Crime Is ‘Down’

 

In the mid-’90s, I was assigned to a beat in SE Albuquerque with a large attractive nuisance. This was a huge park with rolling hills only a couple of blocks from Interstate 25. Because of its location and geography, the park was a magnet for all sorts of disorderly and illegal activity. I made it my personal project to aggressively patrol the area on the nights that I worked.

Unfortunately, my efforts resulted in failure. Crime skyrocketed in the park when I worked. Almost every night there were one or more offenses recorded in and around the park: DWIs, criminal damage, drug and liquor offenses, public indecency, outstanding warrants, park rules violations. Meanwhile, on the days I didn’t work only a small handful of crimes such as auto burglaries and thefts, aggravated batteries and homicides took place.

Now, y’all may have heard the good news that most Crime is Down! True, homicides are up, but property crimes are way down. Yay! The government is doing something right!

All of this is nonsense, of course. Crime in my park did not skyrocket, recorded crime did. The offenses listed above were documented because I patrolled the park and made an arrest or issued a citation for every violation that I observed. If I had not been there, the crimes would have still occurred. The drunk doing donuts on the grass at two in the morning would have driven away unhindered. A parks-and-rec employee may have noticed the damage days or weeks later, but probably would not have reported it to the police. A gathering of boisterous inebriates might be called in by a neighbor, but that’s a pretty low priority. By the time an officer was dispatched, they’d probably be gone. Unless things got really out of hand and someone reached for a knife or a gun.

In fact, crime probably decreased as a result of my efforts. I’d bet that just the fact that I was driving around, walking through the park or riding my bike in the area kept the riff-raff subdued. In the six months that I was assigned to that beat, not a single felony occurred in the park on a day I worked. On the days I didn’t, there were several, including at least one homicide.

The lamestream media has been trumpeting the “decline” in total crime, but, again, it is just a decline in reported crime. Let’s look at the nearest city run by Demoncrats near me: Austin, TX. The boobs in the city council took money away from the police department. Academy classes were canceled while officers were resigning and retiring in droves, resulting in manpower shortages. Specialized units, including traffic and crime-interdiction squads, were disbanded to “put more officers on the streets.” The result was predictable: Austin has recorded a record-high number of homicides already, with almost two months left to go in the year. Also, there has been a record number of traffic fatalities, having nothing to do with the elimination of the traffic enforcement units.

But the silver lining in all of this is that total Crime is Down! Why, even the chief of police is saying it:

Austin officials say crime is on the decline throughout the city

Meanwhile, in the real world, here is what is really happening:

Austin business owner repeatedly burglarized — here’s why she’s not reporting it anymore

It turns out that the police department doesn’t send out officers to investigate “minor” crimes anymore. Even when there are suspects, the department is telling people to do their own investigations:

North Austin business owner was told by police to gather his own evidence after a burglary at his store

If you read the story, the owner found a suspect after posting a video of the crime on social media. He turned that information over to the police and. . .so far, nothing has happened. How many times does this happen before crime victims get the message that reporting crime is not worth the effort?

So holding your fingers in your ears and saying “Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, I can’t hear you,” to people reporting crime works. Crime is Down!

California, literally the bleeding edge of innovation, has another way of reducing crime. Prosecutors have stopped going after “minor” crimes and, coincidentally, thefts under $1,000 are now “minor” crimes. This has resulted in criminal gangs looting retail stores. For some reason, many large retail chains have started closing some of their locations in California. You can’t steal from a store that doesn’t exist, so Crime is Down!

Imagine that you’re an officer who has the time and inclination to aggressively patrol problem areas in his beat the way I did with the park in Albuquerque. He’ll be called in and raked over the coals because of the increase in crime while he’s working.

Even if what we are being fed is true and the decrease in nonviolent crime is real, the whole narrative is still repulsive. Our betters are saying “Sure, there’s a good chance you’ll be murdered (or die in a crash) due to our policies, but it’s a lot less likely that someone will break into your shed and steal a lawnmower.”

I’m sure the lawnmower will provide a comfort to your grieving family.

Published in Policing
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  1. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    I was just thinking … if snatching something out of a store and running isn’t a crime anymore, what is the status of snatching something out of someone else’s hands? One could just loiter around the exit, wait for someone to come running by, and help oneself.

    • #1
  2. JoelB Member
    JoelB
    @JoelB

    This is the news behind the news. No cops, no crimes. We need more like you, Jose.

    • #2
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Percival (View Comment):

    I was just thinking … if snatching something out of a store and running isn’t a crime anymore, what is the status of snatching something out of someone else’s hands? One could just loiter around the exit, wait for someone to come running by, and help oneself.

    Well, you’d probably be arrested and prosecuted for “hate-crime” if the thief that you stole from is a “person of color.”

    • #3
  4. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    I was just thinking … if snatching something out of a store and running isn’t a crime anymore, what is the status of snatching something out of someone else’s hands? One could just loiter around the exit, wait for someone to come running by, and help oneself.

    Well, you’d probably be arrested and prosecuted for “hate-crime” if the thief that you stole from is a “person of color.”

    Cops aren’t going to show up. They’ve been defunded.

    • #4
  5. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    I was just thinking … if snatching something out of a store and running isn’t a crime anymore, what is the status of snatching something out of someone else’s hands? One could just loiter around the exit, wait for someone to come running by, and help oneself.

    Well, you’d probably be arrested and prosecuted for “hate-crime” if the thief that you stole from is a “person of color.”

    You know what else is a hate crime? Closing stores. 

    • #5
  6. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    When the Nixon administration passed out a lot of money thru the LEAA to computerize crime data, recipients and elected officials complained that crime rates appeared to increase.

    Retail targets closed, mugging targets staying home.. the pandemic was likely bad for crime.

    • #6
  7. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    When the Nixon administration passed out a lot of money thru the LEAA to computerize crime data, recipients and elected officials complained that crime rates appeared to increase.

    Retail targets closed, mugging targets staying home.. the pandemic was likely bad for crime.

    Nope. Closed and boarded-up stores and restaurants were looted time and time again. Many of those businesses closed permanently. Downtown Seattle has numerous empty storefronts. 

    • #7
  8. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    If a business doesnt file a police report for burglary – does insurance pay?

    • #8
  9. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Percival (View Comment):

    I was just thinking … if snatching something out of a store and running isn’t a crime anymore, what is the status of snatching something out of someone else’s hands? One could just loiter around the exit, wait for someone to come running by, and help oneself.

    Depends. if you snatch something form a White Oppressor it’s just Social Justice and Reparations.  A Trans Bipoc and it’s a Hate Crime and punishable by death by firing squad.

    • #9
  10. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    I seem to recall this was one of the issues in New York city in the 1970 s .  Official crime statistics didn’t look too bad because people just didn’t report crimes, Since nothing would be done. 

    • #10
  11. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Criminals will take advantage of the lack of a police presence, and the lack of prosecution for committing a crime. Businesses that are subject to repetitive shoplifting as their losses increase will start laying off employees to cover their losses. Payroll, to include matching Social Security taxes is expensive.  They will increase prices, or at some point close their doors when the losses are so great that there is no hope of making any profit. Their business insurance will increase, or they will no longer be able to obtain insurance.

    Shoplifters will become more aggressive and will use force to prevent their looting, any force or expressed intent to use force becomes a robbery, but the Woke Soros prosecutors will not seek bail, or prosecute those crimes. Eventually those prosecutors will prosecute police officers if they use force to stop a shoplift that became violent, to include resisting arrest.

    • #11
  12. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    When the Nixon administration passed out a lot of money thru the LEAA to computerize crime data, recipients and elected officials complained that crime rates appeared to increase.

    Retail targets closed, mugging targets staying home.. the pandemic was likely bad for crime.

    Nope. Closed and boarded-up stores and restaurants were looted time and time again. Many of those businesses closed permanently. Downtown Seattle has numerous empty storefronts.

    I wonder how they report that.  Is an hour’s looting by multiple thieves a single crime?  If there is nothing left to steal but they break in repeatedly is that listed as separate break-ins?  The geek in me would like to know.  A very long time ago, I had a summer job crunching crime data as a contractor working on a consulting contract with New Jersey.  How (and whether) jurisdictions report crime is was rather subjective in those days.  

    When I was looking for side effects of the pandemic and of the policies to deal with it I looked at crime stats nationally and at home.  Property crime did not spike as I thought it would –it has still been declining in general since the 1990s–but violent crime and murders in 2020 and this year are way up.  I assumed that economic disruption would prompt a big surge in burglaries etc but apparently not. 

    Here in Maryland, Baltimore’s murders are keeping us well above national state averages. I think Charm City has moved ahead of arch-rival Detroit in per capita kills but still needs some promising young thugs to get with it if B’more is going to take the #1 spot from St. Louis.  I am confident that lots of criminals are working to create the right conditions. 

    • #12
  13. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Because I can, I will quote from the great Theodore Dalrymple. 

    ‘They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,’ said the Soviet worker in the good old days; the British criminal could nowadays say with equal reason, ‘They pretend to punish us and we pretend to reform.’

    Recent statistics show that two thirds of young criminals ordered to wear electronic tags break their court orders almost with impunity. Nothing could better reveal the hall of mirrors that the British criminal justice system long ago became than the response of Keith Vaz, the chairman of the House of Commons all-party Home Affairs Committee, to very similar news last year. ‘The public,’ he said, ‘must be convinced that community sentences are an effective form of punishment.’

    In other words, the problem is not how to make community sentences work, but how to create the misleading public impression that they do. This has for decades been the ruling imperative of that great friend to the British criminal, the Home Office (and now the Ministry of Justice). It struggles might and main not to reduce criminality but to reduce the public’s supposedly neurotic fear of crime, and it does so by sowing confusion — confusion with a roseate glow.

    • #13
  14. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Ignoring crime serves a purpose, what purposes might be sought and does the policy work?  The long term effect is destructive of both parties, so  assuming some  interest is  served, what is it?

    • #14
  15. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Ignoring crime serves a purpose, what purposes might be sought and does the policy work? The long term effect is destructive of both parties, so assuming some interest is served, what is it?

    It weakens civil society so you have to rely on the government. It also weakens private property so you need to rely on the state. 

    • #15
  16. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Ignoring crime serves a purpose, what purposes might be sought and does the policy work? The long term effect is destructive of both parties, so assuming some interest is served, what is it?

    It weakens civil society so you have to rely on the government. It also weakens private property so you need to rely on the state.

    Yes indeed. And note how the same people who ignore crime and protect criminals will zealously punish innocents who defend themselves.

    • #16
  17. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    This is also how you get vigilantism; there is an ancient covenant with the ‘state’ that it will defend its people and their property from the deprivations of others. 

    ‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property’ is but one way to express this. 

    Citizens will have justice one way or another. It will be much less messy if the tax-eaters remember what they are being paid for. 

     

    • #17
  18. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Ignoring crime serves a purpose, what purposes might be sought and does the policy work? The long term effect is destructive of both parties, so assuming some interest is served, what is it?

    It weakens civil society so you have to rely on the government. It also weakens private property so you need to rely on the state.

    I agree, but who drives it?  I’m assuming ordinary Democrats just don’t know the effect, ordinary bureaucrats may or may not know, but don’t drive policy, they just go along. All our, and China’s, giant companies are mostly digital so enjoy falling costs, so winners become monopolies.  Is this centralization, globalization just mindlessly driven by falling costs, or is it understood and exploited?  Are we already run by this narrow gang of senior bureaucrats and the digital giants?   Whether understood or not by those who run it, it cannot end well

    • #18
  19. JosePluma, Local Man of Mystery Coolidge
    JosePluma, Local Man of Mystery
    @JosePluma

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Ignoring crime serves a purpose, what purposes might be sought and does the policy work? The long term effect is destructive of both parties, so assuming some interest is served, what is it?

    It weakens civil society so you have to rely on the government. It also weakens private property so you need to rely on the state.

    I agree, but who drives it? I’m assuming ordinary Democrats just don’t know the effect, ordinary bureaucrats may or may not know, but don’t drive policy, they just go along. All our, and China’s, giant companies are mostly digital so enjoy falling costs, so winners become monopolies. Is this centralization, globalization just mindlessly driven by falling costs, or is it understood and exploited? Are we already run by this narrow gang of senior bureaucrats and the digital giants? Whether understood or not by those who run it, it cannot end well

    You really don’t need to go that deep. A lot of this can be explained by simple laziness and incompetence. 

    Which is easier:  Doing something or doing nothing?  Dispatching an officer to investigate a crime, follow up on leads, write a report, and maybe arrest someone, or not bothering with any of that?  Better yet, you can have the victim do all the work, and when they get tired of doing that and stop calling you, you can say “Crime is Down!”

    • #19
  20. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    JosePluma, Local Man of Mystery (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Ignoring crime serves a purpose, what purposes might be sought and does the policy work? The long term effect is destructive of both parties, so assuming some interest is served, what is it?

    It weakens civil society so you have to rely on the government. It also weakens private property so you need to rely on the state.

    I agree, but who drives it? I’m assuming ordinary Democrats just don’t know the effect, ordinary bureaucrats may or may not know, but don’t drive policy, they just go along. All our, and China’s, giant companies are mostly digital so enjoy falling costs, so winners become monopolies. Is this centralization, globalization just mindlessly driven by falling costs, or is it understood and exploited? Are we already run by this narrow gang of senior bureaucrats and the digital giants? Whether understood or not by those who run it, it cannot end well

    You really don’t need to go that deep. A lot of this can be explained by simple laziness and incompetence.

    Which is easier: Doing something or doing nothing? Dispatching an officer to investigate a crime, follow up on leads, write a report, and maybe arrest someone, or not bothering with any of that? Better yet, you can have the victim do all the work, and when they get tired of doing that and stop calling you, you can say “Crime is Down!”

     

     

    John Derbyshire calls this the Easier for Them Association.

    February 17th New York Post ran a news item headlined “The Noon Swoon.” The Post had discovered that four city high schools send their students home at midday on Wednesdays, giving them the rest of the day off. The excuse offered by the schools is that Wednesday afternoons are used by the staff for “professional development.” A principal at one of the schools denied indignantly that the weekly early dismissal is depriving students of class time. He insisted that, to the contrary, it helps the students “by giving teachers part of one day to improve the curriculum and their instructional skills.” The diligent Post reporter tracked down one teacher polishing up his “instructional skills” at a local meeting-place named the Austin Alehouse.

    continued

    • #20
  21. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    continued

    As soon as I read that item, I knew that the hidden hand of EFTA must be behind this policy. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but so much of what goes on in our world can only be explained by invoking these malign secret societies that, all unknown to most people, manipulate affairs from behind the scenes. Three years ago, in the print National Review, I uncovered one of them, the SPCDH. Regardless of any personal danger I may be placing myself in, I now feel it is my duty as a soon-to-be citizen to carry forward this work by exposing EFTA, in the hope that an awakened public will prevent these sinister agents of discord from further sapping away at the moral foundations of this nation.

    “EFTA” stands for “the Easier-For-Them Association.”  The aim of this secret brotherhood is to infiltrate all organizations whose chartered purpose is to serve the public in some way. Once they have taken up key positions in such an organization, the EFTA moles then set about subverting all its processes and procedures — enlisting the aid of corrupt or unsuspecting legislators when necessary — so that the work of the organization, instead of being oriented towards true public service, is re-directed towards the ease and comfort of the organization’s employees. Closing down a school on Wednesday afternoons is unlikely to do much for the students’ educational attainment, whatever that sputtering principal may say, but it sure makes life easier for the teachers. I bet those teachers all have EFTA decoder rings.

    • #21
  22. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    JosePluma, Local Man of Mystery (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Ignoring crime serves a purpose, what purposes might be sought and does the policy work? The long term effect is destructive of both parties, so assuming some interest is served, what is it?

    It weakens civil society so you have to rely on the government. It also weakens private property so you need to rely on the state.

    I agree, but who drives it? I’m assuming ordinary Democrats just don’t know the effect, ordinary bureaucrats may or may not know, but don’t drive policy, they just go along. All our, and China’s, giant companies are mostly digital so enjoy falling costs, so winners become monopolies. Is this centralization, globalization just mindlessly driven by falling costs, or is it understood and exploited? Are we already run by this narrow gang of senior bureaucrats and the digital giants? Whether understood or not by those who run it, it cannot end well

    You really don’t need to go that deep. A lot of this can be explained by simple laziness and incompetence.

    Which is easier: Doing something or doing nothing? Dispatching an officer to investigate a crime, follow up on leads, write a report, and maybe arrest someone, or not bothering with any of that? Better yet, you can have the victim do all the work, and when they get tired of doing that and stop calling you, you can say “Crime is Down!”

    And if hospitals stopped admitting sick people, “Hospital Deaths are Down!”

    • #22
  23. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    continued

    As soon as I read that item, I knew that the hidden hand of EFTA must be behind this policy. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but so much of what goes on in our world can only be explained by invoking these malign secret societies that, all unknown to most people, manipulate affairs from behind the scenes. Three years ago, in the print National Review, I uncovered one of them, the SPCDH. Regardless of any personal danger I may be placing myself in, I now feel it is my duty as a soon-to-be citizen to carry forward this work by exposing EFTA, in the hope that an awakened public will prevent these sinister agents of discord from further sapping away at the moral foundations of this nation.

    “EFTA” stands for “the Easier-For-Them Association.” The aim of this secret brotherhood is to infiltrate all organizations whose chartered purpose is to serve the public in some way. Once they have taken up key positions in such an organization, the EFTA moles then set about subverting all its processes and procedures — enlisting the aid of corrupt or unsuspecting legislators when necessary — so that the work of the organization, instead of being oriented towards true public service, is re-directed towards the ease and comfort of the organization’s employees. Closing down a school on Wednesday afternoons is unlikely to do much for the students’ educational attainment, whatever that sputtering principal may say, but it sure makes life easier for the teachers. I bet those teachers all have EFTA decoder rings.

    I’ve said for a long time that the societal purpose of education is not for teachers/administrators/etc to feel like they had a rewarding career and a comfortable retirement; and the societal purpose of marriage is not for any two (or more) people (or barnyard animals) of any combination of real or imagined “genders,” to be “happy.”

    • #23
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