WASHINGTON — This year has brought an unusually grim and steady drumbeat of violence throughout the country.

A 5-year-old girl killed this month in Cleveland in a drive-by shooting. Seven people slain in Chicago over the July 4th weekend. A young female journalist in Washington, D.C., fatally struck by an errant bullet in May while waiting to change buses.

Violent crime has often been a local government concern and a problem that had been on the decline. But rising homicide totals in most of America’s large cities have sounded alarms within the Obama administration.

The Justice Department this month organized a brainstorming summit with mayors and police chiefs. And FBI Director James Comey, testifying last week, said the “very disturbing” homicide spike has law enforcement scrambling to figure out why it’s happening now, and why in so many cities that seemingly have little in common otherwise.

“It’s happening all over the country, and it’s happening all in the last 10 months,” Comey told the House Judiciary Committee. “And so a lot of us in law enforcement are talking and trying to understand what is happening in this country.“