I think that Jason L. Riley’s Wall Street Journal column has it about right:
So long as blacks are committing more than half of all murders and robberies while making up only 13% of the population, and so long as almost all of their victims are their neighbors, these communities will draw the lion’s share of police attention. Defunding the police, or making it easier to prosecute officers, will only result in more lives lost in those neighborhoods that most need protecting.
There’s nothing wrong with having a debate about better policing strategies, how to root out bad cops, the role of police unions and so forth. But that conversation needs perspective and context, and the press rarely provides it. People are protesting because the public has been led to believe that racist cops are gunning for blacks, yet the available evidence shows that police use of deadly force has plunged in recent decades, including in big cities with large populations of low-income minorities. In the early 1970s, New York City police officers shot more than 300 people a year. By 2019 that number had fallen to 34.
Part of the confusion stems from attempts to equate any racial disparities with racism, which is as mistaken as equating age and gender disparities with systemic discrimination. Young people are incarcerated at higher rates than older people, and men draw more police attention than women. Is something fishy going on here, or do such outcomes simply reflect the fact that young men are behind most violent crimes? When journalists break down police behavior by race but don’t do the same for criminal behavior, you’re not getting the whole story.
Advocates of “defunding the police” are quick to point to success stories but less eager to note that after the police were defunded in Baltimore five years ago black homicides shot up. In Chicago murders of black people are inversely correlated with the number of black people shot and killed by police, not that I’m advocating it.
But you would almost think that black genocide were the objective of those imagining a U. S. with more social workers and fewer police officers. I guess you can’t make an omelet with breaking black eggs.
Take Chicago, please. How convinced are you really that 10% more or 10% less police will make a difference? When interviewed what minorities say, or at least I think they say, is that they dont call the police anyway since they dont trust them. Given Chicago’s history it would seem they have good reason to not trust the police. Its almost as if people who want more police dont care whether the murders continue.
Steve
I think that’s right and I also think that the onus is on police to foster trust under Chicago’s circumstances. That doesn’t mean that the lack of trust is not an error.
In Chicago what will happen if there’s a serious move to defund the police is that the city will still be on the hook to pay the pensions of the officers who are laid off, retire, or quit. Little money will be saved and much of what will be saved will be siphoned off as graft by the organizations that will receive grants.
I can’t find the link right now, but I recently read there aren’t many more cops than there used to be, but the amount of support and administration has increased dramatically, similar to what’s happened in education.
Gammon’s Law. “In a bureaucratic system, increase in expenditure will be matched by fall in production.” It’s also happened in health care.
I live in a city that ranks high on violent crimes per capita and on racial economic disparity. The crime is concentrated where poor African-Americans live. Each of my kids have had a classmate with an older sibling that was shot and killed in the last five years. I don’t worry much about crime, and our kids can wander in our neighborhood until curfew.
There have been on police killings of African-Americans here, there was one white schizophrenic who was killed in a hold, after his parents called the police for protection from him. There have been recent rallies, graffiti that complains ‘they’re killing us,’ but very little associated crime. When one organizer was asked why these protests have been non-violent, she said something like ‘they know us; and we know them.’ It did not come across as a ringing endorsement, just that the relationship was not broken. Some police officers crossed over and joined some of the demonstrations. This seems to be an anecdotal support for more community policing.
Watching the protesters escalating demands, Washington and Jefferson memorials now must come down. Pelosi and Schumer in African garb, groveling before Blacks who spurned their self flagellation, it’s clear to me this will not end well. Especially for Black people.
They are rejecting the social contracts, who wants to live among such people?
They will always appear to be 50 percent of an integrated nation in entertainment and advertising. But again, those who can will move away from their reckless and dangerous behavior, and apparent hostility.
New info on the George Floyd death, of the four officers one had been on the force four days and another three days.
More and more it looks like a personal grudge on the part of Officer Chauvin.