Seems a rise in violent crime can be directly related to the fight over drug territory as gangs compete for the money of White Liberal drug users. From USAToday:

In Baltimore, about 91% of murder victims this year had criminal records, up from 74% a decade ago, police reported.

In many cases, says Frederick Bealefeld III, Baltimore’s interim police commissioner, victims’ rap sheets provide critical links to potential suspects in botched drug deals or violent territorial disputes.

Philadelphia police Capt. Ben Naish says the Baltimore numbers are “shocking.” Philadelphia also has seen the number of victims with criminal pasts inch up — to 75% this year from 71% in 2005.

In Milwaukee, local leaders created the homicide commission after a spike in violence led to a 39% increase in murders in 2005. The group compiled statistics on victims’ criminal histories for the first time and found that 77% of homicide victims in the past two years had an average of nearly 12 arrests.

While it was common in the past for murder victims to have criminal records, the current levels are surprising even to analysts who study homicides.

“Anecdotally, the detectives on the street knew” victims with prior police contact were being killed, “but we wanted people to start to look at this” in the community, O’Brien says.

In Newark, where three young friends with no apparent links to crime were executed Aug. 4, roughly 85% of victims killed in the first six months of this year had criminal records, on par with the percentage in 2005 but up from 81% last year, police statistics show.

David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says the rise in criminals killing criminals has escaped policymakers’ attention.

“The notion that these (murders) are random bolts of lightning, which is the commonly held image, is not the reality,” says Kennedy, who has examined the backgrounds of murder suspects and victims in multiple U.S. cities. “It happens, but it doesn’t happen often.”

More from USATODAY:

In some cities, such as Baltimore, the increased attention to victims’ criminal histories provides new information about old problems, including thriving drug markets — similar to the bloody 1990s — where rival dealers turn on one another. The unusually large numbers of victims’ prior arrests also underscore a tense reality on the streets.

“People who are getting hurt in this crime surge are people in the game who are part of the problem,” Philadelphia police Capt. Ben Naish says.

Law enforcement officials try to increase awareness without numbing people to the killings.

Patricia Jessamy, Baltimore’s chief local prosecutor, doesn’t want to create the false impression that violence affects only certain segments of the population and city.

“If we only focus on one bad boy killing another bad boy, we never address the root causes of crime,” Jessamy says, referring to rampant drug addiction and high school graduation rates that have hovered near 40%.

David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says, “This kind of violence just tears communities apart. The ripple effect is horrendous even for people not involved (in criminal activity). When people are afraid to go outside and there is limited access to public spaces, the community collapses.”

So who’s funding this bloody war between gangs in poor neighborhoods? What group funnels thousands of dollars a week into the pockets of drug financed gangs? White liberals of course, who let their kids buy a little weed because “it doesn’t hurt anybody” and who themselves imbibe. These people killing each other in the streets are where your weed comes from. This is the front line of the drug war, where that nice guy who comes around your college dorm went to get your eighth.

The money White liberals and their spoiled offspring spend each weekend to buy pot and meth and whatever else is trendy this week funds an actual war in our cities. It buys the black market guns used in the killings, the cars that transport the killers from crime scene to crime scene and provides the impetus for the violence. I know, I grew up in a city devastated by the drug trade, East Orange N.J. and most of the buyers I saw were White kids from rich havens like Montclair and Verona.

This is what “liberal” attitudes towards drug use creates in our communities. So next time you hear about a shooting in some drug infested area, give your smoking buddy a high five, because you caused it.

h/t Moonbattery