Where did homicide rates spike during COVID? Georgia city ranks in top 10, report says

Homicide rates spiked in 50 of the largest U.S cities during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Georgia’s capital.

Atlanta saw the eighth-highest increase in homicides per capita between Q2 of 2019 and Q2 of 2021, scoring 60.9 out of a possible 100 points representing the highest homicide rates in the nation, according to a report by personal finance website WalletHub.

In the second quarter of 2021 (April-June) alone, the affectionately dubbed “city in a forest” ranked 11th for homicide cases per capita, data show. The city’s homicide rate increase compared to Q2 2020 and Q2 2019 ranked 8th and 6th, respectively.

Here’s how cities ranked:

1. New Orleans, Louisiana
2. Cincinnati, Ohio
3. Baltimore, Maryland
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
5. Detroit, Michigan
6. Milwaukee, Wisconsin
7. Louisville, Kentucky
8. Atlanta, Georgia
9. Memphis, Tennessee
10. Kansas City, Missouri

WalletHub calculated “the number of homicides per capita in Q2 2021, and the change in the number of homicides per capita in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the second quarter of 2020 and 2019” to come up with the rankings, according to the report. Its sample included 50 of the nation’s most populous cities with published homicide data.

The report, released Wednesday, shows Atlanta places among the top 10 U.S. cities grappling with what state and local officials are calling a “COVID crime wave.” Homicides in Atlanta are up nearly 60% this year, coming on the heels of “a historically deadly 2020 when authorities investigated 157 homicide cases,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Violent crime has gotten so bad that residents of the city’s posh Buckhead community are pushing to split from Atlanta, according to WXIA. City leaders including Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms have faced increased criticism and calls for a solution to rising crime.

Bottoms, who recently announced she wouldn’t seek re-election, said the recent violence “isn’t a leadership problem ... [but] a public health epidemic fueled by lax gun control laws.”

“We are in the midst of a systematic trend gripping the entire nation,” she wrote in an op-ed for the AJC. “The pandemic has been the great equalizer for cities big and small dealing with crime, but the root causes of the violence are much deeper than this virus and its effects on our citizens.”

Bottoms said her administration will continue working closely with community leaders, police officers and President Joe Biden’s White House to address violent crime in the city.

New Orleans earned its No. 1 spot in the report, scoring 95 out of a possible 100 points.

This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 1:10 PM with the headline "Where did homicide rates spike during COVID? Georgia city ranks in top 10, report says."

Tanasia Kenney

Sun Herald

Tanasia is a service journalism reporter at the Charlotte Observer | CharlotteFive, working remotely from Atlanta, Georgia. She covers restaurant openings/closings in Charlotte and statewide explainers for the NC Service Journalism team. She’s been with McClatchy since 2020.