3 Shot Over Weekend

Can someone explain to me why there has been a sudden uptick in violence this summer and fall? I may not be fully informed, but it seems to me that there were not this many violent crimes occuring just 6 or 7 months ago. Does anyone know why? Has something changed in the police department, city government, etc.? What might be the cause?

Mayor Elicker called NH "the wild west"---- when he was a candidate. He wouldn't dare say it now.

Wise up , citizens. Vote him out and vote out your bought and paid for alders. Sweep them all out to the trash! Could it get worse???

There has been an uptick in violence nationwide. Changing the city administration isn't going to do much to stop it. The reasons for the recent uptick compared to 6-7 months ago was that with warmer weather, there are more people hanging around outside. Warmer weather leads to more irritability and aggression. More people hanging out on the streets means more opportunities for interpersonal conflict. Part of it has to do with rising depression, anxiety, increased substance abuse, increased domestic violence, and economic instability and social unrest. Part of it is related to the illegal drug trade and gangs beefing over territory and respect. Part of it is former prisoners incarcerated during the war on drugs and the gang task force measures during the 1980's-'90's have completed their sentences and are out on the streets with few resources for changing their ways, and other people have moved in on their former territory while they were gone. The world has changed tremendously during their incarceration due to technology and it's even harder for people to adjust to life on the outside. Former Church St South and Brookside and Rockview housing complexes former residents have no home to return to when they're released which leads them to venture into other rival gangs territory. Increased homeless and addicted people out on the streets looking for money for their next fix increase crime and violence. There are so many social ills, poverty related and pandemic related reasons why right now communities with large poor populations are struggling with crime and violence. Changing the administration won't impact these causes of violence, only social services and support programs make a difference in addressing the root causes of crime and violence, and that requires more spending on those programs, through various local, state and National government funds. But by ending the war in Afghanistan we are saving millions of dollars that could go towards these programs.

@20degran: One reasons for the uptick in violence is the change in policing in New Haven as a result of the request from some of our more vocal citizens to reduce police presence and interactions in our communities. There are legitimate concerns about some of the interactions that are over-doing it and some that have resulted in violence against innocent people, and over-reacting in the handling of situations that should have been. deescalated. But the response by some officers now has been that they won't engage unless ordered to, won't be proactive because they don't see the support of their leadership. I've seen squad cars drive by groups of 7-10 men hanging in front of package stores drinking openly … and patrol won't stop because the complaint will be 'we weren't bothering anyone and the police are harassing us'. Patrol car drives past the group of people openly shooting drugs across from a school but won't engage because the complaint will be 'these people need services not arrest'. Inner city parking violations are ignored because 'the disenfranchised are less able to afford paying fines or tow charges'. If we don't figure out how to let the police 'protect and serve' and stop making them figure out how to be social workers, psychologist, baby sitters, outreach workers, drug counselors … well, then the numbers will keep going up. Those are not the tools we've equipped them with, so WE have tied their hands. And let's NOT talk about the uneven handling of the judicial system. When you give a first offense of dealing small quantity 10-15 what kind of job is available when they get out? I don't have all the answers but the ones I have 'somebody' ain't gonna like and they're gonna be loud, so there's that. But we at least gotta show up with talk AND walk. Let's not spend millions on thinking about what to do. Hire more police. Train the police better.Give them incentive to live here. Put more police on the streets. Better policing equals less gun violence.

There is also a rise in crime, violence and shootings in many suburban communities. Often those incidents are under-reported or not reported at all in the media.
For years, there appears to be a conspiracy of suburban community leadership to suppress such news in order to maintain a false image of security and safety in the suburbs. The media is quick to report incidents of violence in cities across America, but sometimes reluctant to report on crime and violence in suburbs.
Most school shootings and killings in America have occurred in suburban communities. That is a fact. Yet most Americans think urban schools are filled with chaos, violence and confusion on a regular basis.
Over a week ago, several fights broke out at a Hillhouse football game. Many of the perpetrators allegedly were not Hillhouse students.
Last week a news reporter on WTNH referred to the incident as a RIOT! When incidents of violence break out during or after school games in suburbia, are they ever, would they ever, be called a RIOT?
That is a racially charged word that is offensive, biased, and creates certain images and promotes certain racial stereotypes about Black and Brown people.
When suburban kids and adults commit acts of violence, vandalism and crime, when it is ever reported, the words used to describe their acts often minimize the criminality of the actors.
Violence and crime are happening all over America for various reasons, many of which were excellently outlined by @HeatherC.
Simply changing political leadership or getting more police will not address or resolve this American dilemma.
The family is the nucleus of every civilization. We must start there by strengthing and building the many broken and dysfunctional families.
The proliferation of guns in America is another fundamental cause of Ameri an violence. No other nation has the gun homicides and suicides that we have. We need national gun control legislation.
Resolving these problems must be a full scale community effort.

Heather C, Thomas Alfred Paine, and Hill Resident have collectively analyzed the problem. These problems are the symptoms of some of the issues they identified. Such wisdom and insight like this can only be revealed in a journal like the NHI, The problems call for long and short-term solutions. When I read the account of the shooting of Captain Duff and Mr. Clark I was convinced that the shooter was a murderous psychopath beyond redemption. Read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Sociopaths and psychopaths live among us and we must face this reality. Some even rise to positions of leadership. They have to be found and helped when possible and put away when necessary to protect the innocent. We need more police officers in the short and long term and we need to assume collective responsibility for what goes on in our immediate environment starting at home. Sadly we are losing this authority. Despite the rants of City Yankee, big government has to assume some responsibility for rebuilding the social safety net. In the final analysis everyone is responsible for at least working hard to do as much for themselves as possible even as some require more support from others until they can get a leg up.

To those who have been shot, to their families, to the families and friends of those murdered, thoughts on national trends do not make their suffering better. Using it as a way to diminish the violence in New Haven, and Hamden, is wrong. It was looking to national trends that has allowed New Haven to stop the use of legislated law, and police, to put forth their potential to stop the violence. The other side of the coin is looking to similar towns and cities that are home to Ivy League schools. Princeton, NJ? Cambridge, Mass? Ithaca, NY? Hanover, NH?, The upper West Side of Manhattan? And the remainder of those towns and cities, have levels of violent drug gang violence that are not even close to what New Haven has. Why?

If only the shooters were on motorcycles then maybe the mayor would get serious about cracking down on this

Thank you to Thomas Alfred Paine for illustrating the racism aspect of the media coverage and the public's perception. When suburban kids fight at sports events and some adults as well, it is barely covered and nobody calls them "thugs and criminals who should be locked up for life." When kids in the suburbs and rural areas drag race cars and do donuts in parking lots and crash their cars trying to "catch air" in a bump in the road, or roar around on dirt bikes and atvs everyone in their community is so sad that they were foolish enough to drive recklessly and get hurt or killed. When inner city and minority young people do the same things they are portrayed as lowlife thugs and criminals. When suburban kids steal their relatives prescription drugs and smoke pot and become addicts their relatives rally to try to get them help and the drug manufacturers/pushers become rich and declare bankruptcy to avoid paying back for the irreparable harm they have inflicted on society. Meanwhile the inner city and minority and poor drug dealers who get their drugs supply from large scale illegal drug suppliers with foreign roots, (and sell to the privileged from the suburbs,) get jailed and killed and make barely enough money to feed their families. The mass murderers from the white communities shoot and kill at public schools, nightclubs, grocery stores, concerts, and our country mourns, but the countless daily inner city minority deaths are treated as though they deserved their gun deaths because that is part of the poor choices they made in choosing to be poor and the subjects of systemic racism. Meanwhile the weapons manufacturers are getting richer by the second, both in the illegal guns market where our streets are being flooded with guns, and the legal market where the general public scared of the ongoing systemic violence and the media's profiting off of fear, buy up weapons to "protect" themselves from the criminals. The double standards and white privilege is clear.

I think Heather C. is on to something here. We need to make the Cities more like the Suburbs.
However, I think the plan is to make the Suburbs more like the Cities. Hello, Montana.

Here is the problem.Just got finish reading this Book.In fact this book proves H Rap Brown point when he said. Violence Is As American As Cherry Pie"

Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth

The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals in a strangely bloodless war against an oppressive empire. It's a stirring narrative, and one the Founders did their best to encourage after the war. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America's founding, the Revolution was not only a high-minded battle over principles, but also a profoundly violent civil war—one that shaped the American nation.

http://www.history.pitt.edu/publication/scars-independence-americas-violent-birth

Three counts and you're out. Start building the new prisons now.

3/5's-- yes, revolutions are violent. Ours was. The French Revolution was moreso.
But please don't compare people fighting for independence and killing to people who kill over someone looking at them the wrong way.

posted by: CityYankee2 on September 22, 2021 4:50am

3/5's— yes, revolutions are violent. Ours was. The French Revolution was moreso.
But please don't compare people fighting for independence and killing to people who kill over someone looking at them the wrong way.

You need to read the Book.Like it said America's Violent Birth.In fact Kieran Healy a professor of sociology at Duke University did a study.She found this.

People often wonder whether the United States is a particularly violent society. Several years ago, the same question led me to take a look at some comparative data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the rates of death due to assault across different countries. The OECD now has this data for almost all its members from 1960 up to 2014 or 2015. Here is what it looks like.The short answer is that the United States is a society where an unusual number of people die violently, at least in comparison to other rich, capitalist democracies. That has been true for a long time, and it remains true For as long as powerful firearms remain easily available to private citizens, the United States is likely to remain well above the OECD average when it comes to violent death.

America's gun culture in charts

How does the US compare with other countries?
There were 14,400 gun-related homicides in 2019.

Killings involving a gun accounted for nearly three quarters of all homicides in the US in that year.

That's a larger proportion of homicides than in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, and many other countries.

Who owns the world's guns?
While it is difficult to know exactly how many guns civilians own around the world, by every estimate the US, with more than 390 million, is far out in front

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081

Like H Rap Brown said.

H Rap Brown . Violence Is As American As Cherry Pie"