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'Unfathomable': Washington DC murder victims often killed over petty insults, experts say - Fox News
Jan 23, 2022 3 mins, 35 secs
His death set off a cycle of retaliation, yet Lofton’s killer was never arrested, his older brother, Larry McMichael, told Fox News.

"God be told, I lost him when he was 18," McMichael said.

Murders in the nation’s capital most frequently stem from a petty dispute or insult, according to criminologists and local officials.

While rivalries between gangs or crews may drive killings, the underlying disputes frequently stem from petty insults, criminologists and local officials told Fox News.

can occur for surprisingly small things," Thomas Abt, a senior fellow with the Council on Criminal Justice, told Fox News.

"Maybe you bump into someone at a bar, just an instant of disrespect," she told Fox News.

Meanwhile, murders over personal disputes "are sometimes even harder to solve because among the young men among whom this is happening, there's very low levels of trust in police," Abt told Fox News.

Criminologists and local officials don’t know why gunfire has spread to neighborhoods that haven’t typically been associated with violence.

The Nats Park audience experienced the same "panic that some of our neighbors feel every day," Councilmember Charles Allen, who’s pushed to scale back police funding to expand violence prevention programs, told Fox News.

"We can't ignore the fact that we've got neighborhoods that experience gun violence on a routine and regular basis," Allen said. "We've got to be just as concerned about the shooting and the violence that takes place that doesn't have the spotlight.".

Killers – and victims – are frequently involved in gangs or criminal activity, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the murder is gang-related, criminologists told Fox News.

Instead, they might be more appropriately deemed a crew, often consisting of just a handful of members, according to local officials and experts.

But even disputes between gangs can be rooted in petty arguments, local experts told Fox News.

In fact, just below half of D.C’s violence is limited to about 151 of the city’s nearly 5,700 city blocks, according to Geldart?

Experts and local officials provided a several reasons why a petty insult would lead to a murder.

Abt similarly said: "Most homicides today are … between and among young men … without much opportunity or much hope, and there is a tit for tat cycle of retaliatory violence.".

In fact, such a cycle followed Lofton’s murder after he broke up the dice game, McMichael told Fox News.

A major reason disputes have devolved to murder is because killers were never taught the social skills needed to resolve conflicts without violence, according to criminologists.

The people at the heart of these disputes were never taught "morals, integrity and principles," Tyrone Parker, who founded a violence prevented organization called the Alliance of Concerned Men, told Fox News.

Such skills aren’t taught in communities with high rates of violence, which results in rash killings over petty disputes, according to local officials and criminologists.

Inexplicable hate or jealousy can also lead to a homicide, McMichael told Fox News, using his murdered friend as an example.

"But when you not in that right environment, when you not in that right community, when your mother and father hate people just as much as you do, that grow in you," McMichael told Fox News.

"The social interactions between people really have become transactional" over the course of the pandemic, Geldart, the deputy mayor, told Fox News

Such transactional behavior, Geldart said, already existed – stemming from the lack of conflict resolution skills – but it was exacerbated and led to increased brazenness

"The pandemic has exacerbated violence, trauma, the loss, the hurt," Allen, the city council member, told Fox News

Nix further said: "We cannot rule out the pandemic and the strains that put on, not only individuals, but institutions, including the police, including hospitals, including violence interrupters and community programs that deal with violence."

The relationship between law enforcement and police, which was typically already poor, likely sunk even further, according to criminologists

Members of communities with low police trust – regardless of whether that’s due to law enforcement misconduct or otherwise – are less likely to turn to the police and more likely to carry firearms illegally, criminologists said

"There is an expectation among those young men that you don't go to the police, that you resolve it amongst yourselves," Abt told Fox News

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