Homicides and assaults have seen a major uptick in America even as a major drop is occurring in robbery and rapes. The Washington Post. Homicides have increased 28% and assault by 9% over the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Most big cities have seen a drop in robbery and rapes with 73% of big cities seeing a drop in robberies and 86% seeing a drop in rape cases. But many big cities are seeing massive increases in homicides. The causes for this are unknown but many police blame the "Ferguson effect" where police are less willing to make arrests and investigate crimes due to fear of public backlash. The Coronavirus pandemic is also likely a factor as the virus has caused budgets to be slashed and has kept many youth out of school. Bail reform is also being blamed as violent criminals are no longer being held in many major cities and have committed crimes while waiting for trial.
My Comment:
One of my time killing hobbies is to listen to the police scanner for Green Bay Wisconsin, which is near where I live. Though Green Bay is a fairly sleepy smaller city, it too has seen a major uptick in criminal activity. For awhile there it seemed like there was a shooting every night, which is fairly shocking for a town that didn't use to have much in the way of violence.
Things have calmed down a bit and it is due to the police. They have gone out and investigated who was committing these crimes and they arrested some of them. The rest have gone to ground as they know that they could be arrested if they continue to try and shoot people. The police here formed a task force and actually did their jobs.
But I don't see that happening in the rest of the United States. People in Northeast Wisconsin support the police and generally don't give credence to the claims of police brutality given by Black Lives Matter and other activist groups. We did have a minor riot during the George Floyd unpleasantness but it was fairly pathetic. One gas station was looted and someone through a piece of metal at a police cruiser but that was it. And most people here were disgusted with even that.
In the real big cities though? I can't imagine the cops being proactive. Why on earth would they? If they actually go out and try and arrest someone and they don't want to cooperate you have to use force and if you use force and there is someone there with a cell phone then Black Lives Matter will show up and cost you your job, no matter how justified the use of force is. Cops are still out there doing their jobs but there is no chance of anyone taking any risks in this environment so that means proactive policing is off the table.
Hell, even the hippy-dippy community policing that my professors had a hard on for during my college days is impossible in this environment. How are you supposed to connect with the community when there are activists and rioters terrorizing the community? Much like people won't testify against the mafia because you end up in the river with cement shoes if you do, people won't help the police now in these big cities because if they do then BLM or Antifa will show up and make your lives miserable.
In short, neither the old school "broken windows" policing where cops crack down on small crimes in order to stop big ones, or the new school "community policing" where the cops try and make a genuine connection with the people they serve is going to work in this environment. The result is predictable, a major uptick in homicide and violent crime. Things like bail reform, which just seems like comic book levels of evil to me, are not helping things.
It's clear that the Ferguson effect isn't the only thing going on though. It's also pretty clear that the Coronavirus is screwing everything up as well. It's causing a lot of anger and financial distress and that will obviously lead to violence. Having the kids be out of school is getting them into trouble as well. And with many people either out of work or simply working for home, people have a lot of free time to get into trouble.
I think the elephant in the room though is that much of this violence is gang related and that has to do with America's drug trade. Much of this is basically warfare where gangs are trying to keep hold of their territories or expand them. Plus the inevitable cycle of revenge that happens when gangs war with each other. The problems above made this situation worse but it was here before 2020 and I haven't ever heard a good solution on how to fix it. Hell, we can't even be honest about who those gang members are, let alone have a real discussion about the causes and effects of the violence, due to the culture of political correctness we now have.
The good news is that robbery and rape are down across the board. This may seem counterintuitive but it makes sense to me. There are little chances to rob someone if people are for the most part staying at home and are avoiding people when they are out. And rape is mostly a social crime that is fairly hard to commit when everyone's social lives have been destroyed. These crimes were trending down from their highs in the 1990's regardless but the Coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this drop. I am guessing that we will see a spike in both once the big cities finally let their people out from the lockdowns but I am not expecting an explosion like we are seeing with homicides and assaults.
I do think that crime is going to be a major issue going forward. I do have to say that it's pretty funny to see an article from the Washington Post whining about the crime rate when the media has been bashing police for years now. If there was anything I learned from my years in college it's that there aren't any easy answers for crime and criminal justice. The damage that has been done in 2020 is going to be extremely hard to fix and a lot more deaths are going to happen along the way...
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