JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Homicides are surging here on the First Coast and across the nation.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office reports homicides are up 32% year to date, and FBI statistics show homicides nationwide increased 21% during the first three quarters of 2020. That's the largest one-year increase in the United States since 1968.
One of those homicide victims is Malik Brown. The 18-year-old had his whole life ahead of him and was going to college when gun violence took his life way too soon.
“He was just an overall good kid," Omar Simmons said.
Brown had a good reputation on and off the field as a star wide receiver and running back at Robert E. Lee High School.
“He wasn’t a kid to get in trouble," Simmons said. "With typical teenagers nowadays, they have their fun, but for the most part he was a loving kid, a great young man, and it was sad his life was cut short on that tragic day.”
Omar Simmons coached Brown on the football field. He says his death as Jacksonville's first homicide of 2020 shows people the face of homicide numbers and the void victims leave behind.
“The biggest thing is his daughter," Simmons said. "He basically had a newborn at the time that he passed away. She’s going to miss him the most because she’s never going to get to meet him.”
Simmons has this message for young people as he continues to mourn the loss of a promising young man, father, and son.
“That one split second of I want to prove how bad I am can turn into a lifetime in prison," Simmons said. "Our young people have to start loving each other and put all the beef and the issues aside.”
Flagler College assistant criminology professor Dr. Joshua Behl says violent crime tends to go up at times of financial stress.
“There is a pretty clear link between the economy and deviance, and so when we see economic downturns, we tend to see crime go up," Behl said.
Behl believes stress from the coronavirus pandemic is a major reason homicides are increasing.
“We are seeing that people are getting kind of fatigued with COVID and this new way of life, and that could lead to frustration that’s being expressed in violent ways," Behl said.
First Coast News crime and safety expert Mark Baughman says another reason for the increase is more people are being killed in each homicide, such as the triple homicide at the Calloway Cove Apartments in Moncrief in early February.
Baughman also says domestic-violence-related homicides are also on the rise with a link to the pandemic.
“It forces people to interact with people they don’t necessarily want to interact with, and ultimately there’s a dispute, and that dispute ends up with the death of somebody," Baughman said.
Our experts say possible solutions to this troubling trend are complicated.
“If one of the causal mechanisms is this economic suppression, then opening up economies would be a solution to reduce some of this," Behl said. "Of course in a vacuum that’s a good solution. Is that necessarily great in a public health mechanism, probably not.”
“For law enforcement, the solution for them is to continue to have an omnipresence in the communities that are most at risk for violent crimes," Baughman said.