Highlights
“Biden bucks liberals and tells Democrats to get tough on crime.”
“We are in a state of emergency right now.”
“I think that people are scared and people are uneasy and people are fed up.”
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
Editor’s Note
This article was created to support my 18th appearance on the nationally syndicated Armstrong Williams Show.
All quotes below are edited for brevity.
Opinion
Question: Is a lack of accountability for violent and repeat offenders creating massive problems for cities and metropolitan areas?
There is a never-ending discussion as to what controls or prevents crime in cities. After a near decade of controversy over police use of force and the introduction of alternative crime control efforts like violence interrupters or a social problems approach, an array of progressive cities seem to throwing in the towel and returning to more cops, more arrests, more incarcerations, and more accountability.
Their violence problems seem to be escalating with a massive loss of residents, visitors, businesses, economic opportunities, and declining school scores plus the debilitating emotional issues of residents who remain behind. Fear of crime is at an all-time high.
Six months into the year, more than 21,000 people have died because of gun-related injuries in the United States. Doctors and public health officials have a word to describe the rising number of people killed or hurt by guns in recent years: epidemic, National Public Radio.
Last year I wrote, Mayors Want More Arrests-Is This Our Last Chance To Control Crime? This article continues this discussion.
First, it should be noted that not all cities are facing escalating violence. There is some evidence suggesting that violence and homicides might be abating for some. After a national 50 percent increase in homicides and a 36 percent increase in aggravated assaults in major cities since 2019, there was bound to be a regression to the mean (or average).
But in many cities, violence seems to be increasing with all the resulting pitfalls of major hits to economies and residents.
Teens Violence
The discussion as to who’s committing acts of extreme violence like mass shootings, carjackings and homicides seems to be centering on juveniles and young adults. Police and city officials are suggesting that juveniles did not have consequences for their previous arrests leading young people to believe that there is no accountability for their crimes.
Nationally, the number of juveniles incarcerated in all U.S. adult prisons or jails declined from a peak of 10,420 in 2008 to a low of 2,250 in 2021. Juvenile arrests (along with adult arrests) have plummeted. Department of Justice data show that caseloads for delinquency offense cases in 2020 were at their lowest level since 2005.
Juvenile justice systems are there to serve the best interest of the child rather than a period of accountability via incarceration or probation. Any sense of traditional accountability requires charging young offenders as adults.
If the juvenile justice system is based on alternatives and social services, does this confuse a 17-year-old offender who rapes, murders, or carjacks? To many commenting on city crime, it does. A 17-year-old boy has been charged in connection with a mass shooting in South Baltimore that left two people dead and 28 injured, police said Friday, CBS News.
The Associated Press: What these (Editor’s Note-specific cities) and other recent mass shootings share in common is they all involve suspects in their teens, highlighting what can be a deadly mix of teenage bravado and impulsiveness with access to guns.
Questions Of Accountability
Questions of accountability are being debated in cities around the country and it’s somewhat surprising to see big city mayors and governors call for holding more criminal offenders accountable.
50 Cent is right. The rapper has called Los Angeles “finished” as the city reinstates its controversial zero-bail policy, releasing criminals back out on the street with no consequences. “LA is finished,” 50 Cent warned on his Instagram account last Friday. “Watch how bad it gets out there,” NY Post.
Cities At Risk
Editor’s Note: 2021 is the last year for “official” crime statistics from the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Both data sets are considered incomplete or have plans to improve their methodologies or levels of participation. Much of what’s below is based on an analysis of city crime data for 2022-2023.
Baltimore and Washington D.C. are well known as some of the most liberal cities in the country but their mayors seem to have turned from progressive to accountability-based strategies.
Baltimore, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and New York City are all on pace to break their 2021 levels of violent crime halfway through this year, with the nation’s largest city leading the group, according to crime data reviewed by Fox News. New York City has seen a 25.8% jump in violent crime at this point in 2022 compared to the same time in 2021, despite seeing a small decrease in the amount of homicides recorded in the city.
In a poll by the Pew Research Center, violent crime ranked as the third most important issue for registered voters in the congressional election, with 60% of the vote, tying with health care and trailing only the economy (77%) and gun policy (62%), USA Today.
Forbes 15 Most Dangerous Cities in the US in 2023:
In descending order, the most dangerous cities include: St. Louis, Missouri, Birmingham, Alabama, Baltimore, Maryland, Memphis, Tennessee, Detroit, Michigan, Cleveland, Ohio, New Orleans, Louisiana, Shreveport, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Little Rock, Arkansas, Oakland, California, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Kansas City, Missouri, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Richmond, Virginia.
What Cities Are Doing
Washington Post Headline, Baltimore: After the Baltimore shooting, Moore (Editor’s Note-The Governor) calls for more police, tougher sentences.
ABC News on Washington, D.C.: Politicians in the nation’s capital are expected on Tuesday to pass what is being called an emergency public safety bill to address rising crime rates in the city. As of Monday, homicide in Washington was up 17% year-to-date compared to 2022, while reported robberies were up 52% and motor vehicle thefts were up 117%, according to police statistics. “We are in a state of emergency right now. … And like in any emergency, we have to act like it and we have to act urgently as a government to address the problem that we’re seeing.”
CBS News on New York City: Despite a violent Fourth of July holiday weekend, the number of shootings in New York City decreased in each of the last 13 weeks, according to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). For the first half of 2023, shootings are down 25% compared to the same time period a year ago. So far in 2023, nearly 200 fewer people have been shot in the nation’s largest city compared to the first six months of 2022.
The drop coincides with the historic number of gun-related arrests (emphasis added). In June 2023, police made 345 arrests resulting in 300 firearms seized for the month. Overall, NYPD officers have seized 3,424 guns and made 2,162 gun arrests through the first six months of 2023.
Editor’s Note: New York’s Mayor Adams has invested heavily in proactive police strategies. Then there’s perhaps the most controversial component of Adams’ gun violence strategy: Neighborhood Safety Teams, a revamped version of a plainclothes anti-crime unit that was disbanded in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests.
From The Crime Report, Chicago: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (Editor’s Note-since replaced) indicated in a recent closed-door meeting that Chicago police leaders will lose their jobs if they can’t bolster arrest numbers, clear more murders, and get officers to engage more with city residents, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
CNN on San Francisco: I think that people are scared and people are uneasy and people are fed up. But that’s different than saying OK, we’re just gonna hire more cops or OK, we’re going to just do something simple. These are complicated problems. And San Francisco can’t solve some of America’s problems.
Politico: It’s Not Just The US–Growing Drug Markets in the EU: Faced with a worsening situation, EU leaders and law enforcement chiefs are ramping up their efforts to combat the gangs’ onslaught. In 2021, a massive sting operation coordinated across multiple countries and focused on encrypted phones led to some 800 arrests, many of them in Europe. But leaders need to make the fight against organized crime an even bigger priority if they want to avoid citizens losing trust in the system, warned De Bolle. “We are in a very difficult situation,” she said. “We are behind.”
Criminal Histories Ignored?
The examples of cities returning to an arrest-prosecution-
The 369,200 persons admitted to state prison in 34 states had an estimated 4.2 million prior arrests. Persons admitted to state prison had a median of nine prior arrests. 78 percent of inmates had previous incarcerations. Forty-two percent had 5-10 or more incarcerations. 62 percent were violent, Bureau Of Justice Statistics.
Conclusions-A Tougher Approach?
1. Biden bucks liberals and tells Democrats to get tough on crime. President Joe Biden’s decision Thursday on a local crime law sends a national message to fellow Democrats about how he believes they should address Republican criticism of the nation’s rising crime rates.
Democrats have focused predominantly on police reform since the George Floyd protests reignited a national debate over race and law enforcement three years ago. But rising violent crime rates and growing perceptions of unease in major cities have prompted a chorus of party strategists and officials to call for a tougher approach to counter Republican attacks.
2. So, Democrats must dig themselves out of a hole on crime. Most voters favor a crackdown on both crime and abusive policing, but vanishingly few support a stance that’s seen as anti-police, The Hill.
3. The steps he has taken so far, however, have left some concerned that New York hasn’t learned from its past battles with violent crime. Even with the city far safer than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, critics say the mayor is falling back on old so-called “tough-on-crime” strategies while neglecting other strategies that worked in the 2010s to give the city its second historic drop in crime, The Guardian.
So what to make of all of this? Are cities returning to a tougher stance on crime and violence? Does this apply to juveniles responsible for so much of our violence? The obvious answer is a qualified yes. The most potent data as to reducing crime remains proactive policing. Everything else is speculative with little good, independent, replicated research indicating that alternatives work.
But time is running out for many cities. People are leaving and economies are being destroyed. There will come a point where the best available evidence suggests that police tactics and holding criminal offenders accountable is our current best option.
As stated above, “Leaders need to make the fight against organized crime an even bigger priority if they want to avoid citizens losing trust in the system.”
The solution to Oakland’s persistent safety problems, Scott said (Editor’s Note-a community organizer) is to vote for new leadership who will crack down on crime.
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