nonprofits. directory for members of congress and the biden administration. go to c-spanshop.org. >> "washin" continues. host: jeff asher joins us. he is the cofounder of ah datalytics. here to talk about the rise in crime in the country. welcome to the program. guest: thank you for having me. host: tell us about your company. what do you look at specifically? guest: we started about two years ago. we work within the terminal justice sector, doing data analytics for organizations that need help. a lot of police departments, criminal justice agencies, prosecutor offices that have no experience with doing data, doing analytics. either starting off from the ground floor, learning what your data infrastructure looks like, earning about the types of data you want to be collecting, and

ultimately building the tools that allow you to collect and analyze data in a way that leads to better policies. host: what is the type of data you get from police departments across the country? guest: it depends. anything from traffic stops, traffic tickets, crime incidents, to use of force, misconduct complaints, all the way up to management-type topics, like evaluating overtime usage and things like that. depends on the agency, depends on the need, and depends on data availability. host: correct me if i'm wrong, but early on during the pandemic crime was obviously down at that time, right? guest: we talk about crime, we are really talking about how the fbi defines it, which is the uniform crime report, which is property crime and violent crime. property crime was down big last year, as much as 15% in the early parts of the pandemic,

largely because of a drop in mobility, whereas violent crime was down slightly, then rebounded to be up very slightly last year. 99.8 percent of crimes are not homicides, but people tend to think about homicide and murder, and for very good reason. murder was up 25% or more last year. host: our guest comes to this position with experience both with the new orleans police department, jefferson parish, and also with the central intelligence agency and defense department as an analyst. with your own company here, datalytics, how commonly is your data used by police departments and other organizations? guest: first off, it is rarely our data. we are working with data collected by the agencies.

we are the conduit by which police departments are able to look at things smarter and look at them that are. our personal analyses, we keep a running to the murders nationwide. we are up to 72 cities. we are frequently cited in media, frequently cited in academic journals. i have written for the new york times, slate, and i am sure more that i'm missing. host: from the new york times, a look at some cities across the country and a rise in homicide rates. in portland, oregon, the homicide rate is up to 53. it is up 82%. tucson, the homicide rate is up 76%. in minneapolis it was up 72%. in philadelphia, 28%. is there a common theme in the rise of crime across these

cities and others? guest: yeah, the common theme is that they were american cities. the fbi's preliminary data through the end of last year showed that murder was up 20% or more in cities of every size. cities under 10,000, cities between 100000 and 240 9000, and cities over one million. all of those had murder up at least 20%. murder was up 15% in the suburbs. from the available evidence, most of our evidence comes from cities publishing data, it was not just big cities that saw big rises. of the 81 cities above 200,000 that report data to the fbi in 2020 so far, murder was up in 64 of them. murder was up at least 30% in half of the cities, 40 of the 80 cities.

what we saw last year was dramatic, historic, and nearly universal. host: in terms of the rise in homicide rates, washington post headline says that, as homicides soar, mayors see few options for regaining control. what are some of the options in terms of federal assistance typically in the past that has been offered that could be offered this time with those cities? guest: usually you see a surge in federal resources. you see increases in federal attorneys assigned, fbi special agents assigned. usually there are increases in grants. i think we will see a lot of that with the biden administration's proposal. my understanding is that they are working to work on one trafficking. last year there was a large rise in gun violence, a large increase in shootings. there are cities where they are trying to do large introductions of gun trafficking.

ultimately the limited options for the government, because it is so universal, it is so big, and it is hyper-local as far as, how do you solve it? the things that will empower mayors, empower local police departments, local communities are the things that will be more effective in the long run and the federal government's law enforcement responses are unlikely to mask the scale of the problem in terms of their ability to intercede in the short term and make any drastic changes. host: didn't the trump administration try some of this? i think it was with chicago, they surged fbi resources. i believe it was chicago in 2020 or 2019? guest: 2020, it was operation legend. not too dissimilar of a response, although specifically

law enforcement-focused. the major issue is that it is largely a drop in the bucket. it is a near-universal increase and federal law enforcement, there just are not that many federal law enforcement officers to make a dramatic increase, even if the answer was inherently increased law enforcement is what we need to. i am not entirely sold that is the case. i think the cause is complicated and solutions are unlikely to be , just increase officers and you will see a decrease in murders. host: jeff asher is our guest. his company is ah datalytics. we are talking about the rise in homicides across the country. the lines are this. if you are in the eastern or central time zones it is (202) 748-8000. mountain and pacific time zones, that line is (202) 748-8001. jeff asher, is there any

correlation between the rise in homicides and the rise in the other crimes, property crimes, for example? guest: typically there is only a weak relationship between taft and burglary. and a reasonably strong one between auto theft and murder. last year was the -- auto theft was the one property crime that rose. there is a relationship there. it is difficult to suss out. typically you see an increase in shootings, and when people are doing shootings they're going to want stolen cars. that leads to increases in auto thefts. that is an evidence-free hypothesis there. go back the last 25 years, when murder goes up, auto theft tends to go up. last year it was even more strongly related. host: it has been a few months since things have started to

open up in terms of cities and the easing of restrictions, have there been any signs in terms of where the crime rate is going, particularly the homicide rate? guest: right now we have 72 cities we are tracking. in those 72 cities murder is up 18%. historically you get 25, 50 cities, you can do a great job of predicting the national murder trend. the challenge this year is in understanding what it means and, is it a valid comparison this early in the year? because we know last year that it was very much not that murder was up 25% through march. murder was up 7% through march, 15% through june, 20 1% through september, then 25% through december. there was this acceleration that picked up in the second and third quarters. we are really comparing pre-rise

2020 months to post-rise 2021 months, so the question is, murder is up, but is it decelerating? if it is up 18% now but not rising as fast as it did last year, we may only end up 10% this year, which would still be very bad -- it is obviously a tragedy and historically very bad and will have probably the most murders since the early 1990's if that is the case, but it would show a pattern that is not inherently getting worse and a challenge of comparing pandemic 2020 with post-pandemic 2021. host: is there a correlation between the availability of guns and the rise in crime or the flip of that, the restrictive gun laws in many of those cities in terms of guns? is there a correlation there? guest: it is not inherently a

correlation between gun laws. it is a difficult thing, because it is tough to rank gun laws and determine which states have the easiest. in addition, a state like illinois that has harsher gun laws right next to a state like indiana that has easier gun laws just means a large number of chicago shootings are using guns coming from outside of illinois. the correlation exists when you look at the crime guns in the atf, the number of guns the atf is recovering. most of which are not homicides. which is an indication of the number of illegal guns floating around in a state and a state's moderate. louisiana has led murders for 30 years and also has the highest rate of firearms being recovered in the state. there is certainly some evidence of a relationship there between illegal guns and high murder rates. host: let's get to calls.

we will start with mike in whitehouse, ohio. go ahead. caller: really appreciate you guys being on. i have a million things to say, but i will try to keep it short growing up in the country, living outside of toledo i was curious if your company looks into or provides any data -- whether it be publicly or privately -- on the people in these cities committing these crimes have any sort of nuclear family, access to jobs, public transportation systems? is there a ranking or data compiled that would provide correlation? to >> live now to the u.s. house of representatives as part of our long time commitment to bringing you gavel-to-gavel coverage of congress. the house today voting on an age discrimination bill. ifflet the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the prayer this morning will be offered by