is nothing new to the city of Little Rock, Arkansas. A quick search of “river market little rock shooting” will show that even the entertainment district is full of violent crime.
“Crime is trending down. Violent crime is trending down,” Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey told reporters at a year-end news conference in December. He said that crime in the city had been reduced by half, according to KATV.
“We went from 22-23% down to at one point 11%, and now we stand at 12% in violent crime,” he said. “Birmingham is a similar size. We had 65 homicides last year. They had 120. We don’t take our violent crime enforcement lightly here.”
That’s good news, but according to the results of a January 2022 study by Wallet Hub, which ranked the crime rates of all U.S. capital cities, Little Rock topped the list. This study was reported by KARK-TV.
On Tuesday, KATV reported that Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. introduced a resolution to issue a public health emergency at a meeting of the city’s board of directors.
Scott told the directors that Little Rock could not police its way out of the violence, the report said.
Board members were particularly worried about the growing rate of gun violence in the city.
Director Doris Wright said, “The loss of life is just astounding, and I look at it as basically a whole generation is being genocided.”
Another, Capi Peck told the group, “I wish we would have done this long ago. It’s not new. It has escalated, and I know we’ve all been very, very preoccupied because of the pandemic, and I know that crime has been exacerbated by the pandemic.”
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