The Ferguson Effect (good news for Rob, bad news for IL)

[Yossarian]

Good work Rob. Too bad IL.


http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-...ave-1432938425

Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.

....


Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.

Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.

This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.

Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014.

....

If these decriminalization and deincarceration policies backfire, the people most harmed will be their supposed beneficiaries: blacks, since they are disproportionately victimized by crime. The black death-by-homicide rate is six times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined. The killers of those black homicide victims are overwhelmingly other black civilians, not the police. The police could end all use of lethal force tomorrow and it would have at most a negligible impact on the black death rate. In any case, the strongest predictor of whether a police officer uses force is whether a suspect resists arrest, not the suspect’s race.

[JaneV2.0]

Another cheap shot at Rob. So tiresome. I can't speak for him, but I think most reasonable people would like to see less thuggish behavior on both sides of the badge. I could make a list of all the unarmed people of color brutalized or killed by America's finest that have made the news, but there would be no point.

Wall Street Journal? Isn't that the print arm of Fox News? (NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch?) Network for the Elderly, Uninformed, and Frightened?

[iris lilies]

There's nothing smart or glib to say about this uptick in crime here. That the asshole Vonderitt Myers, useless thug and drain on this community, is held up as an innocent victim of police brutality shows how completely off the charts his supporters are. His mother claims he held a "sandwich" rather than a gun. Ok, Mom, whatever.

Vonderitt Myers is the dead thug I know best since he died in the neighborhood near me and I pass by his teddy bear totem often. It's just 2 blocks from the Missouri Botanical Gardens and is on my route there.

Perhaps if Rob would relax a little his repetitive drumbeat screed about America there would be less hostility to his posts. Most reasonable people will acknowledge there are bad cops who do bad things and probably even admit that African Americans experience more negative police encounters in their neighborhood, but I think most reasonable people do not make that the focus of their lives.

Rob, you can state your opinion and as often as you like, but you can't expect there to be no push back.

[bae]

Another cheap shot at Rob.

I don't see it as a cheap shot at all. It's merely pointing out the outcome of the policies and attitudes Rob constantly endorses and cheers on.

[Packy]

They had a young man & a woman(both white) assaulted on a downtown street here last fall by 5 thugs, who took turns beating the victims, including a sexual assault on the woman and kicking the guy after he was on the pavement. This occurred in a well-lit area by a bank that had surveillance cameras, and a police cruiser was in the vicinity and responded immediately to the commotion. After an investigation,using the video and tips to identify them, the perpetrators were taken into custody on felony assault charges. Apparently, they belonged to an out-of-town "rap music"(an oxymoron, there)group that was appearing at a local nightclub. The couple who were assaulted were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. The news story said they missed time off their jobs & were unable to care for their children while recovering. My question is: what are they doing out at 1 am in the bars, when they have small children? Anyway, thuggery goes on everywhere--even here. But, the will of the community is such that there will be little tolerance for "gangsta" behaviors; they will NEVER be the prevailing culture, as in other areas. They can lynch 'em, for all I care. Bail for the perps was set high enough that they will be sitting in our lovely jail(ewww!!)for a while, awaiting due process.

[JaneV2.0]

That's an interesting anecdote, Packy. But some of us--perhaps foolishly--expect more from our taxpayer supported police officers than we do from common criminals. I guess I'm missing your point.

[Yossarian]

Another cheap shot at Rob.

I don't think I am stretching it to say this is what he has been asking for:

“Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” a New York City officer tells me. “Everything has the potential to be recorded. A lot of cops feel that the climate for the next couple of years is going to be nonstop protests.”

Police officers now second-guess themselves about the use of force. “Officers are trying to invent techniques on the spot for taking down resistant suspects that don’t look as bad as the techniques taught in the academy,” says Jim Dudley, who recently retired as deputy police chief in San Francisco. Officers complain that civilians don’t understand how hard it is to control someone resisting arrest.

[gimmethesimplelife]

Mmmmm.....the problem with slapping my name on an aspect of this? The police in general should not have been using extreme levels of excessive force and should not have established themselves in lower income neighborhoods as something to be feared and avoided and distrusted at all costs. Blame indeed - some degree of it - lies at their doorstep. Perhaps feeling neutered to some degree, humuliated, and ineffective will serve to give some cops not in it for the right reasons an idea of what they have dished out for years, on a discriminatory basis of course (whites tend not be be victims as often even if low income and cops tend to behave themselves in higher income areas due to terror of litigation risk/loss of benefits and pension).

I don't know that there is any complete answer for this issue as to high crime rate areas in the shape and form America now assumes - my gut is that there really isn't an answer due to intense inequalities accepted in America. But at least getting government thugs out of the equation is a start - though this is not without it's issues, too. As I said, I don't see a real answer for this overall issue as long as America stands as it now stands. Sad but seemingly true. Rob

[bae]

And there we have it. Rob's World.

Enjoy!

[JaneV2.0]

I can't find anything much to disagree with in Rob's post. I've never lived in a high crime area, but I know, for example, that the Seattle police have been under investigation for excessive force for some time*, and it's clear that police brutality occurs in most major cities. So it's not just Rob's world, it's my world, and Amadou Diallo's world, Abner Louima's world and Tamir Rice's world, Bounkham Phonesavanh's world, and too many more to count.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/06/150128...-investigation