American highways are also the scene of armed violence. Photo: ANSA.
Although schools and university campuses are the scenarios where shootings have had the most impact in recent years in the United States, highways, particularly those in California and Illinois, have also registered an increase in shootings against drivers in recent times.according to reports from local authorities.
Shootings have more than doubled in California and tripled in Illinois in the last two years, local authorities revealed. At the same time, arrest rates for most incidents are in the single digits.
In California, reports of shootings have more than doubled in the last three years, going from 210 in 2019 to nearly 500 in the first 11 months of 2021.
Hundreds of people were injured, according to the latest highway patrol data obtained through a public records request.
At least 50 people dieda figure that set off the alarm among the authorities, who cannot find a solution to armed violence.
In Illinois, the rise in highway shootings has been so great that authorities have launched a publicity campaign to publicize the arrests, seeking to intimidate the attackers.
The campaign includes the posting of a public dashboard with a map of every highway shooting in the state since 2019.
The show is named after Tamara Clayton, 55, a postal worker who was shot and killed on her way to work three years ago, a case still unsolved.
In the Chicago area, a recently passed law requires high-definition license plate readers to be installed at dozens of freeway locations.
Authorities in states like Ohio, Arizona, Texas and Washington, which also have extensive highways, declined to release data on shootings, preventing a complete report from across the country.
State officials in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, New York and Colorado, by contrast, said they do not directly track gun attacks.
In two of the states surveyed, the trend has given rise to another point of concern: arrest rates are in the single digits for the vast majority of highway shootings.
Last year in California, authorities arrested about 8% of suspects linked to confirmed shootings.
In Illinois, suspects were arrested in 5% of cases. Only in Michigan, where the rate was 32%, did authorities arrest people at a rate that matched national statistics.
According to the FBI, 31% of highway crime cases in that state were eliminated in 2019, the latest year for which complete data is available.
Homicide arrest rates in Illinois and California were higher, with authorities reporting 21% and 34% of their cases.
“Citizens view law enforcement as illegitimate, unresponsive and ill-equipped to ensure public safety,” said Paige Vaughn, a professor of criminology and sociology at Spring Hill College in Alabama.
A highway patrol official in California stated that the crimes are difficult to investigate.
In Michigan, a state police official said non-fatal shootings are less likely to be solved because victims and witnesses don’t want to talk.
California officials began noticing an uptick in highway shootings coinciding with the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
“There are a lot of stressors with the pandemic,” said Ryan Stonebraker, chief of the California Highway Patrol’s Division of Protective Services. “There are a lot of people who are unhinged, upset or very concerned about security.”
(With information from ANSA)