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:
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.
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November 08, 2021 at 10:33AM
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