False Assumption Registry

BLM Not Responsible for Homicide Spike

False Assumption: The spike in homicides in 2020 occurred started before George Floyd's death on May 25.

Summaries Written by FARAgent (AI) on February 10, 2026 · Pending Verification

In 2020 and after, many journalists, academics, and officials argued that the murder spike was not a Black Lives Matter story at all. The standard explanation was that homicide had already been rising before George Floyd was killed on May 25, and that the real drivers were the pandemic, school closures, economic stress, court shutdowns, and general social dislocation. That was not an absurd view at the time. Annual crime data were crude, the country was in chaos, and many reasonable people were wary of blaming protests against police abuse for a rise in violence that seemed to be hitting many cities at once.

The trouble came when that broad intuition was presented with more precision than the evidence could bear. A notable example was The New York Times's 2025 graphic suggesting 2020 homicides were already climbing before Floyd's death, using annual totals in a way that made the timing look earlier and cleaner than it was. Critics pointed out that the chart's placement of May 25, and its use of year-level data, blurred the obvious question of when the surge actually accelerated. More detailed city-level timelines had long shown many of the sharpest jumps arriving in the weeks after Floyd's killing, amid riots, anti-police agitation, and what many called a police pullback or "de-policing."

The debate now is not fully settled, but growing evidence suggests the old claim was too confident. A substantial body of analysts now argues that pandemic stress and institutional disruption mattered, but that they do not by themselves explain the timing, scale, and concentration of the 2020 homicide surge. Increasingly, the dispute is less about whether post-Floyd disorder played some role, and more about how large that role was. The earlier line, that the spike "started before George Floyd's death" and therefore could not meaningfully be tied to the aftermath, is increasingly recognized as a shaky way to describe a very consequential sequence of events.

Status: A small but growing and influential group of experts think this was false
People Involved
  • Steve Sailer spent years documenting homicide trends as an independent journalist and analyst who noticed patterns others preferred to ignore. On May 26 2025 he emailed The New York Times with CDC weekly mortality data that directly contradicted their newly published graph marking the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death. The data showed black homicide victimizations rising sharply after May 25 2020 rather than before it. His earlier articles in Taki's Magazine had already warned that the post-Ferguson pullback in policing was producing lethal results in cities like Baltimore. Those warnings gained new force when the newspaper quietly altered its graph online without any admission in the accompanying text. [1][3][4]
  • Steven Rich, Tim Arango, and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs were the New York Times reporters who published the May 24 2025 article featuring the misleading graph. They presented annual homicide totals plotted as if they all occurred on January 1 which placed the vertical line for Floyd's death after the apparent surge. The piece reached the paper's 11 million subscribers and circulated widely on social media before any correction. Their reporting reflected the conventional wisdom that the homicide spike had predated the racial reckoning and therefore could not be blamed on it. The graph remained uncorrected in the print record even after external criticism. [1][4]
  • Daniel Wood designed the graphics for the New York Times article and chose to plot the entire year's homicide total at the start of 2020. This choice created the visual impression that the 29 percent surge had already happened before George Floyd died. The vertical line marking May 25 2020 was placed between the 2020 and 2021 data points. Wood's work embodied the paper's institutional confidence that yearly aggregates told the full story. The subsequent quiet edit to the online version never addressed the original design decision. [1]
  • Peter Moskos is a criminologist who pointed out that pandemic stress could not explain the 2020 homicide surge because murders did not rise in hard-hit cities such as Baltimore and Newark. His analysis challenged the dominant narrative that external shocks alone drove the violence. Moskos noted that the timing aligned more closely with protests and depolicing than with coronavirus case counts. His work remained a dissenting voice amid broader media emphasis on economic and health explanations. The data he highlighted later proved consistent with weekly CDC figures. [9]
  • Hans Bader analyzed the surge at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and identified reduced incarceration, shrunken police manpower, and sustained anti-police protests as the primary drivers. His report catalogued the Ferguson Effect in multiple cities where enforcement retreated after high-profile incidents. Bader argued that these policy shifts produced measurable increases in black homicide victimization. His conclusions clashed with the prevailing view that the spike was unrelated to Black Lives Matter activism. Subsequent national data supported the pattern he described. [9]
  • Thomas Hargrove founded the Murder Accountability Project and argued that protests and depolicing after George Floyd's death caused a 30 percent homicide surge. His organization had long tracked unsolved killings and clearance rates in urban areas. Hargrove emphasized that low clearance rates in black communities encouraged retaliatory violence. His assessment directly contradicted claims that the surge predated Floyd. CDC weekly data later aligned with the timing he identified. [11]
▶ Supporting Quotes (31)
“So, I sent the following email to the New York Times calling for a correction on May 26, 2025.”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“By Steven Rich, Tim Arango, and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Graphics by Daniel Wood May 24, 2025”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“Your graphic artist made the obvious mistake of creating a line graph that attributes all homicides of 2020 to January 1, 2020, so the vertical dashed line for Floyd's death follows rather than precedes the big surge.”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“on a topic I wrote about far more lucidly in Taki’s Magazine last week?”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
““So, I sent the following email to the New York Times calling for a correction on May 26, 2025.””— BLM Not Responsible for Homicide Spike
““By Steven Rich, Tim Arango, and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Graphics by Daniel Wood May 24, 2025””— BLM Not Responsible for Homicide Spike
“Writing in The Wall Street Journal on 2020’s crime surge in July, the criminologist Peter Moskos said, “Were the stress and economic hardship of the pandemic a factor? Perhaps in some places. But Covid struck hard in Baltimore and Newark, for example, and the murder rate in those cities didn’t increase.”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“The reason for 2020’s extra deaths, as Bader said, was that, “incarceration rates fell, police manpower shrank, and anti-police protests spread across the nation.””— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“A couple of years ago, Travis Campbell, an economics professor at Southern Oregon University, published a study showing that from 2014 to 2019, Black Lives Matter protests “meaningfully reduced” police homicides. … “Total reported homicides increased by 12.89 percent over the five years following B.L.M. protests, which is consistent with rising overall crime,” he wrote. That increase, he added, amounted to “over 3,000 homicides.””— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“In the New York Times opinion section, regular columnist Tom Edsall, a public-spirited old-timer, quietly drops some bombshells in a manner intended to bore sensitive subscribers into not noticing that Black Lives Matter has gotten more black lives murdered than saved.”— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“In a July 2021 article, “Police-Involved Deaths and the Impact on Homicide Rates in the Post-Ferguson Era,” Tyler J. Lane, a senior research fellow at Monash University in Australia, found patterns similar to those in the Campbell paper. On the basis of crime data from 44 major cities from 2011 to 2019, Lane found a 26.1 percent increase in civilian homicides, suggesting that “protested police-involved deaths led to an increase in homicides and other violence due to the distrust fomented within the very communities police are meant to protect.””— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“Thomas Hargrove, the founder of the nonprofit Murder Accountability Project, which tracks unsolved homicides, made a detailed argument for a strong link between the protests, depolicing and the increase in homicides in an August 2022 essay, “Murder and the Legacy of the Police Killing of George Floyd”: “What is beyond debate is that homicides increased dramatically in 2020. Murders surged nearly 30 percent, the largest one-year increase on record.””— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
““If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white,” she said.”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“the final report of the landmark review into the treatment of black people by the criminal justice system. The report, commissioned by Downing Street and carried out by the Labour MP David Lammy”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“Even poor Keir Starmer, the Labour prime minister, thinks this is nuts”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“In the summer of 1957, a Baptist preacher in the segregated South issued a series of fiery sermons denouncing the laziness, promiscuity, criminality, drunkenness, slovenliness, and ignorance of Negroes. He shouted from the pulpit about the difference between doing a “real job” and doing “a Negro job”. Instead of practicing the intelligent saving habits of white men, “Negroes too often buy what they want and beg for what they need.” He suggested that blacks were “thinking about sex” every time they walked down the street. They were too violent. They didn’t bathe properly. And their music, which was invading homes all over America, ‘plunges men’s minds into degrading and immoral depths’.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“The code of the streets is actually a cultural adaptation to a profound lack of faith in the police and the judicial system. The police are most often seen as representing the dominant white society and not caring to protect inner-city residents.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“America’s ruling class decided that what African Americans needed most was less rule of law.”— Homicides Way Down
“As I reported in 2019:”— The racial reckoning murder spree is over
“Something that almost nobody knows other than my readers is that blacks became, on average, strikingly worse drivers per capita after Ferguson in 2014 unleashed the ironically lethal Black Lives Era.”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
““We have three types of homicide”, I was told by the chief of detectives in a larger southern city. “If a n*gger kills a white man, that’s murder. If a white man kills a n*gger, that’s justifiable homicide. And if a n*gger kills another n*gger, that’s one less n*gger”.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“I certainly could not discover any principled reason for not becoming a criminal, and it is not my poor, God-fearing parents who are to be indicted for the lack but this society.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“In his 1920 pamphlet Crime in the America and the Police, Raymond B. Fosdick reports the following:”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
““As I may have mentioned once or twice over the past year, the media-declared ‘racial reckoning’ following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, has been getting a lot of blacks murdered by other blacks.””— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“While they ostentatiously display their commitment to racial justice by chastising anybody who talks honestly about the causes of racial disparities in the West, he writes incisively about the problems that plague black America.”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
““As I may have mentioned once or twice over the past year, the media-declared ‘racial reckoning’ following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, has been getting a lot of blacks murdered by other blacks.”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“For us here in Baltimore, we know that Freddie Gray’s legacy lives on. His life was lost and cut way too sure for foolishness. But now what he has done is sparked years of reforms and efforts that would have never happened... Baltimore would never have had a police department can consent decree.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“You can’t just think that you’re going to police your way out of these problems... we’re also going to expand the great work that we have here in Baltimore about safe street violence interrupters where we take people who are used to be involved in shooting people. And now, they’re interceding in that violence.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“the state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, has said she’s already stopped prosecuting certain “low-level offenses” like drug possession and prostitution, for example. Do you agree with that decision? SCOTT: Well, what I’ll say is this, the state’s attorney and I share the opinion that people who have substance abuse, people that are in sex work aren’t inherently criminal.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“"Not only is this the first, this is the first — kind of with a cymbal crash," Tom Johansmeyer, head of PCS, tells Axios.”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
“"It's not just happening in one city or state — it's all over the country," Loretta L. Worters of the Triple-I tells Axios.”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
Organizations Involved

The New York Times promoted the assumption through its May 24 2025 article and graph that placed the vertical line for George Floyd's death after the plotted 2020 homicide totals. The paper reached 11 million subscribers with a visual that implied the surge had already occurred before the racial reckoning. It quietly corrected the online graph after receiving CDC data from outside critics but issued no textual admission or editor's note. The organization continued to frame police killings as the central story while downplaying the larger increase in civilian homicides. Its coverage helped cement the narrative that Black Lives Matter activism could not be responsible for the violence. [1][3][4]

Black Lives Matter organized protests that turned into riots in the weeks after George Floyd's death and sent 127 million emails while coordinating 1.2 million actions. The movement had emerged after Ferguson in 2014 and consistently pushed for reduced police presence in black communities. Its activists were involved in 95 percent of the tracked riots according to insurance industry tallies. The organization framed policing itself as the primary threat to black lives. The subsequent nationwide homicide increase coincided with the depolicing that followed its campaigns. [9]

Baltimore Police Department operated under a federal consent decree sparked by the Freddie Gray case and enforced reforms that included reduced aggressive enforcement. Officials there embraced public health approaches to violence and non-prosecution of low-level offenses. The department's pullback contributed to homicide rates that exceeded even the crack-era peaks of the early 1990s. Its experience became a national case study in the effects of diminished policing. Homicides later declined only after the intensity of anti-police activism faded. [15][21]

Property Claim Services tracked insurance claims from civil disorder since 1950 and ultimately classified the 2020 events as the first multi-state catastrophe exceeding one billion dollars in insured losses. The organization had previously recorded single-city events such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots at 775 million dollars. Its data showed the 2020 unrest spread across twenty states with arson, vandalism, and looting. The scale surpassed all prior records and reflected the nationwide reach of the protests. Officials at the unit described it as an unprecedented event. [22]

▶ Supporting Quotes (25)
“So, the New York Times then responded by slightly correcting the graph in its online archives: Well, that’s still not pointing out to its 11 million paying subscribers what happened in 2020, but at least it’s no longer actively deluding them. But the newspaper has not issued a Correction.”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“according to CDC WONDER mortality data, most of the increase happened in the weeks immediately after his death during the time of the media-celebrated "mostly peaceful protests" as the police retreated to the donut shop.”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“What’s wrong with this fifth anniversary George Floyd celebration graph in the New York Times”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“But the New York Times is not going to tell you that, even after 5 years of BLM induced mayhem.”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“police departments around the country, especially in the aftermath of Mr. Floyd’s murder”— Since George Floyd’s Murder, Police Killings Keep Rising, Not Falling
“Ferguson unleashed the catastrophic Black Lives Matter movement”— FBI: Homicides up over 40% since Ferguson
“The Black Lives Matter organizations, founded and led by Marxists who were recruited and trained by older communists to dismantle American society, organized the protests that sometimes turned into riots. ... BLM activists were involved in 95 percent of the 633 incidents that Princeton’s Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project coded as “riots” for which the identity of the rioter was known.”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“Except that the Times and the others didn’t see fit to include in their reports the words Black Lives Matter or the organization’s main battle cry of “Defund the Police.””— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“In the New York Times opinion section, regular columnist Tom Edsall, a public-spirited old-timer, quietly drops some bombshells in a manner intended to bore sensitive subscribers into not noticing that Black Lives Matter has gotten more black lives murdered than saved.”— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“Notice that they put the vertical line denoting the effect of the beginning of the George Floyd racial reckoning on May 25, 2020 on homicides in the wrong year: between 2020 and 2021 when it should, of course, be between 2019 and 2020? This makes it look like there was a huge surge in homicides before George Floyd when, in truth, the huge surge was after.”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“MoJ analysis for England and Wales released ahead of David Lammy’s review into treatment of black people by criminal justice system”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“the Sentencing Council in the U.K., a recently created QUANGO delegated immense power, has announced a new “two-tier” system of sentencing to punish whites harder than nonwhites”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“Massive surges in anti-police activism led to police withdrawal, leading to fewer interruptions of confrontations, leading to surges in homicide.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“The political influence of prison unions is a factor in this over-incarceration.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“the emergence of Black Lives Matter at Ferguson in August 2014”— Homicides Way Down
“nobody cares about Black Lives Matter anymore, so black lives are being spared.”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“Why did Mr. Kneeland try to flee, and why did he have a gun in the car?”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“Before Black Lives Matter, whites usually used to die the most per capita in traffic accidents... after Ferguson in 2014 unleashed the ironically lethal Black Lives Era.”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“The Asian death rate is up 8% since 2014 (back when Asians and Pacific Islanders were lumped together in CDC mortality stats up through 2017)”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“The former slave States of the American South, under the Jim Crow system, systematically failed to provide that level of public order in the segregated communities inhabited by former slaves and their descendants. They were certainly not trusted by them to do so.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“But medieval Europe lacked a state with the capacity to impose trusted public order. The contemporary American state, by contrast, lacks the informed willingness to do so within African-American communities.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“the media-declared ‘racial reckoning’ following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“we would never have gotten local of our police department if our Freddie didn’t die. So we know that his name lives on... Maryland before this verdict came back became the first state repeal the law enforcement officers’ bill of rights.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“A company called Property Claim Services (PCS) has tracked insurance claims related to civil disorder since 1950. It classifies anything over $25 million in insured losses as a "catastrophe," and reports that the unrest this year (from May 26 to June 8) will cost the insurance industry far more than any prior one.”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
“That number could be as much as $2 billion and possibly more, according to the Insurance Information Institute (or Triple-I), which compiles information from PCS as well as other firms that report such statistics.”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
The Foundation

Proponents of the assumption pointed to early 2020 homicide rates that were already slightly above 2019 levels and continued widening in March and April before George Floyd's death on May 25. They observed that annual aggregates showed a 29 percent national increase for the full year and argued this surge had begun prior to the protests. Pandemic-related stresses such as job losses, home isolation, and increased firearm carrying seemed like plausible drivers especially in a year of unprecedented lockdowns. A reasonable observer reviewing FBI preliminary data and media reports at the time could conclude that external shocks unrelated to policing explained the violence. The kernel of truth lay in the modest pre-May increases which were real even if they were dwarfed by the summer explosion. [10][23][26]

The New York Times graph plotted the entire 2020 homicide total as if it occurred on January 1 which created the visual impression that the surge predated Floyd. This annual aggregation method had long been standard for yearly trend analysis and therefore appeared credible to readers. The vertical line marking May 25 2020 was placed between the 2020 and 2021 data points reinforcing the idea that the racial reckoning followed rather than contributed to the violence. CDC weekly mortality data later revealed that black homicide victimizations rose sharply only after that date. The graph's design became the most widely circulated piece of evidence for the assumption until its quiet correction. [1][3][4]

Travis Campbell's study claimed that Black Lives Matter protests had reduced police homicides by roughly 200 between 2014 and 2019 while acknowledging more than 3,000 additional civilian homicides. The paper compared protest cities with non-protest cities and seemed methodologically sound to those who viewed police killings as a distinct and more urgent problem. It generated the sub-belief that the lives saved from law enforcement were more valuable than the additional murders because the latter were not directly attributable to the movement. Thomas B. Edsall amplified this framing in his New York Times column which highlighted reduced police killings while downplaying the net increase in deaths. Subsequent analysis showed the civilian homicide toll far outweighed any reduction in police shootings. [11]

Growing evidence suggests the assumption was flawed because CDC weekly data showed the homicide surge accelerating precisely in the weeks after Floyd's death rather than before it. International comparisons revealed homicide declines in other countries facing similar pandemic conditions. City-level studies such as the one in Denver documented a 54 percent spike only after the protests and linked it to eroded trust and depolicing. An influential minority of analysts had warned of this pattern since Ferguson yet their concerns were largely dismissed at the time. The debate is not fully settled but the weight of monthly and weekly figures increasingly challenges the pre-Floyd narrative. [9][10][11]

▶ Supporting Quotes (26)
“Your graph makes it look like the huge surge in homicides (about 29% across all races) mostly happened _before_ Floyd's demise when, in reality, according to CDC WONDER mortality data, most of the increase happened in the weeks immediately after his death”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“the black-on-black homicide surge is finally abating, but the increase in black car crash death rate remained elevated at least through late 2024.”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“Notice that they put the vertical line denoting the effect of the beginning of the George Floyd racial reckoning on May 25, 2020 on homicides in the wrong year: between 2020 and 2021 when it should, of course, be between 2019 and 2020?”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
““Your graph makes it look like the huge surge in homicides (about 29% across all races) mostly happened _before_ Floyd's demise when, in reality, according to CDC WONDER mortality data, most of the increase happened in the weeks immediately after his death””— BLM Not Responsible for Homicide Spike
“police departments around the country, especially in the aftermath of Mr. Floyd’s murder, have known about the dangers of asphyxiation when keeping a suspect in the prone position.”— Since George Floyd’s Murder, Police Killings Keep Rising, Not Falling
“Homicides up over 40% since Ferguson”— FBI: Homicides up over 40% since Ferguson
““various pandemic stresses”—in the words of the Times, which also included for good measure, “increased firearm carrying.” ... “More people were at home, creating different social patterns. More people lost jobs and might have turned to dangerous and criminal behavior to make ends meet. People were stressed and unhappy,” The Atlantic said.”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“Homicide rates early in 2020 were slightly above 2019 levels—and the gap widened in March and April, before the murder of George Floyd in May—but violence truly exploded in the summer (Figure 2).”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“we find some evidence that suggests that the nation’s political cultures played a role, with homicide increases in GOP-leaning counties tending to be smaller than those in Democratic-leaning counties ... there is no statistically significant relationship between the growth in the homicide rate and either the number of Covid-19 deaths or the number of guns sold per capita.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“In “Black Lives Matter’s Effect on Police Lethal Use of Force,” Campbell wrote: B.L.M. protests were responsible for approximately 200 fewer people killed by the police from 2014 to 2019. ... “Total reported homicides increased by 12.89 percent over the five years following B.L.M. protests, which is consistent with rising overall crime,” he wrote. That increase, he added, amounted to “over 3,000 homicides.””— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“What’s wrong with this fifth anniversary George Floyd celebration graph in the New York Times on a topic I wrote about far more lucidly in Taki’s Magazine last week? Notice that they put the vertical line denoting the effect of the beginning of the George Floyd racial reckoning on May 25, 2020 on homicides in the wrong year: between 2020 and 2021 when it should, of course, be between 2019 and 2020?”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“About nine in every 10,000 young black people in the general population were locked up in young offender institutions, secure training centres or secure children’s homes in England and Wales in 2015-16. This compared with one in every 10,000 of those from white ethnic backgrounds”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“Urban anthropologist Elijah Anderson analysed inner city youth attitudes as a fluctuating and overlapping tension between street (bravado) and decent (dignity) outlooks and behaviours, with the power and appeal of street culture coming from: ... the profound sense of alienation from mainstream society and its institutions felt by many poor inner-city black people, particularly the young. The code of the streets is actually a cultural adaptation to a profound lack of faith in the police and the judicial system.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“The ongoing failure to impose sufficient public order—as evidenced by dramatically lower homicide clearance rates within African-American communities—not only allows the highly violent to be more violent, it increases the incentive to be violent, both as retaliation and as pre-emption.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“In accordance with the tendency for social stereotypes to be (relatively) accurate, a high-violence stereotype became established regarding descendants of American slaves.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“what African Americans needed most was less rule of law.”— Homicides Way Down
“how bad the Ferguson Effect was in Baltimore, beginning with the Freddie Gray riot April 27, 2015.”— The racial reckoning murder spree is over
“the cops stopped pulling over black bad drivers a few days after May 25, 2020.”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“the anti-police drove up death rates”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“Before Black Lives Matter, whites usually used to die the most per capita in traffic accidents (of course, whites drive the most per capita too) among the four major races/ethnicities.”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“Stigmatisation is about how people are perceived: stigma is negative ascription of others. If some group is seen as inherently violent... and are so stigmatised that bad outcomes are acceptable, are seen as “natural”, even preferred; their communities are then under-provided with, or even starved of, policing services. This results in much higher crime levels, which then supports stigmatisation, creating stereotypes which are accurate, self-reinforcing and, to that scale, the result of stigmatisation—stigmatisation that obscures, even hides, the reality of under-policing.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“The sort of reasons that—overwhelmingly male—folk kill each other for in medieval court records are much the same reasons as—overwhelmingly male—folk kill each other in contemporary African-American urban communities.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
““IQ is off-limits today because people who are verbally facile, such as journalists and academics, tend to assume that reality is largely constructed from words. Thus, if we would all just stop writing about unpleasant facts, they would disappear.””— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
““For instance, the fact that African-Americans seem to have a particular tendency toward criminal violence, for whatever combinations of reasons of nature and nurture, suggests that they need law enforcement more, not less, than do the rest of us.””— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“In 2003, the city had 278 homicides and arrested over 110,000. In 2011, we had 197 and arrested 60,000 people. It’s never been about how many in Baltimore, it’s about who and for what.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“eclipsing the record set in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the police officers who brutalized Rodney King... PCS, a unit of Verisk Analytics, won't reveal an exact dollar figure from this year's violence because it wants to sell that data to clients. But it says the insured losses far outstrip the prior record of $775 million from the 1992 Rodney King demonstrations.”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
How It Spread

The assumption spread rapidly through The New York Times which published the misleading graph on May 24 2025 and reached 11 million subscribers before any correction. The visual was shared widely on social media where it reinforced the idea that the homicide spike had nothing to do with the protests that followed Floyd's death. Mainstream outlets including NPR and Brookings emphasized pandemic explanations while omitting any mention of Black Lives Matter or defund-the-police rhetoric. This framing echoed the earlier Ferguson Effect debate but shifted blame away from depolicing. The narrative gained further traction through academic papers and columns that highlighted reductions in police killings without addressing the larger civilian toll. [1][9][10]

Black Lives Matter activism after 2014 and especially after Floyd's death created intense social pressure on police departments to reduce proactive enforcement. Protests in more than 140 cities were often described as mostly peaceful even as insurance losses mounted. Media coverage focused on grievances against law enforcement rather than the subsequent withdrawal of police from high-risk areas. Elite consensus formed quickly around the idea that African Americans needed less rule of law to escape systemic bias. Dissenting voices faced social and professional costs for questioning the new conventional wisdom. [5][13][19]

The Ferguson Effect had already been documented in cities like Baltimore after the 2015 Freddie Gray riots where homicides rose sharply following police pullbacks. This precedent was memory-holed during the 2020 coverage which preferred to treat the surge as a novel pandemic phenomenon. The New York Times opinion section published columns citing studies that emphasized benefits of reduced police killings while minimizing the homicide increases. Public opinion in many progressive circles accepted the narrative that policing itself caused violence. The assumption persisted in official commentary long after weekly CDC data contradicted it. [15][11]

▶ Supporting Quotes (25)
“You are being widely criticized on social media for a graph appearing in your May 24, 2025 article”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“This makes it look like there was a huge surge in homicides before George Floyd when, in truth, the huge surge was after.”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
““You are being widely criticized on social media for a graph appearing in your May 24, 2025 article””— BLM Not Responsible for Homicide Spike
“despite the largest racial justice protests since the civil rights era of the 1960s”— Since George Floyd’s Murder, Police Killings Keep Rising, Not Falling
“The Establishment went nuts over George Floyd’s death in late May 2020 and, in effect, egged on blacks to carry their illegal handguns when they went out to party because they shouldn’t have to fear the police catching them, which led to a huge increase in black-on-black shootings.”— FBI: Homicides up over 40% since Ferguson
“Their articles instead hypothesized that the extra deaths were due to “various pandemic stresses”—in the words of the Times ... The articles did mention what the Times misleadingly referred to as “increased distrust between the police and the public,””— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“Much attention has been paid to whether this increase was driven by the pandemic and lockdowns or—in an echo of the “Ferguson effect” debate from half a decade ago—by the summer protests and unrest, which could have led to depolicing.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“amid the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests and riots surrounding the death of George Floyd ... or—in an echo of the “Ferguson effect” debate from half a decade ago—by the summer protests and unrest, which could have led to depolicing.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“Other scholars found additional benefits deriving from the protests. “Nationwide, Black Lives Matter protests occurred concurrently with sharp increases in public attention to components of the B.L.M. agenda,” Zackary Dunivin, Harry Yaojun Yan and Fabio Rojas, all at Indiana University, and Jelani Ince, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington, wrote in a March 2022 paper, “Black Lives Matter Protests Shift Public Discourse.””— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“What’s wrong with this fifth anniversary George Floyd celebration graph in the New York Times”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“Young black people nine times more likely to be jailed than young white people – report”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“this has set off a giant Conversation among the Nice People about how something must be done about social media spreading misogyny”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“Massive surges in anti-police activism led to police withdrawal, leading to fewer interruptions of confrontations, leading to surges in homicide.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“a substantial proportion of Martin Luther King’s speeches and writings were directed against moral failings within African-American communities—something that contemporary academe memory-holes.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“America’s ruling class decided that what African Americans needed most was less rule of law.”— Homicides Way Down
“beginning with the Freddie Gray riot April 27, 2015.”— The racial reckoning murder spree is over
“the young black male traffic fatality rate shot up during the George Floyd racial reckoning for reasons that I, but few other pundits, understand: the cops stopped pulling over black bad drivers a few days after May 25, 2020.”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“Ferguson in 2014 unleashed the ironically lethal Black Lives Era.”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“This is as explicit a statement of abandonment—or, at least chronic under-provision—of public order for African-American communities as one can imagine. This persisting history which has led to, completely understandable, levels of what sociologists call legal cynicism.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“One of the sins I was accused of before getting fired was liking a tweet by Steve Sailer.”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“the media-declared ‘racial reckoning’ following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“Freddie Gray’s legacy lives on... sparked years of reforms and efforts that would have never happened... We have to treat violence and crime like a public health issue.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“The protests that took place in 140 U.S. cities this spring were mostly peaceful, but the arson, vandalism and looting that did occur will result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
“Homicide rates early in 2020 were slightly above 2019 levels—and the gap widened in March and April, before the murder of George Floyd in May”— Why did U.S. homicides spike in 2020 and then decline rapidly?
“Homicides only began to increase rapidly in mid-April when cell phone data show that Americans started leaving home more often”— Massive 1-Year Rise In Homicide Rates Collided With The Pandemic In 2020
Resulting Policies

Police departments across the country enacted new training protocols and accountability measures after the 2020 protests based on the belief that poor oversight had caused fatal encounters like George Floyd's. These changes included restrictions on prone restraints and increased scrutiny of use-of-force incidents. Many cities reduced proactive policing in black neighborhoods to avoid further controversy. The policies were justified as necessary reforms that would ultimately save black lives by lowering tensions with law enforcement. Homicide rates rose immediately in cities that adopted the most aggressive versions of these changes. [5][11]

In Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby implemented a federal consent decree, repealed aspects of the law enforcement bill of rights, and launched a Comprehensive Violence Reduction Framework that treated gun violence as a public health issue. They stopped prosecuting low-level offenses such as drug possession and prostitution and planned to divert 911 calls to mental health professionals instead of police. These steps were presented as evidence-based alternatives to traditional policing. The city experienced homicide levels worse than the crack era before rates later declined. Similar consent decrees and non-prosecution policies spread to other jurisdictions. [21]

The British Ministry of Justice released statistics showing young black people were nine times more likely to be jailed than young white people which was interpreted as proof of systemic bias. Prime Minister Theresa May and MP David Lammy commissioned reviews that called for action to address ethnic disparities from arrest through sentencing. The Sentencing Council proposed guidelines that would punish white offenders more harshly to reduce per capita disparities. These policies rested on the assumption that unequal outcomes reflected unequal treatment rather than unequal offending rates. The approach drew criticism for undermining deterrence in communities with higher violence. [12]

▶ Supporting Quotes (12)
“a wave of measures to improve training and hold officers more accountable”— Since George Floyd’s Murder, Police Killings Keep Rising, Not Falling
““The number of people in America’s prisons and jails dropped by 14% from 2019 to mid-2020,” writes Bader. ... rogue prosecutors elected with far-leftist money are releasing criminals from prison or not prosecuting them in the first place”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“The Ferguson Effect from 2014 onward was more localized and more spread out in time than the much more national and immediate Floyd Effect. So it’s easy to see that where BLM did score major triumphs over the local police, such as in the St. Louis area, Baltimore, Chicago, and Milwaukee, homicides soon shot up in the black community.”— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“An interim report by Lammy last November confirmed that people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds were more likely to be jailed for some crimes than those who were white.”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“a new “two-tier” system of sentencing to punish whites harder than nonwhites because nonwhites, per capita, commit more crimes.”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“The most effective way police reduce homicide rates is by being present to interrupt and defuse confrontations. Police who are sufficiently respected are directed towards such confrontations.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“the cops stopped pulling over black bad drivers a few days after May 25, 2020.”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“the return of good times and the anti-police drove up death rates”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“The former slave States of the American South, under the Jim Crow system, systematically failed to provide that level of public order in the segregated communities inhabited by former slaves and their descendants.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“the media-declared ‘racial reckoning’ following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, has been getting a lot of blacks murdered by other blacks.”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“Baltimore would never have had a police department can consent decree... I created the Mayor’s Office and Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and then embarking upon Baltimore’s first of its kind Comprehensive Violence Reduction Framework Plan.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“the state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, has said she’s already stopped prosecuting certain “low-level offenses” like drug possession and prostitution... we’re going to be pushing towards a world class 911 diversion program where we’re going to be sending healthcare professionals and mental health professionals out.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
Harm Caused

The assumption concealed the scale of the post-Floyd homicide surge that added roughly 5,000 extra murders in 2020 alone with a majority of victims being African American. Black homicide victimization rose 34 percent that year producing eight additional deaths per 100,000 people in a population already facing elevated baseline rates. CDC data showed the increase persisted into 2021 and 2022 before declining only after anti-police activism waned. Black motor vehicle fatalities also jumped 36 percent in the second half of 2020 compared with a 9 percent rise for other groups. These deaths continued at elevated levels through 2024. [9][10][19]

Insurance losses from the 2020 unrest reached between one and two billion dollars across twenty states making it the most expensive civil disorder event in American history. Arson, vandalism, and looting damaged businesses and strained insurers in ways that exceeded the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The unrest affected cities from coast to coast rather than remaining confined to single metropolitan areas. Many affected neighborhoods experienced long-term economic decline after the destruction. The human cost extended beyond the insured losses to include thousands of additional violent crimes. [22]

The decade following Ferguson produced an estimated 11,000 excess murders according to some analyses with black victims comprising the large majority. Homicide clearance rates in African American communities remained dramatically lower than the national average which encouraged cycles of retaliatory violence. Young black male suicide rates and traffic fatalities also rose during periods of reduced policing. These secondary effects compounded the direct toll of the homicide spike. The assumption that the violence was unrelated to depolicing delayed recognition of these patterns. [8][16][18]

▶ Supporting Quotes (35)
“did the elite embrace of Black Lives Matter after George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020 get a massive number more African-American lives killed by increased homicides (and by increased motor vehicle accidents)?”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“This would seem to be one of the most important findings of American social science of this era, but the NYT has been extremely weak at reporting on it over the last five years.”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“The triumph of Black Lives Matter got countless black lives murdered and splattered on the asphalt by lying about the death toll.”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“Here are the actual CDC figures for black homicide victimizations and black traffic fatalities by week from 2018 to 2013:”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
““did the elite embrace of Black Lives Matter after George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020 get a massive number more African-American lives killed by increased homicides (and by increased motor vehicle accidents)?””— BLM Not Responsible for Homicide Spike
“Last year, the police killed at least 1,226 people, an 18 percent increase over 2019... Black Americans still die in disproportionate numbers... Frank Tyson, an unarmed Black man in Canton, Ohio, who uttered Mr. Floyd’s famous words last year before dying when he was wrestled to the ground”— Since George Floyd’s Murder, Police Killings Keep Rising, Not Falling
“the FBI’s count of the total number of homicides in the U.S. was 41.9% higher in 2023 than in 2014, the year when Ferguson unleashed the catastrophic Black Lives Matter movement, and up 43.8% in the CDC data. (The US population was up around 5% over the same period.)”— FBI: Homicides up over 40% since Ferguson
“That is an extra 5,000 Americans killed in 2020, a majority of them African-Americans, as they make up 53 percent of homicide victims.”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“there were between 1,000 and 6,000 extra murders between 2014 and 2019 in areas of the country where BLM had protested. That is called “the Ferguson effect.” ... this brings the number of extra Americans murdered since 2014 ... to perhaps more than 11,000.”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“In 2020, ... America’s homicide rate increased by an astonishing 30%... If the homicide rate had remained the same between 2019 and 2020, more than 5,000 additional Americans would be alive today.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“Proportionally, homicide rates rose by about 34% for black Americans ... this translated into 8 additional black deaths for every 100,000 population—an increase similar to the total homicide rate for the country as a whole.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“The demographic groups that started out with the highest homicide rates also saw the biggest surges ... 8 additional black deaths for every 100,000 population.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
““Total reported homicides increased by 12.89 percent over the five years following B.L.M. protests, which is consistent with rising overall crime,” he wrote. That increase, he added, amounted to “over 3,000 homicides.” ... Data on all homicide deaths compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a significant increase in Black death rates from 2014 to 2019, while the death rate among white people remained virtually unchanged. In 2012 and 2013, the Black homicide rate averaged 19.5 for every 100,000 people. From 2014 to 2019, the average rose to 22.7.”— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“C.D.C. data shows that the national weekly homicide average was 410 in the 10 weeks before Floyd’s death and 523 for the 10 weeks afterward, when protests occurred in cities across the nation. ... “What is beyond debate is that homicides increased dramatically in 2020. Murders surged nearly 30 percent, the largest one-year increase on record.””— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“Wow, it’s almost as if the triumph of Black Lives Matter on May 25, 2020 subsequently got a whole lot of Black Lives Murdered and Splattered on the Asphalt.”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“what could make more sense than reducing deterrence on those more likely to murder?”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“We can see the importance of such disrupting and defusing very clearly in the surges in homicides after the Ferguson and George Floyd BLM riots. Massive surges in anti-police activism led to police withdrawal, leading to fewer interruptions of confrontations, leading to surges in homicide. Needless to say, people’s genetics—their continental ancestry—did not change during these sharp surges in homicides and serious assaults.”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“dramatically lower homicide clearance rates within African-American communities”— Bravado in the absence of order (3)
“the U.S. went through a murderous decade starting with the emergence of Black Lives Matter”— Homicides Way Down
“There were no homicides in Modesto in all of 2025, mayor confirms”— Homicides Way Down
“The Ferguson Effect drove up Baltimore’s murder rate to be even worse than in the crack era of the early 1990s portrayed on The Wire.”— The racial reckoning murder spree is over
“The racial reckoning murder spree is over The Ferguson and Floyd Effects are finally over and done with if homicide stats are reliable.”— The racial reckoning murder spree is over
“the young black male traffic fatality rate shot up during the George Floyd racial reckoning”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“the young black male suicide rate has gone up a lot in the last decade for reasons that nobody seems to understand.”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“for the same reason black homicide deaths have declined: nobody cares about Black Lives Matter anymore”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“the black death rate was still 11% higher in 2024 than in 2019 and 45% higher in 2024 than in 2014... The Hispanic death rate is up 39% over the last 10 years... The white death rate on the roads is up 8% since 2014”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“Overall death rates are still up 15% since 2024 and 7% since 2019.”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
“That the overall male homicide death rate in descendants of American slaves communities was twelve times that in Euro-American communities in 1950... speaks to the long-term failures in providing public order in those communities. Low homicide clearance rates means that people are literally getting away with murder.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“In Indianapolis in 1919, a negro shot and killed another following a quarrel over a girl. Upon apprehension, the perpetrator admitted the act, but was freed by the Grand Jury presumably upon the ground of justification in killing a trespassing rival. Upon release from custody he called at the coroner’s office to collect his pistol which he had left by the body of his victim and which had been held in evidence.”— Bravado in the absence of order (2)
“If policy makers listened more to Sailer and less to preening white liberals, thousands of black men and women who were killed from 2014-2024 might still be alive today: “As I may have mentioned once or twice over the past year, the media-declared ‘racial reckoning’ following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, has been getting a lot of blacks murdered by other blacks. But I am not being ironic in saying that I am now stunned to find out that motor vehicle fatalities among blacks similarly soared 36% in June-December 2020 versus the same period in 2019, compared with a 9% increase in the rest of the population.””— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“But I am not being ironic in saying that I am now stunned to find out that motor vehicle fatalities among blacks similarly soared 36% in June-December 2020 versus the same period in 2019, compared with a 9% increase in the rest of the population.”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“Some crimes, such as arson and various property crimes, spiked substantially during the 2020 summer riots but have since leveled off... The belief that police should be defunded and defenestrated is a “luxury belief”... when police are defunded, it is a mom in St. Louis... who will now have to sleep with one eye open... The more police departments lose funding, the harder it will be for them to recruit high-quality officers.”— Race & Policing: A Data-Driven Look at Policing and Its Discontents
“like some 92 homicides have taken place already in the city this year. That follows some more than 300 in Baltimore last year.”— Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Breaks Down How Police Reform Can Affect Systemic Oppression
“will result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims — eclipsing the record set in Los Angeles in 1992... the insured losses far outstrip the prior record of $775 million from the 1992 Rodney King demonstrations.”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
“Homicide increased by 30% from 2019 to 2020, the largest single-year increase since 1960”— The Record Increase in Homicide Rates in the US From 2019 to 2020
Downfall

Growing evidence suggests the assumption was flawed after Steve Sailer emailed The New York Times on May 26 2025 with CDC weekly mortality graphs showing black homicide victimizations rising sharply after May 25 2020. The newspaper adjusted its online graph without issuing any textual correction or editor's note. Weekly data from 2018 through 2023 confirmed the surge began in the week of Floyd's death rather than before it. This timing undermined claims that the increase was a pre-existing trend driven solely by the pandemic. An influential minority of analysts had warned of this connection for years and their position gained credibility as the data accumulated. [1][3][4]

Homicide rates dropped sharply in 2023 and continued declining through mid-2025 as anti-police activism lost intensity and normal policing resumed in many cities. CDC WONDER data documented weekly declines that brought rates back toward historical baselines in places like Baltimore. International comparisons showed homicide falls in other countries facing similar economic stresses which weakened the pandemic explanation. City-level studies linked the 2020 spike to depolicing and eroded trust rather than to prior trends. The assumption that the surge predated Floyd became increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of monthly and weekly figures. [8][14][15]

Multivariate analyses controlling for demographics and economic factors found that the 2020 indicator itself predicted higher homicide growth particularly in jurisdictions with stronger anti-police political cultures. Counties with higher Republican vote shares experienced smaller increases suggesting that local attitudes toward policing mattered. The Denver study documented a 54 percent homicide spike only after the protests began. These findings reinforced earlier warnings about the Ferguson Effect. By 2025 the narrative that Black Lives Matter bore no responsibility for the violence had been challenged by a substantial and growing body of evidence even if not all experts accepted the full causal link. [9][10][20]

▶ Supporting Quotes (23)
“As you can see, the beginning of the post-Floyd Racial Reckoning during the last days of May 2020 saw a historic surge in black lives being splattered by gunfire and car crashes, probably due to less pro-active policing.”— The NYT Corrected Its Ludicrous George Floyd Homicide Graph ...
“Wow, it’s almost as if the triumph of Black Lives Matter on May 25, 2020 subsequently got a whole lot of Black Lives Murdered and Splattered on the Asphalt.”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
““As you can see, the beginning of the post-Floyd Racial Reckoning during the last days of May 2020 saw a historic surge in black lives being splattered by gunfire and car crashes, probably due to less pro-active policing.””— BLM Not Responsible for Homicide Spike
“according to an analysis by The New York Times drawing on data compiled by The Washington Post and the nonprofit Mapping Police Violence... the number of people killed by the police continues to rise each year”— Since George Floyd’s Murder, Police Killings Keep Rising, Not Falling
“Murders are dropping since the Racial Reckoning started to peter out... homicides were down sharply in 2023 vs. 2022, 11.7% in the FBI tally... In the more reliable CDC count, homicides were down 8.1% in 2023 vs. 2022.”— FBI: Homicides up over 40% since Ferguson
“The FBI has made it official: 2020 saw the biggest spike in murders in American history—30 percent. ... “Most of the world saw reductions in homicide rates in 2020.”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“"The killing of Floyd, and the legitimacy crisis it created, accelerated violence in Denver ... Homicide spiked in this period by 54% ... Pyrooz, Nix and Wolfe name three effects from the anti-police rhetoric we saw in 2020: “The first is depolicing ... Second, depleted trust ... Lastly, delegitimacy"”— What the Media Doesn’t Want You To Know About 2020’s Record Murder Spike
“Homicide rates early in 2020 were slightly above 2019 levels—and the gap widened in March and April, before the murder of George Floyd in May—but violence truly exploded in the summer (Figure 2). As the provisional data from the early months of 2021 show, the increase persisted beyond the end of the year.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“Counties with a higher share of GOP voters not only have lower homicide rates but also a lower growth in homicide rates between 2019 and 2020 (Figures 6 and 7).”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“we pool our two years of data for 302 counties and estimate multivariate regressions. We examine models with two different outcome variables—the log number of deaths due to homicides and their year-to-year growth rate. We regress these outcomes on an indicator for whether the year is 2020, together with demographic and county controls.”— Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike
“When weekly homicides are studied, he continued, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a very clear pattern emerges. Although social and economic disruption caused by Covid began in early 2020, it wasn’t until the week ending May 30 that weekly homicides topped 500 for the first time in many years. Although unemployment caused by Covid surged in April, there was little if any increase in murders at that time. Homicide began the historic hike exactly in the week when George Floyd was murdered.”— NYT: Black Lives Matter got 15 times more blacks murdered than it saved
“Here are the actual CDC figures for black homicide victimizations and black traffic fatalities by week from 2018 to 2013:”— Happy 5th Anniversary of the Racial Reckoning
“In reality, Britain has big problems with blacks stabbing each other and with Pakistanis and Albanians abusing young white girls.”— "Adolescence" proves need for two-tier justice
“they stopped carrying so much about BLM, so black deaths went down.”— Homicides Way Down
“this graphs goes up through June 14, 2025: Presumably, the second half of 2025 would show a continued decline.”— Homicides Way Down
“The murder rate in Baltimore is now only slightly worse than in 1977, the year after Taxi Driver... The Ferguson and Floyd Effects are finally over and done with if homicide stats are reliable.”— The racial reckoning murder spree is over
“The Ferguson and Floyd Effects are finally over and done with if homicide stats are reliable.”— The racial reckoning murder spree is over
“But it has since gone down for the same reason black homicide deaths have declined: nobody cares about Black Lives Matter anymore, so black lives are being spared.”— Why Are Black Suicides Up So Much?
“black deaths in traffic fatalities per capita... have been dropping since the peak of the Racial Reckoning in 2021. But, the black death rate was still 11% higher in 2024 than in 2019 and 45% higher in 2024 than in 2014.”— CDC Traffic Fatalities: Good News and Bad News
““For instance, the fact that African-Americans seem to have a particular tendency toward criminal violence, for whatever combinations of reasons of nature and nurture, suggests that they need law enforcement more, not less, than do the rest of us.””— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“If policy makers listened more to Sailer and less to preening white liberals, thousands of black men and women who were killed from 2014-2024 might still be alive today”— Steve Sailer: Still noticing after all these years
“In total, 18 unarmed Black Americans were shot by police in 2020... The Washington Post, for example, is one of several websites that now maintains a public and easily accessible database of police shootings... We found that strongly-identified political liberals overestimated the actual number to an incredible degree—many were wrong by over an order of magnitude... “very liberal” Americans estimate that number to be over 60 percent... About 25 percent of all people shot by police are Black in any given year.”— Race & Policing: A Data-Driven Look at Policing and Its Discontents
“For the first time, PCS has designated this civil disorder and those that followed across the United States from May 26 to June 8 as a multi-state catastrophe event... "Not only is this the first, this is the first — kind of with a cymbal crash," Tom Johansmeyer, head of PCS, tells Axios.”— Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history
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