This Is the American City Where Homicides Are Soaring

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 14, 8:30AM EDT

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This Is the American City Where Homicides Are Soaring — © Thinkstock

Homicides in America have been on the rise. According to a Guardian headline: “US records largest annual increase in murders in six decades.” This trend has happened in large and small cities, by region and by state. Experts say there are several reasons. American society has been shaken by the pandemic, and gun purchases are at an all-time high, according to FBI statistics.
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In metropolitan areas across the country, the increase in homicides last year eclipsed the national surge — in some cases, many times. Using metro area-level data from the FBI, 24/7 Wall St. identified the major U.S. city where homicide is soaring.

Among the cities we considered, the number of murder cases surged anywhere from 40% to 500% between 2019 and 2020. Though these cities span the country, the largest concentration is in midwestern states.
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It is important to note that while murders are rising rapidly in many metro areas, many of these cities are still relatively safe. In fact, most of these cities have a lower overall violent crime rate than the national rate of 388 incidents per 100,000 people.

The city where homicides are rising the most is Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Here are the details:

Year-over-year increase in homicide: +500.0% (+10)
2020 homicide rate: 4.4 per 100,000 people (12 total murders)
2019 homicide rate: 0.7 per 100,000 people (two total murders)
2020 violent crime rate: 252 per 100,000 people (691 total)
Population: 274,312

This surge in homicides in Cedar Rapids is by far the highest increase of any large U.S. metro area. The 12 murders reported in the metro area in 2020 were up from two in the previous year. Despite the worst-in-the-nation increase, the local murder rate of 4.4 for every 100,000 people remains well below the U.S. rate of 6.5 per 100,000 people.

Most homicide victims in the city last year were under age 30. City police officials attribute the spike, in part, to the pandemic, which sent unemployment soaring and exacerbated certain stressors that are tied to violent crime. Joblessness in the Cedar Rapids metro area more than doubled from 3.0% in 2019 to 6.2% in 2020.

In identifying the city where homicide is soaring, 24/7 Wall St. ranked the metro areas on the percentage increase in total murders from 2019 to 2020. In the case of a tie, the metro area with the largest percentage increase in the murder rate was ranked higher. Only those metro areas with populations of at least 250,000 residents and at least one homicide in 2019 were considered.

Click here to see all 50 cities where homicides are surging.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.