MSNBC reported Aug. 30 that FBI statistics show that assault and rape rose 2.5 percent nationally between 2004 and 2005, and murders and robbery are up about 5 percent. Medium-sized cities like Washington, D.C., Seattle, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis have been hardest-hit.

Methamphetamine is blamed for rising crime in Las Vegas, but Houston's spiking crime rate is more related to an influx of criminals in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Experts point to factors like gang rivalries, population growth, budget cuts, competing priorities for local law-enforcement (like homeland-security assignments), and the cyclical nature of crime to explain the trend. In many communities, attention has fallen on directionless minority youth carrying guns and other weapons as the crux of the problem.

"We've been watching crime decrease or flatten out for the last 10 years," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of Police Executive Research Forum. "But last year we started hearing from police chiefs (about increasing violence) ... enough of them that we started to wonder, what's going on?"

Local law-enforcement leaders slammed recent funding cuts in community-policing programs. "It's understandable that with a war going on in Iraq and terrorism, that the country would put its resources around those issues," said Wexler. "But our thought is that things are changing and we've still got 15,000 people murdered in this country every year. That's pretty high for an industrialized country."