Ginia Bellafante writes today:
Earlier this week, Mayor Eric Adams released a 15-page document, “The Blueprint to End Gun Violence,” with the purpose of alleviating a “public health crisis that continues to threaten every corner of the city.” The plan was prompted by the rise in violent crime that has...
Hold on. Just for the record, here is major crime in New York City:
Let's continue:
In 2020, the number of shootings in New York more than doubled to 1,531 over the previous year; then they climbed again, to 1,877 in 2021, the highest figure in decades. One problem for the mayor is that these statistics are not imprinted on all New Yorkers — particularly those still working at home in moneyed neighborhoods to which they have more or less retreated....In effect, Mr. Adams is left selling aggressive policing policies in a post-George Floyd world to a host of constituents who do not necessarily recognize the urgency.
New York City is like the rest of the country: Murder has increased a lot—by 66% since 2017—but violent crime in general has increased only slightly.
Democrats lost a lot of credibility in the 1970s for dismissing public fears of rising crime, and they shouldn't make the same mistake today. That said, fighting crime, first and foremost, requires understanding crime. Today we don't have a crime problem, we have a murder problem, and understanding that is the first step to figuring out how to fight it. Everyone who writes about crime needs to get on board with this.
I don't disagree with this. I agree that its murder and that its pretty mysterious.
And,
A second mistake would be to say, as your political stance, "Let's study this". That sounds like "let's do nothing, but pretend we are doing something" to many people.
I don't disagree with this. I agree that its murder and that its pretty mysterious.
It's not really that mysterious if it's primarily driven by an increase in shootings. If shootings are up by quite a bit, it may be that the needle wouldn't move upwards all that much with respect to "serious crime" as a whole or even just all "violent crime" (because crimes involving a shooting account for only a modest percentage of all serious crimes or all violent crimes).
But needless to say, an increase in murders will definitely be reported, for obvious reasons.
All of which to my eyes suggest what's driving the problem is an increase over the last few years (after decades of decline) in the percentage of Americans who own guns. Which in turn suggests at least some Americans in the past were indeed being deterred from becoming gun owners by gun laws. Such laws in recent times have been eviscerated by Republican lawmakers and judges.
Yup. We all hate each other more openly but the real issue is that we also have more guns than ever. Hard to do a mass killing with just a knife as Japan and South Korea demonstrate.
I'm puzzled. Intuitively it seems that violence is violence; whether it results in murder or not is a matter of chance and luck. But it seems something has changed ?
I don't know for a fact, but for instance: Assault is a violent crime, but it entails the threat of violence, which does not need to be carried out in order for the charge of assault to stick.
Likewise, armed robbery is a violent crime, but again, nobody needs to get shot for someone to get convicted of armed robbery.
One hypothesis, and this is just a SWAG (scientific wild-assed guess), is that how it used to work is somebody pulls a gun and people put their hands up and let them do whatever (probably robbery). But these days, it's far more likely that they refuse, maybe pull out their own gun and the shooting starts and people get killed.
Your SWAG fits with reports of a big increase in gun ownership.
Gun ownership hasn't increased that much. Matter of fact, many gun crimes are with non owners. Your mumbling dialectical nonsense is part of the problem. Stop talking your book and look idiot.
Do more people own guns, or do gun owners have more than before?
Mostly the latter...
...But I want to know how much gun-owners have been emboldened?
Does this have to do with police officers not being held responsible? Or lesser crimes being held more stringently than murder?
More stringently? Lesser crimes are punished less stringently than ever or sometimes not at all
Do more people own guns, or do gun owners have more than before?
For decades it was entirely the latter, ie, the percentage of households who own firearms had been declining, partly driven by urbanization and rural depopulation.
My understanding is that this sadly has not been the case in recent (last 5-7?) years, perhaps driven by GOP evisceration of gun laws.
Another SWAG might be that, with hospitals overwhelmed by covid, the folks are somewhat more likely to die from gunshot wounds, stabbings, etc. than they would be absent that stress on the emergency system. As a result, the ratio of attempted murder to murder could have shifted a bit, resulting in an increase in the number of murders that could account for part of the increase.
This was started before the pandemic.
There's a secondary element, where people who experience violent crime may now be less likely to call the cops unless they absolutely have to, because how many reports do you have to see of a black person phoning the police for help and they end up having the police shoot them or arrest them on some utterly specious pretext?
Property and minor crimes I could buy. But violent crime? I think that's much more dubiously. (Most of the police shootings that led to outrage were when people were shot over minor crimes, sometimes as minor as a traffic stop).
Whether or not violence causes death is much more a matter of the nature of the violence than of chance and luck. For instance, if I slap your face with an open hand that's violence but it's EXTREMELY unlikely to be lethal. If I punch your face with a closed fist, that may be lethal but is only marginally more likely to cause death than the open hand slap. If I knock you down and stomp on you, that may be lethal, but is not really likely to be, although considerably more likely than the open hand slap.
I think that assaults that are not intended to kill but do so anyway are quite rare; not unheard of, by any means, but rare.
I don’t know. In my time, the two things that generated the overwhelming amount of murders (in New Orleans, where I was) were robberies gone wrong or drug related disputes (turf, failing to pat for drugs on consignment, rip offs). But the crack epidemic is long past and robbing is way down.
So I’m not sure that violence is violences interchangeable. It might be gang activity, including collateral damage. I looked on the DOJ website but couldn’t find a breakdown.
And most murders are committed with guns, but we know guns are not the problem.
/s
We need more Good Men.
The information is dated but less than 1/3 of murders involve a gun...
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That's hard to credit. It's pretty hard to kill someone (other than a much weaker person like a child) without a gun. We have plenty of murders here in Baltimore. The vast majority involve guns.
Crime and public safety are related, but different issues.
In particular violent crime in easier to measure (typically a victim or hospital will report the crime.
Public safety is a more vague concept based on the perception of crime. This category is influenced by the media and by personal experiences. I live near San Francisco. Events that historically would get a police response such as car break ins, or consistent shoplifting, have changed. The police will no longer respond to events that some believe to be crimes. We can debate if this change in policing is a good thing. However, I THINK this (the perception that the police have basically legalized some crimes) leads to a perception of higher crime
It would also lead to a lack of official statistics yes? If there is no police response there is nothing entered into the database. One might even go out on a limb and compare it to a lack of testing…
As I said, even SFPD and NYPD (who seems to be leading the league in obtuse laziness) probably respond to homicides. Plus, for almost all deaths occurring outside the presence of a medical doctor, the laws in most states require an autopsy so even in Chicago and NYC the cops have to at least show up and fill out some forms.
I don’t think “broken windows” is a viable explanation. I’m assuming even the cops in San Francisco (who are being paid lavishly to do god knows what will bestir themselves to at least come out and look at a dead body; perhaps even write a report.
Also, all of these crimes the cops can’t be bothered with are all prosecutable as misdemeanors. My feeling is that the prerequisite for effective crime fighting is breaking the police unions and getting rid of a lot of deadwood.
Isn't that progressove prosecutors not bothering to prosecute?
No. Police unions don’t get to make criminal justice policy and they don’t get to decide to unilaterally decriminalize certain crimes as a way of exerting political pressure. If the crime’s a low level thing, it’s entirely appropriate to send it to misdemeanor court.
But if, as the police claim, these situations are brought about by organized criminal gangs, it’s up to the police to investigate and build cases against the ringleaders. What we’re seeing isn’t something created by “progressive” prosecutors but rather by inept, lazy police work which is empowered by the reality that police unions are insulated from accountability.
The first and absolutely indispensable step in fighting crimes is to disband the police union and reinstate proper discipline and good work habits in police forces.
I’ve got no answers. Crazy people and criminals have access to deadly weapons. Which murders are the “extra” ones which are increasing? Domestic violence? Gangs? Mentally ill?
“A 61-year-old Brooklyn pastor was stabbed to death by her adult son in their shared Brooklyn home over the weekend, cops said.”
“Five people were arrested in connection to a wild, caught-on-video shootout in an affluent Rockland County neighborhood over the weekend. Sources told The Post that the suspects were part of a rap music video being filmed at 3 Turnberry Court, which had been rented on Airbnb.”
“CHICAGO -- Eighteen people were shot, four fatally, in Chicago gun violence over the weekend, police said.”
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shootings-violence-weekend-police/11525457/
Tell me… which of these could the police have prevented?
Police by themselves--not much...
But Chicago pays out millions each year due to police misconduct--and that misconduct fosters distrust in the community. A seven year old was killed by a stray bullet recently--and suspects were captured in a few days-, so that's a start. Maybe if we could get guns off the streets...
If you want to get guns off the streets you will end up needing to get guns out of homes. (Ie private ownership) Otherwise you have a reservoir of
virusguns remaining to leak out onto the streets.Nope. Because guns in homes doesn't even come close to the illegal trade driven semi and clipped semi's which are illegal. Your such a moronic idiot, you still don't get the connection.
I doubt many "guns" with the gang Rockford were legal. But morons like you still don't get it.
There is little appetite for funding or operating the outreach and social programs required to prevent violence. If a nice Christian woman can’t talk her own son out of killing her, nothing will. If she had tried to get help, what would that have looked like? Those two police officers in NY were killed by the son of a woman in similar difficulty.
That leaves the only acceptable action as harassment and harsh punishment. And that, as you point out, results in distrust. All we’ll ever do is clean up the mess and punish the murderers. Prevention is not possible.
“As long as we continue to perpetuate violence against them or not identify them as youth being at risk, we are not doing our due diligence to protect them,” she said. “A lot of them have experienced some kind of trauma and trauma looks different for different people. So, if you’re not able to acknowledge that, you’ll look at the behavior versus what happened to that individual that would create the behavior they are exhibiting.”
https://www.woodtv.com/news/kent-county/event-to-bring-light-to-school-discipline-rates-among-black-girls/
Who is traumatizing them? But it’s our lack of due diligence which is the problem? Ok.
That would be great. But programs that guns off the streets are then criticized as racist be the SJWs. NYC had the violent crimes until that did just that but all the lefties screamed racism so they disbanded it. The new mayor had a little common sense and brought it back.
Lefties??? Nope. Liberals. Understand the difference idiot. A eye gouge may educate yourself.
The only lefties pining for guns are the Weather Underground cosplayers from the Jacobin & intercept who go shooting with Alex Jones.
A negro's rage. Maybe socialist reeducation would help angry black men???
Why oh why does the racist comments continue?
Why do you keep feeding the troll?
Murders are hard numbers that don't depend on the rate that the public report crimes. We know that shoplifting isn't reported as much because, in some jurisdictions, the law or District Attorney's change in prosecution and sentencing guidelines means cases will be dropped or minimally charged. And so there are numerous instances where the shoplifter is never held in custody and is back on the streets to resume their practice. So why bother with the hassle of filing a report?
Your point is irrelevant. All crime is filed. The noticeable rise in black on black murders is pretty evident.
More racist comments.
Angry black men need to chill
...and more racist comments.
… and more troll-feed.
I disagree with this post. I am from Minneapolis and all that anyone talks about there is how carjackings have quadrupled in the past year or so. Then there’s a significant homeless problem which is second place for most talked about (even though the only change is that they are less often removed from public spaces).
I grant that carjackings are and will always be a small segment of all crime, but people vote based on fear. Being held at gunpoint, clocked in the face with the gun, then having your car stolen is scary. Maybe Minneapolis is a niche case but if one or so types of crime in many cities get a lot of attention then the overall decline might continue but the effect is the same. You can blame the media, but until they start making up crimes to write on then I find it hard to blame them
I think the homeless problem isn't near what they think. Even the car jackings are mostly very black gang related. Use your brain.
The carjackings really are scaring a lot of people, especially since they are happening in places that really had no carjackings before. Just across the river the two big murders on 7th street ( the quadruple murder and the mass shooting) freaked out a lot of people as well.
What is happening now is people no longer feel insulated from the risk. It is easy to ignore murders when they are between gang members or drug deals gone bad. Even domestic violence can often be ignored by the public, since most people do not fear their close relations. But people feel extremely vulnerable when the violence is targeted randomly.
What is NYC’s definition of “major crime” and has it remained constant since 2000?
The flip side of course would be wanting to see what the “minor crime” rate looks like over the same interval. And the same question about definition.
And I wonder how internet crime is counted.
In hexadecimal. To keep the number of digits low…
You know, I think one of the many problems with a racial "explanation" is that it doesn't actually explain anything at all. We have about the same number of black people and thus black males now as we did 5 years ago. Something changed, but it wasn't the number of black people.
Even granting that the increase is more among black people than white people (which is an unproven assertion - there's no data given, unlike the OP) it still doesn't explain anything. So, why are the people who are committing these crimes killing more people? It does not matter if they are black or white except to blame "them" and absolve "us", and wash our hands of it, and decry "those crazy cities, where there's so much crime".
There is absolutely nothing at all useful about this claim.
Other wealthy Wesiern countries like Canada, Australia, or Europe do not have this problem. What is the difference between them and them and the US that would lead to a vast increase in murders?
Less grumpy darkies???? Watch the difference in the way colored people act there vs here. Blacks are trained in America to be hateful and racist.