Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate
Homelessness is one of the most grotesque horrors of US capitalism. And even worse, according to new reporting by Jacobin, the rate of murders of homeless people has spiked to appalling new highs.
Contrary to the common perception, unhoused people are far more likely to be victims of homicides than perpetrators. (Matthew Woitunski / Wikimedia Commons)
The first reports just before Christmas 2021 brought scant, scary details. A “suspected serial killer” named Willy Maceo had been arrested in Miami for “hunting” sleeping homeless people.
Jerome Price, fifty-six, had died after Maceo allegedly shot him five times from a car. (Price’s family learned of it on TV.) A second victim barely survived. A third attack (and second homicide) was linked.
Police gathered evidence. Mayors and police brass crowded podiums. Maceo’s gun, it emerged, had been confiscated by police but subsequently returned. Maceo’s social media accounts revealed a “dapper” real estate agent hawking pastel mansions, aquamarine seas, and palm trees.
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