We have all been duped by politicians, Police, and their corrupt Unions into believing that hiring more officers is the solution to the perception of growing or escalation in violent crime statistics.
In many cases, the fear and apprehension ginned up by politicians about increases in violent crime do not match the real data. Nevertheless, with a large part of the population steeped in the romanticized Hollywood idea of policing, everyone is forced to dole out more taxes to hire more police, which produces no recognizable dividend.
Republicans have used the smokescreen of escalating violent crime to generate fear among white voters. Of course, many of these people do not read or have the comprehension skills to think for themselves. The way the narrative is framed is that Black criminals in large cities are on a tear; they must be stopped before they devour the fragile and innocent white population.
When the narrative is framed that way, there is no need for it to be factual; entrenched racial bigotry is enough to get them to do whatever the party wants, including raising taxes to hire more police officers.
Democrats, for their part live in fear of being branded weak on crime, so they too run on the fictitious idea that violent crime [must] be contained, and the way to do it is to hire more officers and continue to militarize the police.
This plays right into the hands of the corporate powers who need the police, which has become a private army beholden to those who control the ‘prison industrial complex.’
There needs to be an understanding that people kill who they are around. Blacks kill Blacks. Whites kill whites, and so on. At the same time, when we look at crime data, the greatest threat to America does not come from Blacks killing Blacks in underserved communities. It does not come from Islamic terrorists seeking to exact Jihad on America. The greatest threat posed to American security comes from the very people who frame themselves as patriots. People who would have you believe that attacking the United States House of Representatives, destroying property, and shitting in the hallways are acts of patriotism.
From this group comes young men who feel a sense of entitlement, and when they are not allowed to extract what they feel is owed them, they go out and kill, usually slaughtering defenseless children, people of color in places of worship, supermarkets, movie theaters, and other public places. Young white males generally carry out those killings.
It is generally understood that no matter how wealthy a society is, some people will decide to engage in criminal conduct. In fact, even rather wealthy people with enormous resources are sometimes drawn to the lure of the dark side. Some become wealthy by evading the long arms of the law because of their skin color; others of a different hue are not so lucky. The prisons and cemeteries are filled with the bodies and remains of the latter.
In January 2012, the conservative publication The Christian Science Monitor noted: The last time the crime rate for serious crime – murder, rape, robbery, assault – fell to such low levels, gasoline cost 29 cents a gallon and the average income for a working American was $5,807.……That was 1963.
In the past 20 years, for instance, the murder rate in the United States has dropped by almost half, from 9.8 per 100,000 people in 1991 to 5.0 in 2009. Meanwhile, robberies were down 10 percent in 2010 from the year before and 8 percent in 2009.
The report went on, however: Despite strong evidence of crime dropping over recent decades, the public sees the reverse. “Recent Gallup polls have found that citizens overwhelmingly feel crime is going up even though it is not,” says Professor Fox. “This is because of the growth of crime shows and the way that TV spotlights the emotional. One case of a random, horrific shooting shown repeatedly on TV has more visceral effect than all the statistics printed in a newspaper.”
That report also went on to credit technology and what it characterized as more effective policing. I disagree then, as I do now. Police had no idea what caused the decades-long drop in crime.
The fact is that since the 1980s, there has been a revolutionary change across America with the advent of the internet and the ushering in of the digital age. As new opportunities abound, people’s lives have been exponentially changed for the better, at least for a few decades.
Unfortunately, like everything else, there is a downside to the growth the nation experienced, beginning largely during the Clinton years, through and despite Bush and through the Obama years.
The COVID pandemic changed that trajectory, and we are back to the perception that the sky is falling, so we need more police.
If the growth of crime shows on television and the way TV spotlighted the emotional was a factor during the 1980s, imagine what social media has done in amplifying crime stories today and why there is the perception that crime is going up.
It is exactly what powerful police unions want us to think. The NYPD, the nation’s largest police gang, is very happy with the perception that the sky is falling, so more money is made available to purchase new toys like more Robos controlled by artificial intelligence, drones, and all kinds of gadgets. And, of course, the obligatory more police bodies.
In the meantime, homelessness continues to increase among the poor in major cities, usually run by Democrats who fell for the hokie doke of building out large police departments. Or the fake Democrats like the wolf in sheep’s clothing in New York City who still thinks he is a cop.
All of this, while the large behemoth of a police force 37,000 strong swarms poor, underserved minority communities among the city’s 8.5 million residents and arbitrarily stops and frisks men as if the laws and their constitutional rights mean nothing.
In the Subway, the homeless lives on the trains, and white vigilantes kill a homeless man who asks for food. All around the city, poor homeless people sleep on benches at the sides of buildings.
No one cares about the poor, but they keep hiring more cops.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.