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Eliminating Crime Requires Much More Than An Equipped Police Department

Crime is soci­etal; it is a prod­uct of the con­struct of the par­tic­u­lar soci­ety in which it is occur­ring. 
Crime gen­er­al­ly thrives in sit­u­a­tions in which peo­ple are denied the basic ameni­ties of every­day liv­ing. Usually, when they are unable to work or source jobs that pay a liv­able wage.
On the oth­er hand, crime thrives when peo­ple have jobs and homes and are real­ly not too bad­ly off, but soci­ety makes it easy for those with the pre­dis­po­si­tion to com­mit crimes.
View of parts of down­town Chicago

With the most sophis­ti­cat­ed polic­ing tech­niques avail­able to law enforce­ment offi­cers, crimes, includ­ing vio­lent crimes, will per­sist and grow if cer­tain mixed com­po­nents are left unad­dressed.
The city of Chicago police depart­ment in Illinois is the sec­ond-largest munic­i­pal police depart­ment in the United States. It has about 12,244 offi­cers behind only the New York City Police Department.  Chicago has a pop­u­la­tion of 2,716,450.

Despite hav­ing the largest police depart­ment in the Midwest and all of the trade’s sophis­ti­cat­ed accou­ter­ments, the city of Chicago has one of the high­est homi­cide rates and vio­lent crime in the nation.
This is not unique to Chicago’s city; the same is true of Detroit, Michigan, and many oth­er cities the length and breadth of the United States.


So you ask, “If the police depart­ments across the coun­try are so well equipped and staffed, why are there so many killings in the United States each year”?
If you ask that ques­tion, it means you are think­ing, so I will try to address two fac­tors that con­tribute to the over 33,000 gun killings in the US each year.

Poverty and the lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties and a stri­dent refusal to accept that there are far too many guns in the hands of far too many peo­ple who should ‘t have them have seri­ous­ly influ­enced the con­tin­u­a­tion of vio­lent crimes in the United States.
During the 1970s to ear­ly 1980s, New York City was allowed to slide into depres­sion; vio­lent crime was ram­pant. Many busi­ness­es fled to oth­er areas more con­ducive to their bot­tom line.
New York City

After Mayor David Dinkins took over, he ini­ti­at­ed some­thing called “safe cities, safe streets”. This was.” a mul­ti-faceted approach aimed at increas­ing the num­ber of cops on the streets while improv­ing police-com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions.
The oth­er was pros­e­cut­ing minor offens­es, there­by lim­it­ing the process of small­er crim­i­nals grad­u­at­ing to larg­er, more vio­lent crimes.


A cleanup of the city began, and busi­ness­es start­ed to return. Rudolph Guliani suc­ceed­ed David Dinkins; he con­tin­ued Dinkins’ pol­i­cy and put them on steroids.
Getting caught with a gun in New York City meant manda­to­ry prison time, on the gun charge, as well as for the ammu­ni­tion.
Violent crimes plum­met­ted in NYC, as busi­ness­es returned, so did the jobs.
Today NYC is one of the world’s safest big cities.

It seems that the take­away, at least to me, is that when we tack­le the issues of pover­ty by pro­vid­ing jobs to peo­ple, ensure that we keep unreg­is­tered guns out of the hands of peo­ple. Most of all, ensure that offend­ers are duly penal­ized; the out­comes are positive.

Kingston, Jamaica — Aerial view of Kingston’s uptown area, called New Kingston.

If we co-opt the fore­gone and apply them to Jamaica, a coun­try with the pop­u­la­tion of Chicago, Illinois, we may be able to gar­ner the accom­plished results of New York City.
Today Chicago Illinois, remains one of America’s most dan­ger­ous and vio­lent cities because those who run the city failed to learn from the prin­ci­ples applied in New York City.
In Jamaica’s case, there is an (a) seem­ing lack of under­stand­ing of what it takes to reduce and ulti­mate­ly elim­i­nate vio­lent crimes, and (b) an absence of will to get the job start­ed.
Instead, they blame the police for some­thing far out­side the scope of what the police can accom­plish with­out exec­u­tive input.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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