Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned Tuesday that recent upticks in homicides and violent crime could be the start of a “dangerous new trend,” and promised to take steps from his department to curb it.
“We’ve done a lot of good. We need to not give up on that progress,” Sessions said in his first speech as head of the Justice Department to the National Association of Attorneys General. “I do not believe that this pop in crime — this increase in crime — is necessarily an aberration, a one-time blip. I’m afraid it represents the beginning of a trend.”
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Sessions conceded that overall, crime rates in the United States “remain near historic lows.” But he added that in the last two years, “we’ve seen clear warning signs […] that this progress is now at risk.”
Statistics from the FBI show an 11 percent increase in murders and a 3 percent uptick in violent crime from 2014 to 2015. Preliminary numbers show for the first half of 2016 there was a 5.3 percent increase in violent crime over the same time the year prior.
“These numbers should trouble all of us. My worry is that this is not a blip or an anomaly, but the start of a dangerous new trend that could reverse the hard-won gains of the past four decades – gains that made America a safer and more prosperous place,” Sessions said.
Sessions promised to crack down against the crime rise, noting that under his leadership “agents and prosecutors will prioritize cases against the most violent offenders, and remove them from our streets so they can no longer do us harm.”
Sessions also announced the formation of a Justice Department task force that will include the heads of the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Marshals Service. The task force, Sessions said, will look at gaps in current laws and make sure agencies are “collecting good crime data.”
Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order creating a federal task force “on crime reduction and public safety.”
