The Sconi

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney is lamenting the overall direction of the state’s largest city after new data concluded that the city of Milwaukee recently set its third straight all-time record for homicides.

“A sad day with Milwaukee setting their third straight homicide record,” Toney tweeted on Nov. 19, calling attention to data earlier this month showing that the city has already eclipsed its all-time record for yearly homicides, with a number of weeks still to go in 2022. All-time records were also set in 2020 and 2021, spurring many to desperately seek out explanations for the deadly rise in crime.

ABC News reported that the city’s troubling trend puts it in the company of a number of larger cities across the country, all of which have seen homicide rates spiral out of control over the last two years, jumping by 30% in 12 major cities at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and continuing the pattern as time has progressed.

The 30% jump in homicide rates since 2020 is the largest single-year jump in recorded U.S. history, according to CNN, easily surpassing the 20% jump that came in 2001, presumably in response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Earlier this year, New York Times reporter Jesse Drucker tweeted that yearly homicides across the country have climbed nearly to the levels they hit in the mid-1990s, at 6.9 murders per 100,000 people.

In the wake of the reduced levels of policing that came soon after the death of George Floyd at the hands of officers in Minnesota, data shows that murders skyrocketed, according to The Heritage Foundation, with black people particularly becoming victims of the increased violence.

As reports of the violence played out, The Heritage Foundation speculated the historic uptick in murder rates at least partly stemmed from the intense public pressure placed on police to be less harsh after Floyd’s murder in the spring of 2020.

Finally, Fox News reported that the 2021 calls to "defund the police" did little to aid in slowing levels of violent crime, saying that as a result of the movement, law enforcement agencies across the country were forced to carry out their duties with fewer resources.

At the same time, fatal shootings of police officers skyrocketed over the last year, prompting Fox News to recently publish an op-ed by Justin Haskins, highlighting the number of recent unprovoked attacks on officers, where Haskins argued that the weakening of law enforcement agencies leads to deadly consequences for public servants.