evidence: Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Milwaukee was on a four-year historic decline in homicide, with around 100 homicides total in 2018 and 2019. All that changed in 2020, when the city saw an astronomical rise in violence — nearly doubling those numbers in 2020 and 2021. As of Wednesday, the city has had 74 homicides, about 45% more than at the same time last year. Jamaal Smith is a community injury and violence prevention manager at Milwaukee’s Office of Violence Prevention. He says the uptick in violence reflects the pain, frustration and anger that exists in Milwaukee communities from the emotional toll of the COVID pandemic, as well as the generational and current trauma that many people have experienced. [...] He notes the disparities had that already existed for Black and brown communities were exacerbated even more when COVID hit. He says this has all contributed to the historically bleak homicide numbers in Milwaukee.