Violent crime jumps in Minnesota

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has released its report on crime in Minnesota in 2015. The BCA’s findings are grim:

Violent crime saw a nearly 8 percent jump in 2015 compared to the year before, according to a report released Friday by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Uniform Crime Report.

Murders stood out among the findings — they climbed nearly 60 percent from 2014 to 2015.

Minnesota thus joins a nationwide trend, as the steady decline in violent crime that began in the 1990s has been reversed. This chart shows the number of murders committed in Minnesota from 2002 through 2015, as reported by the BCA. 2015 tops the list with 130:

Homicide Chart

While the numbers bounce around, it appears that in Minnesota, an upward trend may have begun around 2009.

Some have blamed the Black Lives Matter movement, the war on cops and the Ferguson Effect for the sharp jump in violent crime, and especially homicide, that began nationwide last year and has continued into 2016. In Minnesota, too, the crime wave seems to have gotten worse so far in 2016. Whatever its causes, the current increase in violent crime, threatening to reverse nearly two decades of progress, is troubling.