46 ms·

"It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing." That's how they ran Baltimore for a while. Great improvement in

"It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing." That's how they ran Baltimore for a while. Great improvement in metrics make a good show even if the real situation is not good. Or go the other way: arrest more and more people for more and more trivial offenses. Number of arrests going up that way looks good but in reality it's useless.

irishcoffee 8y ago
Looking at Baltimore as a good example of how to do anything right is a bad idea. During the riots it took the then-mayor much longer than it should have to reach out to the Governor for help. Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Say what you will about Ed Norris, but he was an incredibly effective commissioner until he was removed from office.
- adventured 8y ago
  > Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Baltimore is in a class with about half a dozen other US cities for being an exceptional disaster. The entire city should be federalized and cleaned up top to bottom. Compare it to functional or semi-functional, prosperous cities like Seattle, San Diego, Austin, New York, Boston or even Boise Idaho. Seattle had 19 murders in 2016. Baltimore had 318, or 51 per 100k (with a slightly smaller population than Seattle). That's almost a warzone. It compares to cartel ravaged countries in Latin America. There's no excuse for it and nobody will do anything about it. There's only one possible solution given the extreme incompetence: the federal authorities must step in, take over the city and stop the slaughter no matter the financial expense.
  - irishcoffee 8y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree.
  - moosey 8y ago
    The disaster that is Baltimore is largely caused by federal drug policy. Federal drug policy is also largely responsible for a number of other dark patterns that we see in the US: Militarized and corrupt police, ghettos, and a massive prison population. EDIT: To clarify, "The Color of Law" and "The New Jim Crow" cover the ways that we have made sure that POC are primary police targets in the US. I further submit that we intentionally create lawless zones for POC to live in so that they can be harassed by police, and that the war on drugs was the perfect cover to do so. There is enough evidence of this that I don't think I need to go nuts explaining it. Cities with similar demographics will have similar problems, because it has been designed to work that way.
    - foozed 8y ago
      thank you so much for this comment - what a relief to see this among all of the "idc about statistics, my observations tell me crime is way up" and "crime is only down because of prop 47"...
- irishcoffee 8y ago
  https://baltimore-cbslocal-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/baltimore.cbslocal.com/2019/03/21/mayor-pugh-speaks-out-amid-healthy-holly-umms-controversy-im-not-perfect/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fbaltimore.cbslocal.com%2F2019%2F03%2F21%2Fmayor-pugh-speaks-out-amid-healthy-holly-umms-controversy-im-not-perfect%2F https://baltimore-cbslocal-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/baltim...

irishcoffee 8y ago

Looking at Baltimore as a good example of how to do anything right is a bad idea. During the riots it took the then-mayor much longer than it should have to reach out to the Governor for help. Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Say what you will about Ed Norris, but he was an incredibly effective commissioner until he was removed from office.

adventured 8y ago
> Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Baltimore is in a class with about half a dozen other US cities for being an exceptional disaster. The entire city should be federalized and cleaned up top to bottom. Compare it to functional or semi-functional, prosperous cities like Seattle, San Diego, Austin, New York, Boston or even Boise Idaho. Seattle had 19 murders in 2016. Baltimore had 318, or 51 per 100k (with a slightly smaller population than Seattle). That's almost a warzone. It compares to cartel ravaged countries in Latin America. There's no excuse for it and nobody will do anything about it. There's only one possible solution given the extreme incompetence: the federal authorities must step in, take over the city and stop the slaughter no matter the financial expense.
- irishcoffee 8y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree.
- moosey 8y ago
  The disaster that is Baltimore is largely caused by federal drug policy. Federal drug policy is also largely responsible for a number of other dark patterns that we see in the US: Militarized and corrupt police, ghettos, and a massive prison population. EDIT: To clarify, "The Color of Law" and "The New Jim Crow" cover the ways that we have made sure that POC are primary police targets in the US. I further submit that we intentionally create lawless zones for POC to live in so that they can be harassed by police, and that the war on drugs was the perfect cover to do so. There is enough evidence of this that I don't think I need to go nuts explaining it. Cities with similar demographics will have similar problems, because it has been designed to work that way.
  - foozed 8y ago
    thank you so much for this comment - what a relief to see this among all of the "idc about statistics, my observations tell me crime is way up" and "crime is only down because of prop 47"...
irishcoffee 8y ago
https://baltimore-cbslocal-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/baltimore.cbslocal.com/2019/03/21/mayor-pugh-speaks-out-amid-healthy-holly-umms-controversy-im-not-perfect/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fbaltimore.cbslocal.com%2F2019%2F03%2F21%2Fmayor-pugh-speaks-out-amid-healthy-holly-umms-controversy-im-not-perfect%2F https://baltimore-cbslocal-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/baltim...