What To Know Today
A violent weekend sees tragedy unfold coast to coast, including at a Major League Baseball game. From Friday night through Sunday night, a string of 12 mass shootings left 11 people dead and 49 injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Among them: In Portland, Oregon, a woman was killed in the city’s downtown and six others were injured; in Sacramento, two people were killed and four injured in a shooting Friday night; in Chicago, six people, aged 12 to 25, were shot and injured while standing outside of a party, in one of 41 total shooting incidents in the city over the weekend.
Shocking scenes in Washington, D.C. — though you may have only heard about one. Three people were injured in a shooting outside Nationals Park on Saturday. During the sixth inning, shots rang out outside the stadium, echoing inside the park and leading fans to scramble and players to run into the stands to find their families. Fernando Tatis Jr., a shortstop for the San Diego Padres who helped people to safety inside the stadium, said ahead of Sunday’s rescheduled game: “The situation changed immediately; there were no longer players or fans. I feel like everybody is just people. Just human beings out there.” While the incident got widespread coverage, elsewhere in Washington, a family was already mourning: The night before the stadium shooting, 6-year-old Nyiah Courtney was killed and five adults were injured in a drive-by shooting. “We must never allow people to get away with murdering our children,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
A leading criminologist anticipates slowing of homicide, gun violence. Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, who has co-lead a series of analyses on crime trends for the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, predicts that the swelling rates of homicide and gun violence will slowly — but surely — return to pre-2020 levels. “My expectation is we’re going to see a continued slowing of the rise we saw over the last year,” Rosenfeld told Insider. Speaking to the same outlet, Christopher R. Herrmann, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, broadly echoed that picture but said a fuller understanding will take more time: “We’ll have a horrible summer of shootings and homicides, and there’s another month and a half of that. And then we’ll start to see things settle down. We’ll really have to wait until the first quarter of 2022 to see what the trend is going to be.”
Remembering domestic violence survivors as part of the rise in violence. When abusers have access to firearms, a woman’s risk of being killed drastically increases — one study says as much as 1,000 percent. During pandemic lockdowns, the Council on Criminal Justice estimates, domestic violence increased by 8.1 percent. Now, advocates at domestic violence shelters want to see more attention on the people they serve alongside the national focus on homicides and mass shootings. “Just knowing that your abusive partner has a firearm can be very, very intimidating and frightening,” Ruth Glenn, president of National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told PBS NewsHour.
Weapons cache taken from men charged with plot against California Democratic Party’s headquarters. An unsealed indictment said law enforcement officials seized five pipe bombs, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and between 45 and 50 firearms — including at least three fully-automatic weapons — while investigating Ian Benjamin Rogers and Jarrod Copeland. Federal prosecutors said the men were affiliated with a militia group and were “prompted by the outcome of the 2020 election” to attack the state’s Democratic headquarters after first allegedly considering the offices of Twitter and Facebook.
Don’t miss: A roundtable discussion on criminal justice reform and the rise of violent crime. Next Tuesday at 7 p.m. EST, The New Republic will host a virtual panel featuring Amy Fettig, executive director of the Sentencing Project; Phillip Goff, co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity; and John Pfaff, author and professor of law.
Data Point
16 — the number of jurisdictions included in the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative, which held its first meeting at the White House on Thursday. The group includes mayors, law enforcement, CVI experts, and philanthropic leaders who will use American Rescue Plan funding and other public money to invest in gun violence prevention. [The White House]
