Violent crime rises in Sacramento region’s largest cities. Did COVID shutdown play a part?

The number of violent crimes in the Sacramento region’s three largest cities rose during the first six months of 2020 compared to the same period last year, new FBI data show.

The violent crime increase in Elk Grove, Roseville and Sacramento was driven largely by a rise in aggravated assaults — the type of assaults that lead to serious physical injuries. Aggravated assaults in the three cities rose by a combined total of 252, or 23 percent.

In the city of Sacramento, the number of murders rose from 18 during the first six months of 2019 to 22 during the first six months of 2020.

In the span of a month earlier this year, the number of shootings surged in the Sacramento area and killed nearly a dozen people and injured dozens of others, including a 13-year-old child. That increase in gun violence occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, around the time authorities were beginning to loosen coronavirus stay-at-home rules.

“It isn’t immediately clear whether the pandemic has contributed to the rise in violent crime,” Sacramento Police Department officials said in an email to The Sacramento Bee last week. “Investigators do know that many of the shootings that occurred this year were due to a surge in gang-related activity. Our officers continue to proactively patrol and seize illegally possessed firearms.”

Since August, officers have made 106 arrests on gun-related charges, according to the Police Department.

Detectives with the Sacramento Police Department and Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office investigated 60 shootings from May 22 through June 21, more than twice the number they investigated over the same time period last year, the police agencies announced in a news release in late June. The agencies at the time also reported taking 188 firearms off the street since late May.

The news release said the uptick in violence stemmed in part from gang members, though the agencies did not elaborate.

Two law enforcement officials, however, have told The Sacramento Bee that incidents had risen as gang members began coming out after stay-at-home orders triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. The sources, who were not authorized to speak on the matter, said gang members decided to carry out personal disputes as police were busy elsewhere during protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

They pointed to one particularly gruesome attack where one person was killed and four others, including the 13-year-old, were targeted. Sheriff’s officials publicly said the June 10 shooting on Della Circle in the Florin neighborhood of south Sacramento was a targeted attack.

Elk Grove and Roseville also see an uptick

While the increase in aggravated assaults was much smaller in Elk Grove, Roseville, those cities experienced a rise in violent crime, as well. Elk Grove rose from 92 aggravated assaults in the first half of 2019 to 131 this year; Roseville increased from 52 to 76 in that same time period.

Officer Hannah Gray, a spokeswoman for the Elk Grove Police Department, said it’s unknown if the pandemic and economic shutdown somehow contributed to the increase. She said the spike in aggravated assaults was likely due to a couple of non-fatal shootings earlier this year that had multiple victims. But Gray said she did not have specific information about the shootings she referred to.

“Anytime we see an increase in crime, it’s a concern,” Gray said. “We’re always looking to direct the appropriate resources as needed.”

A spokesman for the Roseville Police Department declined to comment on this year’s increase in aggravated assaults.

Murders and aggravated assaults increased in large cities statewide and across the nation from 2019 to 2020, the FBI data show. Those increases were offset by a decline in the number of robberies and rapes.

There has been much attention paid to the rise in murders reported in the nation’s cities during the pandemic. Experts attribute the rise partly to increased domestic violence that may occur when people are forced to spend most of their time together in quarantine.

However, some experts also note this is a recent trend during an unprecedented time so no one is exactly sure why it is happening or if it will continue. It can be risky to compare one year’s worth of data to another without looking at broader trends, experts say. In the city of Sacramento, violent crime has risen and fallen a few times during the last decade.

The number of property crimes — burglaries and thefts — fell in Sacramento and Roseville and held steady in Elk Grove during the first six months of 2020, FBI data show.

The FBI data is preliminary. The agency did not release data showing crime totals for cities with fewer than 100,000 residents.

Did coronavirus rules create easy targets?

Michael Benjamin, a longtime resident of Sacramento’s Oak Park neighborhood and a community advocate, said what led to the increase in these crimes has a lot more to do with social issues of inequality than gang violence.

He said people with a lack of access to social services while the unemployment rate and homelessness increased during the pandemic leads to desperate people to take action. Benjamin believes these desperate times could force someone to steal or sell drugs while arming themselves with a gun.

“They’re crimes of poverty,” Benjamin said. “It’s about the lack of access to opportunities.”

Benjamin, who as a community advocate responds to violent crimes in his neighborhood to assist victims or their families, said the rise in the number of shootings could’ve been a byproduct of coronavirus rules restricting many to their homes or their neighborhoods.

Those who have rivals could have become an easy target, since others know how to easily find them in their neighborhoods, Benjamin said.

The coronavirus rules also kept many people at home in front of computer screens or using their smartphones to access social media, which Benjamin said has, unfortunately, become a platform for rival gang members to escalate conflicts virtually before the online sparring leads to actual gunfire.

“You’re seeing a lot more aggravation this year,” Benjamin said.

While the increase in these crimes is alarming to Benjamin, he said the increase isn’t that far off from last year’s numbers long before the pandemic hit the United States and forced authorities to implement precautions to slow the virus spread.

Sacramento had 18 murders and 974 aggravated assaults in the first half of last year. The city had 22 murders and 1,163 aggravated assaults in the first six months of this year.

Benjamin says police should focus on the roots of gun violence and assaults, such as economic inequality and mental illness, instead of broadly pointing to gang activity as the culprit. He said that only leads to increases in funding for more police vehicles and armed officers, which isn’t the right solution.

“They’re trying to criminalize this, when it’s really a social issue,” Benjamin said.

This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Violent crime rises in Sacramento region’s largest cities. Did COVID shutdown play a part?."