ABC News — Feds Warned Last Spring of Spike in Violence and Extremism During Pandemic: Memo

“We were already in a weakened condition when the pandemic hit — class divisions, overt racism, partisanship, a really poor social support infrastructure — so if you think about the effect of the pandemic on an ‘epidemic’ of shootings — it’s like the immune system of the United States was already suppressed,” Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ABC News.

New York Magazine — Progressives Don’t Need to Downplay Rising Homicides

Investing in policing may reduce rates of victimization. But it does so at a price not captured in any fiscal budget: the needless deaths caused by trigger-happy officers; young Black men’s routine experience of harassment, discrimination, and/or nonlethal forms of police violence, and the physical and emotional toll of those experiences.