Violent Crime Up For Second Year

With all the emphasis on fighting terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is very little left over for fighting crime:

The number of violent crimes in the United States rose for a second straight year in 2006, marking the first sustained increase in homicides, robberies and other serious offenses since the early 1990s, according to an FBI report to be released Monday.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Report will show an increase of about 1.3 percent in violent offenses last year, including a 6 percent rise in robberies and a slight rise in homicides, according to law enforcement officials, who described key findings in advance of the report's release. That follows an increase of 2.3 percent in 2005, which was the first significant increase in violent crime in 15 years.

This administration can't get anything right:

[...]critics say the increase has been spurred by declines in assistance from the federal government, including more than $2 billion in cuts in Justice Department law enforcement programs since 2002. Many police chiefs and mayors have complained about being stretched particularly thin by counterterrorism demands in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks.