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Summer of Crime?

Dr. Munr Kazmir
4 min readJun 28, 2021

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The NYT says we’re seeing a violent crime wave that hasn’t even crested yet. Others have dismissed such claims as hysterical.

Photo by ALEKSEY KUPRIKOV on Unsplash.

With Homicides Rising, Cities Brace for a Violent Summer,” the New York Times noted grimly in a recent article which sent progressive lawmakers into a tailspin.

The NYT didn’t offer much hope with the subtitle, either: “Homicide rates in large cities were up more than 30 percent on average last year, and up another 24 percent for the beginning of this year, according to criminologists.”

Progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was quick to object to this characterization and dire prediction of a “violent summer.”

“We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said of the Times article in a subsequent interview. “Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much,” she qualified; “But I also want to make sure that this hysteria, you know, that this doesn’t drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez also accused, “the news and media, they perpetuate this idea of crime wave, crime wave, crime wave, right?”

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