Experts, police say surge in gun violence in Cleveland, nation could be due to coronavirus-related stressors

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The number of homicides and injuries from gun violence in Cleveland continue to climb compared to recent years, including a particularly violent Fourth of July weekend. In years past, law enforcement here attributed rising crime rates to everything from a poorly-funded police department to sweltering temperatures.

But 2020, in all its anxiety, civil strife and political upheaval, brings with it a new explanation some in law enforcement are now using to explain rising crime rates: The coronavirus.

In a press conference after the July 4 weekend, Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams and Mayor Frank Jackson attributed the sharp rise in violence, in part, to the pandemic. Neither provided anything beyond the statement to bolster their theory.

The same goes for police chiefs in New York and Chicago.

But does the theory hold water?

What is known is that coronavirus resulted in record unemployment, dire projections for evictions and brought many of the underlying systemic socio-economic problems into sharp focus. And coronavirus hit home not long before the social unrest over several high-profile police killings, most predominantly the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd on May 25.

“COVID-19 is pretty unprecedented, and what we’ll be able to attribute to it is a story yet untold,” said Dan Flannery, the director for the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research Education at Case Western Reserve University. “But people have been cooped up for quite a while, and more people are literally back out on the streets, so there’s more opportunity for something to happen.”

Twenty-seven people suffered gunshot wounds, and three died during the Fourth of July weekend. By contrast, 10 people were shot during the same weekend in 2019.

The 2020 surge has shown little signs of waning. Thirteen more people died from gun violence since that weekend, and at least 62 more have been shot, including seven children under 17 years old, according to police reports.

“Since the latter part of February going into March, when COVID-19 really started to hit in this country…we saw an increase in violent crime,” Williams said during his post-Fourth of July press conference. “Not just here in the city of Cleveland and in Northeast Ohio but across the country. And we’ve been dealing with those increases ever since.”

93 homicides in 2020, compared to 68 in 2019

Statistics show the numbers of homicides are up — with 93 in 2020 as of Thursday, compared to 68 through July 29, 2019, according to Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner and police records. Non-fatal shootings – including incidents of gunfire where no one is injured— are up 35 percent across the city as of July 18, according to the most recent data released by Cleveland police.

Police recorded 673 shootings through that date, compared with 495 through the same date in 2019 and 544 in 2018.

Each of the five police districts has seen an increase of about 20 percent. The far West Side First District experienced a 94 percent increase in shootings, up from 37 in 2019 to 72 in 2020. The Fourth District, which encompasses the southeast side of Cleveland, by far leads the city with 222 non-fatal shootings.

The experts who spoke with cleveland.com -- Bryanna Fox, an associate professor of criminology at the University of South Florida and Cleveland State University director of criminology research Wendy Regoeczi-- said researchers wouldn’t have a full picture of the effects of the virus on crime for some time. But they pointed to several issues that contribute to high crime rates in Cleveland and other cities.

Pre-existing issues intensified by pandemic, social unrest

Cleveland already had problems with poverty and police-community mistrust before coronavirus concerns enveloped the nation in March. U.S. Census Bureau data released in September 2019 showed one-third of Cleveland residents and half of the city’s children live in poverty. The Cleveland Police Department remains under a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to reform the department, in part because of a pattern police misconduct towards residents.

And statistics show homicides during the first part of the year were already trending up. Non-fatal-shootings, however, were down.

The amount of stress heaped on by the effects of the pandemic — including skyrocketing unemployment and less access to social services — likely intensified those issues.

“People act out more aggressively in general during times of stress,” said Fox, who is also a former FBI agent. “Environmental stressors increase the likelihood that we act out more aggressively or violently than if we were a better version of ourselves, where we could take a step back or walk away.”

Easing coronavirus restrictions

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s relaxing of stay-at-home orders on May 18 also could play a role. More people ventured out of their homes in the following weeks, evidenced by near-historical levels in new COVID-19 cases in Ohio and Cleveland. Those numbers have since waned since the state recorded its second-highest number of new coronavirus cases on Friday.

The ease of restrictions also coincided with the Fourth of July holiday, which landed on a Saturday, and as the weather warmed, coaxing more people out of their homes, Regoeczi said.

“Violent crime rates go up in the summer, and I don’t know if it’s just unfortunate timing, but restrictions were lifted so close to July 4 and people have been cooped up in the colder months. They want to come out and let loose,” Regoeczi said. “That’s always an issue during the holiday weekend that may have been exacerbated.”

Police-community mistrust escalated after Floyd killing

Social unrest over Floyd’s death is another key issue that likely worsened already existing mistrust between residents and the police. That can lead to more violent crime in neighborhoods where police mistrust is already an issue, the experts said. Regoeczi noted that Cleveland’s deadliest year in the last decade – 2016, when 144 people were killed— also came amid of social unrest following a string of police killings of unarmed Black men across the country.

Mistrust of police tends to have two effects on violent crime for two reasons: people hesitate to call police to help resolve disputes that without intervention escalate into violence and residents become reluctant to cooperate with police during investigations, Flannery said.

Solving shootings and homicides is critical in lowering violent crime in neighborhoods because it takes violent offenders off the streets and breaks the cycle of retaliatory violence, Flannery said.

The issue of solving homicides is a longstanding one in Cleveland. A recently-released report by the Department of Justice’s National Public Safety Partnership said Cleveland needs double the amount of full-time homicide detectives in order to investigate the increasing number of homicides properly.

The DOJ on Tuesday announced a crime-reduction plan called “Operation Legend” that will send at some 25 federal agents to Cleveland and provide $10 million for the city to hire 30 new officers, the Ohio State Highway Patrol to hire five more troopers and the Ohio Adult Parole Authority to hire four new investigators.

“When police-community relations deteriorate, the community tends to provide less information to police in investigations, that’s going to lower arrest and clearance rates, which means more perpetrators stay on the streets,” Regoeczi said.

Record number of guns

Fox also pointed to the number of guns on the street, another pre-existing issue that grew during the past few months.

As coronavirus concerns hit in March, the FBI reported an all-time high of 3.7 million background checks for gun purchases, an indicator of how many people are buying guns. That record was broken in June, with 3.9 million background checks, as the country roiled with anger over Floyd’s killing and weeks of ensuing protests.

“It all happened during social unrest. You have millions of new guns around, people are more on edge, their stressed, fearful, they don’t have jobs. All of those things do not bode well for gun violence.”