AILSA CHANG, HOST: With Memorial Day weekend upon us and the start of summer with it, cities around the country are bracing themselves for more violent crime. Shootings and murders have been up sharply, intensifying the debate over how police should respond or, as NPR's Martin Kaste reports, whether police are even the answer in the aftermath of last summer's protests. MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Jeff Asher is a crime analyst who's been collecting murder numbers for cities that post their monthly statistics. And he says in those places, murder is up this year 23.5%. That's over the same period last year.