LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland traveled to Little Rock to discuss violent crime and efforts to stop it.
Garland was joined today by state and federal officials, where he shared data from the justice department.
He said part of the Justice Department's ongoing strategy, which has been in place for 3 1/2 years, is to continue to see a decline in violent crime, and he says the strategy is working.
"The Justice Department's violent crime reduction Steering Committee announced new data from across 88 cities indicates that violent crime has continued to decline considerably in 2024 that included a further 16.9% drop in murders,” Garland said.
According to Garland, not only is the Justice Department seeing a decline, but so is the FBI.
"The FBI released a report showing an 11.6% drop in homicides last year and one of the lowest violent crime rates nationwide in 50 years,” Garland said.
US. Attorney Jonathan Ross of the Eastern District of Arkansas said his office has been working for years to keep violent offenders off the street and bring those numbers down, tactics they will keep using.
"Which is to continue to aggressively work with our state and local partners to get the most severe sentences we can," Ross said. "Either through the state court system or the federal court system, to get dangerous people out of our communities."
Garland also announced millions of dollars in grants that will go towards helping law enforcement resources across Arkansas.
"Today's grants are part of the more than $26 million that the department is awarding to organizations and government agencies across Arkansas this month to support law enforcement activities and community initiatives," Garland said.
Part of that money will help enhance the DNA backlog reduction program.
"The Justice Department is awarding more than a million dollars in funding to the state under the DNA capacity enhancement and backlog reduction program to enhance state laboratories capacity process DNA samples,” Garland said.
More than $4 million is going towards improving the national criminal history improvement program.
"This week, we awarded more than $4 million to Arkansas of the national criminal history Improvement Program, which provides funding to states and localities to improve the quality, timeliness and immediate accessibility of criminal history, records and related information,” Garland said.
Garland is offering these grants that provide resources to the state, which Ross calls much-needed.
"We have the number one caseload in the country, we've made a strong case that we deserve more resources, because we use those resources well, and that's borne out by those statistics of having the highest caseload in the country for the last five years," Ross said.
Garland said creating this partnership with the agencies reflected around this table is the main part of their mission.
"To arrest violent felons, to seize and trace guns used in crimes to disrupt violent drug traffickers and prosecute the individuals and the gangs who are the most responsible for driving violent crime," Garland said.