Quotes
Dallas, Texas: When I asked chief Garcia what explained the rise in crime in the first half of 2021 and its decline in the second half, he said, “It is morale. No plan works without officer morale. If morale is not at a certain level, there’s nothing I can do as chief to force policemen and women to make an investigative stop. They’ll only do so if they feel supported by the department and mayor.”
Former NYC Chief William Bratton says political leadership has had the biggest impact on the rise in crime. “[Police officers] are not effective because they are not being supported by political leadership … Political leadership has disrupted the criminal justice system that reduced crime for 25 years straight.”
A young Democratic member of Congress declared the “defund the police” movement “dead” on Thursday, and Black Democratic mayors from San Francisco to New York, Chicago to Washington, D.C., are moving to increase police budgets and end “the reign of criminals.”
Democratic strategist James Carville on crime: “If you cede something that your voters in particular encounter every day, then you’ve given up,” he said. “You’ve got to own this or this is going to own you.”
Author
Article (all quotes are edited for brevity)
In 2021, I wrote that the Crime Counter-Revolution Has Begun. Growing violence was destroying everything in its path. The progressive movement was increasingly coming under fire for an emphasis on the welfare of offenders rather than the protection of the public. The criticism of cops and the “defund the police” movement greatly impacted policing.
When I left law enforcement and attended college, a criminology professor stated that there’s no conclusive evidence that law enforcement reduces crime. “But remove them,” he said, “and see what happens.” Well, per the endless negative media coverage of policing indicting “all” cops for the wrongs of a few, we have done just that.
Progressives And Exploding Violence
There are endless reasons as to why we have exploding violence and fear of crime. Progressives and many in the criminological community will point to the availability of firearms or the pandemic or economic considerations or poverty as the reasons which all seem a bit silly because violence started increasing five years before the pandemic and the economy is begging people to take available jobs.
There are 390 million firearms in the US, approximately the same number during years of decreasing violence. Poverty exists regardless of the level of violence. The media loves to address “gun violence” when the great majority of violent crime does not involve firearms.
So if the reasons for devastating violence aren’t the number of firearms or economic distress or the pandemic (violent crime and serious violent crime started increasing in 2015), why has violent crime increased dramatically? Why have firearm and security sales skyrocketed? Why are people leaving cities? Why are lower-income minority communities being devastated?
It’s because cops are leaving by the thousands, cities don’t have the personnel to respond to 911 calls, and officers stopped being proactive for fear of being the focus of national media coverage for a split-second decision.
Defunding Cops Is The Major Reason For Increased Crime
Sixty-nine percent of respondents in a survey from Politico and Morning Consult said that increasing funding for law enforcement would decrease crime “a lot” or “some” while 22 percent said it would not decrease crime. Another 10 percent had no opinion. Respondents were also asked about potential reasons for rising violent crime rates in the United States. Overall, 49 percent said that they viewed defunding the police as a major reason for the uptick in violence.
Changing Policing
There was a massive defund the police movement now repudiated by most (all?) states and cities. But what message did it give to police officers? What alternatives to policing exist?
To address growing violence, progressives suggest economic programs and violence interrupters, and neither has a shred of independent research conclusively suggesting that they reduce crime. Violence interrupters are being murdered. Even social workers replacing cops have growing pains.
No one is suggesting that we shouldn’t try new initiatives as long as they are independently studied. No one is suggesting that financial incentives for distressed communities shouldn’t be offered. But data produced by advocates associated with these programs as to less crime routinely stretch the truth.
There have been massive media efforts and devastating riots and endless protests demanding that cops stop being proactive. It worked. Police officers throughout the country recoiled from the criticism. They respond to calls and do routine patrol but proactivity is now either very cautiously applied or nonexistent.
What Works-Proactive Policing
The only effort that indicates reductions in crime are proactive police strategies via the US Department of Justice and the National Academies of Sciences. Proactivity means that officers will take their own initiative to approach someone when they have the legal right to question or search. Proactive policing embraces a variety of tactics. But proactivity has major challenges and risks for everyone and after endless criticism, few officers are willing to engage.
Dallas, Texas is reducing crime based on proactive policing. “But for people in leadership on topics of public safety, you can’t let the politics dictate what you do. You can’t chase political favor on one side or the other with solutions that don’t work — of ‘defund the police’ on one side and ‘police can do no wrong,’ and dismissing concerns of reform advocates. You can end up on either extreme easily. You have to follow the data.”
The data states that proactive policing works. Nothing more, nothing less.
Former NYC police chief William Bratton says political leadership has had the biggest impact on the rise in crime. “[Police officers] are not effective because they are not being supported by political leadership … Political leadership has disrupted the criminal justice system that reduced crime for 25 years straight.”
Bratton is correct. Cops have undergone an endless series of harshly negative news reports, some of them deserved due to unethical and illegal use of force. But there are a million police officers and employees who did nothing wrong yet they are being forced into a collective national mindset by the media that they are somehow evil just for putting on the uniform. If true, why stay in policing?
Progressives Won?
We now have prosecutors refusing to bring charges for serious crimes. Bail reform makes the situation even more complex with endless stories of released offenders committing more violence.
Correctional populations are now at historic lows and are probably related to growing violence based on the criminal history of offenders and massive recidivism.
There is data suggesting that progressive prosecutors create more violence (forthcoming article).
We are currently going through “the great resignation” and employees by the millions are leaving their jobs. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, thousands of police officers are quitting. Per the Police Executive Research Forum, there’s a 63 percent reduction in police recruits. Cities throughout the country complain that they are so understaffed that they cannot respond to all 911 calls.
So the progressives have “won” on a wide variety of fronts. They insisted that the police be defunded. They demanded that the numbers incarcerated be cut dramatically. Candidate Biden called for the prison population to be cut in half.
But per Democratic strategist James Carville, per my interpretation of his comments, the progressive legacy is the destruction of metropolitan areas devastating low-income minority communities, people leaving cities, the elimination of economic development, sinking school scores, residential fear and PTSD, and massive rising violence.
Arrests
Arrests began declining in 2007 concurrent with a twenty-year-plus reduction in crime and high rates of incarceration. Starting in 2014-2015, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, violent crime and serious violent crime started increasing. Growth in crime ran concurrently with the Baltimore riots over the death of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown Ferguson and the unceasingly negative media coverage of policing.
Protests costing over two billion dollars in insurance claims erupted throughout the country. Regardless of the culpability of the individual police officers involved, there began a national conversation about everyone and everything in law enforcement. The negative publicity was endless as more use of force incidents occurred.
Police officers began to resent that “all” cops were targeted. They pulled back from proactive policing. They started retiring or quitting or left for more supportive environments. Family members thought that the American public was massively unfair to the vast majority of officers who do dangerous jobs judicially. They told their loved ones to get out, and to get out now.
Then came the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and massive national protests and the continued attack on all cops. The sharpness of the decline in arrests is apparent in the chart below.
Statisica.Com
Conclusions
Mayors across the country are now calling for more arrests promising police officers that they “have their backs.” Quite frankly, many (most?) don’t believe them.
Will cops return to proactivity? Hundreds of police officers have responded to similar articles firmly stating that they want the ground rules written in stone. Cops have heard this story before just to be crucified when they make a split-second mistake.
Per the Dallas, Texas statement above, “No plan works without officer morale. If morale is not at a certain level, there’s nothing I can do as chief to force policemen and women to make an investigative stop at 2 or 3 in the morning. They’ll only do so if they feel supported by the department and mayor.” At the moment, police morale could be compared to whale dung at the bottom of the ocean.
Communities need to take this issue head-on. It’s perfectly fine for residents to voice what they want from their police officers, which is why we have elected sheriffs. But communities need to take this responsibility seriously and not turn on cops for doing what they are asked to do. You can’t make arrests without the use of force. Force becomes ugly and necessary at times regardless of the judiciousness of officers.
Are cops perfect? Obviously not. But when I was a police officer, I came close to occasional lethal force. It was just freaking scary to understand that the right instantaneous decision under extreme duress was almost impossible to make every time. Most cops get this which is why they are leaving by the thousands before they become a household name.
Every cop in the country understands that they have to be judicious. Everyone willingly accepts that all citizens, regardless of who they are need to be treated with decency and respect which is why USDOJ data states that out of tens of millions of police-citizen interactions, the overwhelming majority state that the officer acted appropriately and force “or” the threat of force was used in two-three percent of encounters. Hardly the stereotype presented by critics and the media.
Regardless of everything police have been through, law enforcement remains one of the most respected institutions in the country. Regardless of demographics, policing has the trust of most Americans. People in high-crime communities are calling for more cops and greater proactivity.
But unless there is overwhelming evidence from politicians and community leaders that they understand the difficulties of proactive enforcement, nothing is going to change. Violence will continue to increase.
Are nurses leaving their jobs because of impossible workloads and a COVID complaining public? You know the answer. Public attitudes have consequences.
The data is abundantly clear, it’s low-income minority lives and communities that are being destroyed by violence along with larger metropolitan areas.
“Nutter, who is Black, has been on something of a crusade against Philadelphia’s reformist district attorney, Larry Krassner, who is white, after the top prosecutor said at a December news conference that “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.”
In a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed, Nutter wrote that “it takes a certain audacity of ignorance and white privilege to say that right now,” noting that people of color living in struggling parts of the city were often the ones most victimized by crime, NBC News.
It’s time for reasonable people to take charge of this issue before it’s too late.
See More
See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.
Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
An Overview Of Data On Mental Health at Mental Health And Crime.
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