Rising violent crime in U.S. cities and tensions between police and minorities offered a sobering backdrop to President Obama’s optimistic message Thursday as he hosted the nation’s mayors to highlight cities’ gains during his presidency.
The concern among the nation’s urban leaders about the spike in violence was prevalent at the annual gathering of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a Democrat, said violence in cities “is manifesting itself in a number of different ways all at the same time.”
“The temperature is much higher,” he said, a reference to community tensions that have given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement and other social unrest.
FBI statistics show that violent crime rose in the first half of 2015, compared with the same period in 2014. In medium-size cities of 250,000 to 500,000 residents, violent crime increased 5.3 percent. FBI Director James B. Comey has said he believes the protests over police-involved shootings are causing police to be less aggressive in their policing tactics, contributing to the rise in violent crime — a suggestion the White House disputes.
St. Louis — near the city of Ferguson where tensions first erupted over the police shooting of a black teen in 2014 — had 188 murders in 2015, the most in two decades, said Police Chief Sam Dotson.
Even Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the president’s former chief-of-staff who is under intense criticism for his handling of officer-involved shootings, said gun control isn’t as important in his view as making sure students earn their high school diplomas. He said the most common factor among prison inmates is that they dropped out of school.
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“In the long term the biggest impact you can make on gun violence is getting kids to walk across the stage on graduation day,” Mr. Emanuel said.
At a meeting with mayors in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama said violence, especially against young people, is “one of those areas where we all have concerns.” He praised cities such as Columbia, South Carolina, for implementing recommendations of his task force on community policing.
Mr. Obama pointed to his administration’s announcement of $1 billion in grants this week to 13 cities, states and counties to help build “climate-resilient” communities with improvements aimed at countering the effects of climate change. He said cities during his presidency have raised minimum wages and improved their economic outlook generally.
“We’ve accomplished a lot together on behalf of the American people,” the president said. “We have seen transformations of communities across the country.”
Mr. Obama also referred to the water contamination emergency in Flint, Michigan, calling it “inexcusable.”
“Our children should not have to be worried about the water that they’re drinking in American cities,” he said.
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Other mayors who met with Mr. Obama at the White House Thursday credited him with improving race relations and the overall economy over the past seven years.
“The best thing that he’s done was he was elected twice,” said Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Sly James, a Democrat. “That, in and of itself, says something about race relations, because … before his election, there were people who believed that that was an impossibility.”
Republican Mayor Ashley Swearingan of Fresno, California, credited the administration’s policies for cutting her city’s unemployment rate in half, reducing chronic homelessness by 60 percent and helping to put the city’s finances on the right path.
“We have much work to do, but our partnership with the Obama administration has been pivotal in helping Fresno reverse the course of many decades of decline and to chart a new future for our city,” she said.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat credited the president’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative with helping the education and career opportunities of young minority men. And he said Boston, unlike many other cities, saw a decrease in violent crime of 3 percent in 2015.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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