Well you see, decades of underpolicing murder and serious crimes, while overpolicing minor crimes and mental illness essentially led to a breakdown in the state monopoly on violence in certain African-american communities, resulting in the rise of gang culture...
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Because if the police won't deter violence for you, you gotta deter it for yourself, and so we ended up in a kind of intimidation arms race that is, frankly, stable but costs a lot more lives---and facilitates a lot more petty crime---than the state monopoly on violence system.
And then on top of that, we had a massive---CIA-assisted!---infusion of capital into black inner cities in the form of cocaine. The---again, CIA-assisted!---glut of cocaine in the market led to the popularization of the more addictive "crack" form of the drug.
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Any infusion of unregulated capital into any community---but especially one cut off from regulated capital by structural inequities, lack of wealth-building due to housing segregation/redlining, etc---will lead to violence to enforce legally unenforceable contracts, etc.
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And of course the employ of that capital itself is... you guessed it! A crime! So we've got addicts fueling demand, committing a crime every time they succumb to their addiction, community small businesses with all employees committing crimes, violence underpinning it all...
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