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Major crime hits five-year low in Richmond, ran a headline in this newspaper just 19 months ago. The story focused on the city, where violent and property crimes fell 10 percent and homicides dropped by 26 percent.

The citizens of Richmond should be proud, very proud, of their Police Department and the numbers that we have, the initiatives, and the positive interactions that we have with the members of the community, said Police Chief Alfred Durham then.

Mayor Dwight Jones agreed: I think its important for us and particularly the media to be able to say that we are bucking a national trend. We believe that the reason for this is we have a progressive police force, we have good leadership in the police force, that we have citizens who are helping our officers.

The feel-good story has turned into a horror movie. Regional killings soar past 100, reach highest level in decade, was the headline on Sundays front-page article by reporter Mark Bowes. The principal reason for that: bloodshed in the city. The region as a whole had 26 more homicides than last year. Richmond accounts for 25 of them. The city now has a homicide rate equal to Chicagos.

A lopsided majority of the victims were black. The same is true of the perpetrators. In a city where roughly every other resident is African-American just under nine out of 10 homicide victims were.

(By contrast, VCU criminologist William Pelfrey notes that Latino violence appears to be low relative to their numbers in the population. Therein lies a lesson for all those currently wetting their beds over a fictitious immigrant crime wave.)

Durham says the police department is overwhelmed from doing too many things that are not a proper part of policing, and he laments the lack of cooperation from neighbors and witnesses when a killing takes place. We trust his sincerity. But what happened? Less than two years ago the city was celebrating the relationship between cops and helpful citizens. What changed?

One possible explanation: The massive attention given to the killing of black males by police officers, which coalesced into the Black Lives Matter movement.

That attention was justified as anyone familiar with the cases of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Walter Scott and too many others to name can testify. The concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement are legitimate, and reactionaries should not use black-on-black crime to suggest otherwise.

At the same time, it might be possible to devote so much effort to one cause that other, equally important causes wither on the vine. Or bleed out in the street.

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Editorial: Do black lives matter in Richmond? - Richmond.com