With month to go, Fort Worth passes 100 murders in 2020, the most in 25 years
Fort Worth has surpassed 100 homicides in a year for the first time since 1995, a grim milestone that represents a dramatic increase in violent crime across the city.
Last year, at this time, the city had 64 homicides on record, according to data from the police department. That’s compared to the total of 103 homicides this year reported as of Wednesday.
Experts and police officials, including Chief Ed Kraus, have pointed to factors like the coronavirus and a rise in incidents of domestic violence, primarily against women. Seventeen Tarrant County residents have died as a result of domestic violence since March, more than any other year on record, according to preliminary data from the Criminal District Attorney’s Office. Abusers can use the isolation of the pandemic to impose control in a relationship, experts have said.
Capt. Mark Barthen, a police spokesman, acknowledged that “obviously the coronavirus pandemic has increased stress and should be considered when trying to account for the increase” in murders. He also said gang activity has been up and could help explain the increase.
But he noted that most types of homicides in Fort Worth have increased in 2020, and there may not be a single answer to explain it.
“There isn’t any one contributing factor that can be attributed to the increase,” Barthen said in an email. “Our investigators do their best to determine a motive, but motives aren’t always obvious and suspects are often uncooperative.”
With a little less than a month in 2020, Fort Worth could still exceed the 108 homicides recorded in 1995, which would give this year the distinction of being the most violent in 34 years. The most homicides ever recorded in Fort Worth was 202 in 1986, according to police. However, the city’s population has almost doubled since 1995, so the per capita homicide rate would still be lower than it was 25 years ago.
In only the past four days, there have been two homicides in the city. A 44-year-old man was found dead in a pickup truck on Sunday night with multiple gunshot wounds, police said, and a 31-year-old man died Wednesday morning after his neighbor shot him during a dispute Tuesday night.
There have been periods over the last year where violent crime has spiked in Fort Worth, like the Sunday in which five people were killed in four separate shootings, including one at a house party that left two dead.
The homicide rate in Fort Worth, which became a national topic after it was cited in a question during a presidential debate, has attracted a certain level of criticism against the police department from those who advocate for it.
Manny Ramirez, the president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association, said over the phone on Wednesday it’s easy to point to COVID as the only factor, but in reality there has been a rise in gang and narcotics activity unrelated to the pandemic. He said a decrease in proactive policing within the department in recent years can help explain the uptick in murders in 2020. This strategy, he said, can include more traffic stops of suspicious vehicles that could lead to the discovery of guns or drugs.
At this time, he said, there’s community policing going on — which he said is valuable — but “no proactive policing.”
The department has a special response team that’s typically made up of six units of 10 people, Ramirez told the Star-Telegram. He estimates only 30 people were on the team as of Wednesday.
“Some of the feedback that our officers have heard is that criminals — they’re not afraid to get stopped anymore. They’re not afraid to carry a gun around,” Ramirez said. “If you arrest folks for carrying illegal firearms, if you arrest folks for narcotics offenses, those don’t turn into homicides or violent assaults.”
In response to Ramirez’s claims, which he also shared with KXAS-TV, Barthen said police have moved vacant positions from special response teams to the crisis intervention team but “the positions will be added back to the Special Response Teams when we can fill the positions.” He said the department also hasn’t directed or encouraged officers to pull back on proactive protocols.
The department, he said, is struggling with officer shortages related to vacancies and coronavirus protocols. Ten percent of the department is quarantining at the moment due to COVID-related illnesses or exposures, he said.
“We have several recruit classes in field training with two additional recruit classes in the academy, including one that graduates next week to begin field training,” Barthen said.
Ramirez, too, said COVID has been a problem, estimating it’s around 50 or 60 officers who are out at the moment due to the coronavirus. A study was also done years ago saying police needed to add supervisors, he said, but the department couldn’t do that this year due to budget cuts.
Many officers, both seasoned veterans and newcomers, have also left the department as part of the “mass exodus” of cops across the nation due to what he described as a negative environment for police officers.
As the department searches for a new police chief to replace the outgoing Chief Kraus, Ramirez said he would like to see the next person to lead the department recommit to doing everything possible to reduce incidents of violent crime. He’s looking forward to the hiring process, he said.
“We need to really focus on realizing that a police department’s core function is to make sure that your citizens feel safe in the city and we need to provide that protection,” Ramirez said. “Our officers are just heartbroken to see our city victimized.”
This story was originally published December 2, 2020 at 6:25 PM.
