CA Homicides And Violent Crime Spiked In 2021, State Report Shows

CALIFORNIA — Violent crime and homicides rates shot up again in 2021, adding fuel to an argument that the Golden State is fraught with crime as the state's top Democrats head into another election season.

The total arrest rate decreased, but the report also revealed that homicides increased 7.2 percent from the previous year, according to a report from the state Department of Justice. That rate is "significantly" below the state's historical high of 4,095 homicides in 1993, the state's attorney general's office said.

The state's annual crime report showed that three-fourths of all homicides in California involved a firearm and more than eight in 10 of the victims were men.

"Gun violence in particular remains a consistent and growing threat," Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in a statement.

Half of people killed were Hispanic and about 30 percent were Black. About 40 percent were killed by strangers, 40 percent by friends or acquaintances and the rest by a relative, the report detailed.

More than half of female victims were killed in homes while more than 40 percent of male victims died on the street, according to the report.

The report comes just before Gov. Gavin Newsom, Bonta and other top Democratic officials will have to defend their policies as they relate to public safety when they face opponents in November.

The new numbers "reflect what Californians have been experiencing every day: a spiral of lawlessness," Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and former assistant U.S. attorney general, told the Associated Press.

Bonta and Newsom have built gun control policies into their platforms as a suite of gun laws were recently passed following the deadliest mass shooting on an elementary school campus in a decade in Uvalde, Texas earlier this year.

"We all know the gun violence epidemic plaguing communities across our nation is sickening and it’s unacceptable," Bonta said in San Diego on Thursday.

The number of violent crimes per 100,000 people increased 6.7 percent from 437 in 2020 to 466.2 in 2021, which also remains below the state's high of 1,103.9 in 1992. Property crime increased 3 percent.

Meanwhile, the state's arrest rate decreased from 2,812.3 per 100,000 people in 2020 to 2,606.3 per 100,000 in 2021. Numbers show a downward trend since 2004.

A drop in arrests of juveniles has also fallen in recent years from a near 63,000 in 2016 to less than 20,000 last year.