Violent crime rose in the largest cities in the country this past year, Time Magazine reports.
The Major Cities Chiefs Association report compiles data from over 60 metropolitan police agencies. The association found 6,407 homicides occurred in 2016, up 11 percent from last year.
The cities of Dallas, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Memphis, San Jose and Louisville all saw a rise in homicides.
"We are going to put more focus in the police department on the gangs and the gang units, because they are really driving a lot of the homicides," Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said to local NBC News affiliate WMC at the beginning of the month.
The small cities of Arlington, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah saw a surprising jump. Arlington had 18 murders last year, compared to 4 the year before, and Salt Lake City has 14 in 2016, after only 6 the previous year.
"We've had at least two years running now where there's been an increase in 35 to 45 major cities," Darrel Stephens, MCCA executive director, told Time. "It's a major issue and should be in the cities where it's taking place. But it's not anywhere near the kind of violence that we had in the 1990s."
Stephens also said it was too soon to tell if this indicates a sustained trend of rising violent crime.
The MCCA released a set of 25 recommendations for President Donald Trump's administration and for Congress to reduce the rate of violent crime.
"Major cities aren't asking for temporary surges of hundreds more federal agents or responses that take months and years to have a sustained impact. They want tools and smart resources like ballistics imaging, gun tracing, and flexible grants," said Chief Tom Manger, MCCA President, in an apparent response to Trump's tweet suggesting he should send federal agents to help fight Chicago's crime rate.
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