6 ms·

Your partisan lens is showing here, rather blatantly, along with a heavily US-centric tilt. Do you think the spike in crime is driven by the pandemic? A GLOBA

by JPKab 5y ago

Your partisan lens is showing here, rather blatantly, along with a heavily US-centric tilt. Do you think the spike in crime is driven by the pandemic? A GLOBAL pandemic? Do you think there is a spike in crime in other nations as well? Or do you think that maybe, just maybe, a radical political movement casting all law enforcement officers as bigoted predators may have more to do with it? I vote Democratic, have my whole life, so I can bash the GOP all day long, but acting as if the incredibly massive, and corporate sponsored "Defund the Police" movement hasn't had an impact on crime is simply irrational and not supported by data. The spike in crime in US cities has not been universal, and the data clearly shows the cities which cut police budgets and predictably lost officers were the worst hit.

margalabargala 5y ago
What spike in crime? All data I've seen has shown marked, consistent decreases in crime. Could you link the data you refer to?
- cratermoon 5y ago
  > What spike in crime? Well, see, that's the subtle part. Is there really a crisis-level crime wave (in the US)? There was a sharp decrease in crime in the initial months after lockdowns went into affect, but a spike in gun purchases. As such, homicides, which in the US are overwhelmingly committed with guns, are definitely up. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/us-crime-rate-homcides-explained https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/us-crime-rat... But it's not anywhere near the historic rates of the '70s. You won't know that from reading the "violent crime collapse porn", which likes to point to absolute numbers (Most murders in 25 years!) while ignoring population and other factors. So my contention is that the collapse has been embraced by the reactionary Law and Order types to sow fear and uncertainty. This is partly has a pushback against the attempts to reform police and partly as a way to push for economic austerity as well as a return to racist criminal justice policies of the 80s.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    It's so hard to find good data on this in one place. On one hand there's a pandemic, on the other hand there's police protests, etc. Year by year numbers will be so lumpy that you could support tons of narratives, I bet. I couldn't find month-by-month numbers quickly for some of the cities in that article like Chicago or NYC, but Baltimore has some: https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2020 https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2020 Interestingly there, the biggest spike during 2020 happened in May 2020, so generally before the George Floyd killing and protests and "defund the police" movement.
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      That's a pretty cherry you've picked.
      - majormajor 5y ago
        Please be my guest, if you can find month-by-month shooting and/or homicide numbers for NYC/Chicago/LA/other cities that have seen big 2019->2021 homicide spikes. I spent a few minutes trying, but this one the only one I could find nicely broken down. The coarse yearly numbers tell us these crimes have increased, they don't let us see how they play out with regard to the different things that changed in 2020.
        cratermoon 5y ago
        looking at just 2019-2021 is cherry picking. Look back to the 70s and 80s if you really want to see that our current "crime wave" is nothing more than a made-up crisis for pushing a law-and-order agenda.
        majormajor 5y ago
        Looking at a potential inflection point where a trend reversed, to try to understand it (blip? new trend? change caused by change in underlying conditions?) is not cherry-picking. It's being responsible. "It was worse in the 70s" is "the climate is always changing"-level deflection. "It was worse in the 70s" is not a compelling argument for a political platform - having nothing meaningful to say in response to new events is exactly what would help "tough on crime" un-nuanced crackdown politicians elected.
- abduhl 5y ago
  I think it’s currently understood that crime rates in aggregate are down because people stayed home during the pandemic. So, burglary/mugging/drug dealing and other crimes that mostly take place when people are out have fallen. On the flip side, crimes driven by annoyances (for lack of a better term) or “fun” have gone up: murders, domestic violence, car jackings, commercial theft below the local prosecution limit, etc. While drug related crimes have gone down, it’s likely that criminalized drug behavior has actually gone up but just moved off the streets into homes. Along with decreased enforcement in light of the current cop hatred, this all means that reported crimes are down but criminal behavior may actually be up.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Where I live, the murders are about social media and “the rap game”. It used to be about drugs but weed is legal now and there are enough junkies to go around. The entire criminalization of drugs was invented by the Nixon White House as a pretext to oppress black people and “hippies”. There are official tapes and transcripts where it’s all described in great detail so this isn’t a conspiracy theory. The war on drugs had the side effect of obliterating the credibility of the police. Because its motivations were so blatant and its punishments so harsh, the greater public (yes this includes white people) see the police as causing more problems than they solve. In my city, murder clearance rates are well below 50% because nobody talks to the cops. They’re not going to solve any more of them by having more cops on the street; we have to think about policing differently because the war on drugs has distorted it beyond recognition.
    - thisiszilff 5y ago
      > The entire criminalization of drugs was invented by the Nixon White House as a pretext to oppress black people and “hippies”. There are official tapes and transcripts where it’s all described in great detail so this isn’t a conspiracy theory. When I've looked into this in the past, almost everything points to an alleged quote from John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon's advisors, with Dan Baum in 1994. The alleged quote wasn't published in Baum's 1996 book and only later appeared in 2016 for an article in Harper's Bazaar, 16 years after Ehrlichman's death. On its own it never seemed like compelling evidence, especially as Ehrlichman was dead when the quote was first published. Are there any other sources you are familiar with?
- Telemakhos 5y ago
  Here's some data from Chicago: https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_Daily_Public_CompStat_Report_08242021.pdf https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_D... Murder in particular is way up.
  - nosianu 5y ago
    That is one city with its own very specific problems in a large country. Are we picking only the data that fit our narrative now? What about all the other big cities? Starting point for an example: "Reported violent crime rate in the United States from 1990 to 2019" -- https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      If you really want to compare the so-called violent crime crisis with historical data, look back to the 70s and 80s, when crime was really bad. There's a ton of stuff out there looking back only two or three decades, which is like looking at global temperatures since the 90s and saying global warming is fake.
      - JPKab 5y ago
        "The ideological movement that I favor triggered a rise in crime, so I'm going to minimize that rise in crime by comparing it to overall crime levels several decades ago, after I first denied the rise was occurring in the first place" https://www.denverpost.com/denver-homicides/ https://www.denverpost.com/denver-homicides/ (Murders increased sharply in 2020) https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/07/27/violent-crime-surges-across-minnesota-with-record-murders https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/07/27/violent-crime-surge... https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bca-divisions/mnjis/Documents/2020-Minnesota-Uniform-Crime-Report.pdf https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bca-divisions/mnjis/Documen... https://www.news10.com/news/ny-news/nypd-shootings-up-166-fueling-nyc-crime-surge/ https://www.news10.com/news/ny-news/nypd-shootings-up-166-fu... (shootings up 166%, totally not a big deal according to you) Like I always tell climate deniers, it's not the temperature, it's the rate of change that's the problem. The Earth was far hotter in the time of the dinosaurs, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem that it's getting hotter now. You sound like them, but with crime instead of climate. And 2019-2020 saw the sharpest increase in murders since the FBI began collecting stats in the 60s according to this article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/homicide-rise-us-report/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/homicide-rise-us-report/in... Since the article doesn't support your thesis, feel free to denounce it as right wing propaganda, like you've done elsewhere in this thread. That's totally what CNN and the AP are known for, right?

by JPKab 5y ago

margalabargala 5y ago

What spike in crime? All data I've seen has shown marked, consistent decreases in crime. Could you link the data you refer to?

cratermoon 5y ago
> What spike in crime? Well, see, that's the subtle part. Is there really a crisis-level crime wave (in the US)? There was a sharp decrease in crime in the initial months after lockdowns went into affect, but a spike in gun purchases. As such, homicides, which in the US are overwhelmingly committed with guns, are definitely up. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/us-crime-rate-homcides-explained https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/us-crime-rat... But it's not anywhere near the historic rates of the '70s. You won't know that from reading the "violent crime collapse porn", which likes to point to absolute numbers (Most murders in 25 years!) while ignoring population and other factors. So my contention is that the collapse has been embraced by the reactionary Law and Order types to sow fear and uncertainty. This is partly has a pushback against the attempts to reform police and partly as a way to push for economic austerity as well as a return to racist criminal justice policies of the 80s.
- majormajor 5y ago
  It's so hard to find good data on this in one place. On one hand there's a pandemic, on the other hand there's police protests, etc. Year by year numbers will be so lumpy that you could support tons of narratives, I bet. I couldn't find month-by-month numbers quickly for some of the cities in that article like Chicago or NYC, but Baltimore has some: https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2020 https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2020 Interestingly there, the biggest spike during 2020 happened in May 2020, so generally before the George Floyd killing and protests and "defund the police" movement.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    That's a pretty cherry you've picked.
    - majormajor 5y ago
      Please be my guest, if you can find month-by-month shooting and/or homicide numbers for NYC/Chicago/LA/other cities that have seen big 2019->2021 homicide spikes. I spent a few minutes trying, but this one the only one I could find nicely broken down. The coarse yearly numbers tell us these crimes have increased, they don't let us see how they play out with regard to the different things that changed in 2020.
      - cratermoon 5y ago
        looking at just 2019-2021 is cherry picking. Look back to the 70s and 80s if you really want to see that our current "crime wave" is nothing more than a made-up crisis for pushing a law-and-order agenda.
        majormajor 5y ago
        Looking at a potential inflection point where a trend reversed, to try to understand it (blip? new trend? change caused by change in underlying conditions?) is not cherry-picking. It's being responsible. "It was worse in the 70s" is "the climate is always changing"-level deflection. "It was worse in the 70s" is not a compelling argument for a political platform - having nothing meaningful to say in response to new events is exactly what would help "tough on crime" un-nuanced crackdown politicians elected.
abduhl 5y ago
I think it’s currently understood that crime rates in aggregate are down because people stayed home during the pandemic. So, burglary/mugging/drug dealing and other crimes that mostly take place when people are out have fallen. On the flip side, crimes driven by annoyances (for lack of a better term) or “fun” have gone up: murders, domestic violence, car jackings, commercial theft below the local prosecution limit, etc. While drug related crimes have gone down, it’s likely that criminalized drug behavior has actually gone up but just moved off the streets into homes. Along with decreased enforcement in light of the current cop hatred, this all means that reported crimes are down but criminal behavior may actually be up.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Where I live, the murders are about social media and “the rap game”. It used to be about drugs but weed is legal now and there are enough junkies to go around. The entire criminalization of drugs was invented by the Nixon White House as a pretext to oppress black people and “hippies”. There are official tapes and transcripts where it’s all described in great detail so this isn’t a conspiracy theory. The war on drugs had the side effect of obliterating the credibility of the police. Because its motivations were so blatant and its punishments so harsh, the greater public (yes this includes white people) see the police as causing more problems than they solve. In my city, murder clearance rates are well below 50% because nobody talks to the cops. They’re not going to solve any more of them by having more cops on the street; we have to think about policing differently because the war on drugs has distorted it beyond recognition.
  - thisiszilff 5y ago
    > The entire criminalization of drugs was invented by the Nixon White House as a pretext to oppress black people and “hippies”. There are official tapes and transcripts where it’s all described in great detail so this isn’t a conspiracy theory. When I've looked into this in the past, almost everything points to an alleged quote from John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon's advisors, with Dan Baum in 1994. The alleged quote wasn't published in Baum's 1996 book and only later appeared in 2016 for an article in Harper's Bazaar, 16 years after Ehrlichman's death. On its own it never seemed like compelling evidence, especially as Ehrlichman was dead when the quote was first published. Are there any other sources you are familiar with?
Telemakhos 5y ago
Here's some data from Chicago: https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_Daily_Public_CompStat_Report_08242021.pdf https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_D... Murder in particular is way up.
- nosianu 5y ago
  That is one city with its own very specific problems in a large country. Are we picking only the data that fit our narrative now? What about all the other big cities? Starting point for an example: "Reported violent crime rate in the United States from 1990 to 2019" -- https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    If you really want to compare the so-called violent crime crisis with historical data, look back to the 70s and 80s, when crime was really bad. There's a ton of stuff out there looking back only two or three decades, which is like looking at global temperatures since the 90s and saying global warming is fake.
    - JPKab 5y ago
      "The ideological movement that I favor triggered a rise in crime, so I'm going to minimize that rise in crime by comparing it to overall crime levels several decades ago, after I first denied the rise was occurring in the first place" https://www.denverpost.com/denver-homicides/ https://www.denverpost.com/denver-homicides/ (Murders increased sharply in 2020) https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/07/27/violent-crime-surges-across-minnesota-with-record-murders https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/07/27/violent-crime-surge... https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bca-divisions/mnjis/Documents/2020-Minnesota-Uniform-Crime-Report.pdf https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bca-divisions/mnjis/Documen... https://www.news10.com/news/ny-news/nypd-shootings-up-166-fueling-nyc-crime-surge/ https://www.news10.com/news/ny-news/nypd-shootings-up-166-fu... (shootings up 166%, totally not a big deal according to you) Like I always tell climate deniers, it's not the temperature, it's the rate of change that's the problem. The Earth was far hotter in the time of the dinosaurs, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem that it's getting hotter now. You sound like them, but with crime instead of climate. And 2019-2020 saw the sharpest increase in murders since the FBI began collecting stats in the 60s according to this article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/homicide-rise-us-report/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/homicide-rise-us-report/in... Since the article doesn't support your thesis, feel free to denounce it as right wing propaganda, like you've done elsewhere in this thread. That's totally what CNN and the AP are known for, right?