Over the past few years, Memphis has seen a drastic rise in homicide and other violent crimes. Memphis Crime Stoppers have come up with strategies to curb prevailing crime in this city. There have been 87 homicide cases reported in Memphis this year. Different events are organized to commemorate people who died in this event.
Let us know more about it in detail.
Statistics of Homicide event
In the last year, a total of 57 homicide cases were recorded in Memphis city. This figure has increased to 87 in 2019. This data is obtained as per the study performed by The Commercial Appeal’s homicide tracker.
This tracker records different types of homicide cases such as vehicular homicides, justified homicides, and police shootings. It has been seen that around eighty percent of homicide events that occurred in 2019 involved guns. The first case was a man shot dead in Raleigh on New Year’s Day. Another incident happened just two days after this event.
A man was killed as a result of gunfire inside a car with the 6200 lump of Arborwood Drive. Along with the killing of common citizen of Memphis, several high-profile deaths were also noted in this city. One of these incidents is the shooting of LaTarica Stripling. She got killed in presence of her children on April 25. Police arrested her husband, Michael Mckinnie, for her death.
A T-shirt Event
The people who are shot dead in homicide in Memphis are honored by way of offering a t-shirt to their family members. More than three thousand people have signed up for this event. They get commemorative T-shirts with a photo of the dead person printed on it. This is one of the ways to remember them.
https://memphiscrime.org/ is a website of the Memphis Shellby Commission. It has started a 5-year plan “Safe Community Operation” that aims at lowering the rate of violent crime in this city.
What is the expected outcome of this event?
Every person who dies due to homicide or any violent crime in Memphis is provided with a T-shirt. This is the largest event held in Memphis. This is an attempt to assist people in coping up with the trauma.
After seeing various honoring T-shirts of people who got killed due to gun violence, it is expected that city leader will work to obtain answers for the violent act from their families quickly. This will help in putting a stop in occurrence of these crimes and thereby reducing the overall crime rate.
What is the cause of increasing incidences of homicide in Memphis?
The state of Tennessee has reported one of the largest numbers of black homicide victims in the country. Both violence and poverty are interconnected in Memphis.
As per the data collected, it shows that poverty lies mainly in black neighborhoods in Memphis. This condition isn’t improving. In addition to it, 25% of the overall Memphis population lies below the poverty line that includes 39% of children.
Conclusion
Though the rate of Homicides has increased, a decline in the percentage of violent crime is noted at the same time. Poverty is seen to be the major cause behind it. Government efforts to curb poverty among people would greatly help in bringing down homicide cases in Memphis city.
