Thursday, January 28, 2021

When political correctness fertilizes crime and promotes violence

 

I've been fielding comments from a number of my law enforcement contacts about the deteriorating situation on the streets of America's cities.  Without exception, they report greater crime, more violence, less safety and security for "regular" citizens and residents.

The Wall Street Journal describes the reasons.


The year 2020 likely saw the largest percentage increase in homicides in American history. Murder was up nearly 37% in a sample of 57 large and medium-size cities. Based on preliminary estimates, at least 2,000 more Americans, most of them black, were killed in 2020 than in 2019. Mainstream media and many politicians claim the pandemic caused this bloodbath, but the chronology doesn’t support that assertion. And now the criminal-justice policies supported by President Biden promise to exacerbate the current crime wave, while ignoring its actual causes.

. . .

Eighteen people were murdered in Chicago on May 31—the city’s most violent day in six decades, according to University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell. Other American cities saw similar spikes in mayhem, all tied to the street violence unleashed by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. The political and media response to Floyd’s death amplified the existing narrative that policing was lethally racist. The ensuing riots received little condemnation from Democratic leaders and a weak response from the criminal-justice system.

Cops now face a poisonous environment. Since the summer, they have been shot in the head, firebombed and assaulted with lethal projectiles. An officer providing first aid at a crime scene may be met with a hail of rocks and bottles. Resistance is now the norm. Officers believe they face a political and legal environment that is eager to sacrifice them in the name of racial justice.

As a result, the calculus for engagement has changed. An Oakland, Calif., officer who has arrested dozens of known murderers and gang members over his career tells me he is scared for the first time, “not because the criminals are necessarily more violent, even though they are.” But if he has to use force on a resisting suspect, he could lose his career, his life, or his liberty, he says. A “simple cost-benefit analysis” recommends simply responding to calls for service and collecting a paycheck. “All cops now understand this.”

“Every day you have to decide whether to get out of your patrol car and do something or do nothing,” a veteran Chicago detective reports. If you opt for real police work, you may end up in jail or without a job if an interaction goes off script.

“Proactive police work is dead,” says Lt. Bob Kroll of the Minneapolis Police Department. The data bear him out. In Minneapolis, police stops fell more than 50% over the summer. The number of police-civilian contacts plummeted in Philadelphia, Oakland, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Across the country, specialized police units that got guns off the street were disbanded, since they were said to have a disparate impact on African-Americans. Police chiefs and prosecutors have refused to enforce low-level quality-of-life laws for the same reason.

The consequence: More gang members are carrying guns, since their chances of being stopped are slim. They are enthusiastically killing each other and innocent bystanders out of opportunism, not economic deprivation or existential angst.

The anarchy of 2020 has continued into 2021. Shootings in South Los Angeles rose 742% in the first two weeks of the year. In Oakland, homicides were up 500% and shootings up 126% through Jan. 17. In New York, murders were up 42% and shooting victims up 15% through Jan. 17. Carjackings, already up 135% in Chicago in 2020, are spilling into the city’s suburbs. On Jan. 16, a woman was pulled from her car in Aurora, Ill., and shot in the back by carjackers who had already stolen two vehicles earlier that day. Four other Chicago suburbs were hit that weekend. In Chicago proper, there have been 144 carjackings through Jan. 21, with 166 guns recovered.


There's more at the link.

There's clear evidence that police were ordered by their political bosses to pull back and not maintain law and order during the riots of the past year or so.  For example, "Minneapolis police officers testified they could have done more to protect the city if local officials hadn’t tied their hands".  The same pattern was visible in many more cities.


For three days, police in Minneapolis and St. Paul were ordered to stand down as rioters destroyed their cities. In New York City and Washington, D.C., on Monday night, police stood by as looters destroyed parts of those cities.

The same politicians who ordered police to stand down and released prison inmates are the same people who want to ban guns. These politicians prevent citizens from protecting themselves, at a time when police protection cannot be depended on.

. . .

Across the country, police have had orders to stand down.

“Tonight, I watched Seattle burn. Seattle is dying, by fire, looting, weakness of the political leadership,” wrote Seattle KVI radio talk-show host Kirby Wilbur. “We watched on TV as our law enforcement stood by while vandalism, looting, assaults, pure chaos reigned in the streets of our downtown business district.”


Again, more at the link.

As a result of this nonsense, a great many police officers are either resigning and seeking employment in less politically correct departments, or taking early retirement.  It's a pattern visible in many cities.  The residents of those areas are going to find their situation deteriorating even further, because there'll be fewer police available to uphold what law and order still exists there.

I said last year that "I fear vigilantism and 'lynch law' are about to make a comeback, because in the absence of the even-handed, objective rule of law, there's little alternative".  There have already been incidents reported in several US cities that, I'm told, appear to fit that pattern - although the authorities have carefully said nothing in public about that.  Nevertheless, my police contacts in those cities are less hesitant to draw conclusions among themselves.  The term "public service homicide" has been used more than once.

Friends, if you live in a city where crime and violence have spiked over the last year or so, please consider moving to a safer environment if that's possible.  This situation isn't going away, and is likely to get much worse before (if!) it gets better.

Peter


15 comments:

Aesop said...

They know who butters their bread.

The lucky ones will either get out because they can put in their papers and retire, or because they're new enough to be able to walk away and chalk it up to poor life choices.

The troubled and troublesome ones will be those in too long to quit, but too little to pull a pension, and they'll have to actually confront their choices, and the moral implications of them.

For most of our history, the little-acknowledged truth is that most cops weren't honest most of the time, and 20th century attempts to reform the business have failed, as they revert to the mean so aptly embodied by Shakespeare's Dogberry.

Most of us have gown up where corruption was the exception, and modern policing made it largely untenable.
That, however, depended upon both honest political broker/ masters, and a free and honest press.

We have neither.
They have also polluted the gene pool of those entering, such that no expectation of common sense nor civic mindedness is rational nor likely, nor has been for some time.

Now, those chickens are coming home to roost.

Everyone is going to pay that penalty: cops, robbers, civic administration, and the citizenry.

In the immortal words of SgtMaj Plumley, "Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves.."

Bob said...

Time will soon come when you see Apache Gunships active in the skies of American cities. Try to hide in your house - which is made of mostly two-by-fours and sheetrock - and you won't stand a snowballs chance in hell. These dudes all decked out in camo with their AR-15 and ten thousand rounds of ammo will get eliminated in a matter of minutes. And if you think the U.S. military won't attack American citizens in their own homes and cities, you haven't been paying attention. If there is an armed uprising against our new Communist government, the slaughter will be massive. Just look at some gunship videos made in Afghanistan or some such place. That's the reality we face. I don't think any of us have a clue as to the things the present Washington crowd is capable doing of to keep power.

Ray - SoCal said...

This explains:

Man seen on video being beaten, stripped in NYC was targeted gangbanger
https://nypost.com/2021/01/25/man-beaten-stripped-in-nyc-was-targeted-gangbanger/

kamas716 said...

A lot of people have forgotten that the police are there to protect the criminals from the populace. Vigilante justice is prone to rumor and speculation not thorough investigation.

Ah well, I guess more gang bangers will end up disappearing.

Beans said...

To complete what kamas716 said, yes, vigilante justice is harsh and prone to make mistakes, but America has a long history of appropriate vigilante justice, citizens stepping up to quell unrest when the powers-that-be, being police or the local militia or federal troops, couldn't.

It happened twice in San Francisco.

Random bands of vigilantes are bad. Committees of Vigilance are... better. Organized, with set goals in mind - these are the crimes, these are the punishments, we're not your paid politicians and corrupt justice system.

Everywhere a Committee of Vigilance worked, the justice was fair-ish. Harsh, usually fatal to the violator, but fair. The trials were much more fair than what was current in the judicial system in the area that the CoV replaced.

Is there a potential for CoVs to go sideways? Yes. Is it worse than what is currently in place, that lets murderers out on ROR release because bail is racist or something? No. When the legal-justice system goes so sideways that even hanging the perps on streetpoles looks legit, you will see the Committees of Vigilance appear. That will be once the breakdowns are so bad even the authorities that allowed/caused the breakdown can't contain.

Me? I'm looking forward, unhappily, to the Committees of Vigilance. Too much open fighting, drug use, loud cars at 3am and other bad things that are perturbing the normally quiet and reclusive normal person.

Vigilantes are coming. No matter what. It's the responsibility of the citizenry to make it not a mob but a Committee that abides by the basic tenets of Justice.

And, then, when order is finally restored, the Vigiles can drift back into the fabric of the society, ready for the next time.

Seriously, read up on the Committees of Vigilance that saved San Francisco twice. Absolutely amazing what power they had and didn't use. (And, yes, they had cannon, and were prepared to use it on the local justice system as quickly as against the crooks and criminals.

Aesop said...

@Bob,

Nota bene: Actual terrorists only got to fly 3 planes out of 4 into buildings before that tactic was obsolete, within less than 2 hours. There's a lesson there.

And where are they going to base those Apache gunships? And how will they get POLs and munitions to them there?

It is to laugh.

Using Afghanistan tactics in US urban areas would merely flip the allegiance of the populace, en masse,from the state to the insurgency at the speed of lead, and by the metric crapton. Neither the Air Farce nor the entire Army has enough troops, nor even bullets, to stop the crapstorm that would be visited on them after even one such incident, and the entire Army Aviation Branch, top to bottom, (the ones who didn't defect with their birds intact) would be beheaded, dismembered, and strung up from bridges coast to coast in about a day.

Even odds that were such an order ever given, half the pilots and gunships would shoot the other half down immediately after takeoff, and then strafe the field, HQ buildings, the ammo dump, and the POL storage area, before moving off to parts unknown, if not to expend all ordnance remaining on armored assets in government hands the next base over.

If so much as one crew goes over the fence in-air, you'd lose the entire squadron, or worse.

LAPD has one of the largest police air divisions extant, and 95% of them could be taken out in about 5 minutes from up the block, most days, leaving them with maybe 3-4 flyable birds 10 minutes later. That would be the ones already launched, and running out of fuel.

The most vulnerable thing on the planet is a helicopter ("a collection of moving parts flying in loose formation"), in flight or on the ground, and every single one of them are located in "enemy" territory, every time they take off and land.

We've gotten away with drone strikes on less advanced countries 9000 miles away, but that only works until someone starts driving semi-trailers full of HE/ANFO onto that base, and/or into satellite uplink stations, and goes all Aloha Snackbar. Now Droney's Air Farce is paperweights as well.

Trying it on home soil gives the very people they're most worried about an insurmountable homecourt advantage.

And everyone from the JCS to the Spec 4 pulling flight line maintenance or gate guard knows this.

Now it's Tuesday, you're FOTUS and/or the Army CoS, you have no more air cover, it takes 6 months to a year to get more pilots, the factories that make the birds and munitions are the next targets, your bases are either overrun and aflame, heavily besieged, or have switched sides and are now actively hostile, and most of the populace wants your blood.

What's your B Plan at that point?

The worst thing to do is start an insurgency in your backyard, and then pour gasoline on the flames you kindle.

But it would get things down to the grunt level in short order.

Sherm said...

As I recall, the Vigilance Committee in San Francisco even had a canon.

We in Montana were not that heavily armed but we did institutionalize the practice. 3-7-77 was the marker of the vigilance committee in Virginia City and is now on the shoulder patches of the Montana Highway Patrol.

We had a BBQ team we named the Pigilance Committee because why not.

Chumgrinder said...

We wilfully deluded ourselves by insisting that cops were on the side of the little guy and would remember their oaths if the SHTF. Then Katrina happened, and gave us the b*ch slap that we needed.

Now we are deluding ourselves in precisely the same manner about the military. We'd better wake up.

Bob said...

Chumgrinder has it right:

"Now we are deluding ourselves in precisely the same manner about the military. We'd better wake up."

Exactly so.

To think that half the pilots will shoot down the other half because patriotism or whatever.... is pure fantasy. They will strafe, rocket and bomb whatever target they are told to, and then go the their heavily protected base, have a few beers and swap stories. Cops have an ingrained them/us attitude, even more so military pilots.

The Author said...

3 months ago I was dispatched to a shooting. Found the vic down on the sidewalk unconscious and unresponsive, started CPR. 2 GSWs to the chest but it's mostly for organ viability anyhow. 30 seconds into the compressions and I took a beer bottle to the head from the local BLM/F***12/ACAB contingent that had gathered. They attacked me, 3 officers that arrived within 2 minutes of me, EMS and the fire department medics. To hell with this city.

Ps- To all of those trotting out the "cop pensions" BS, tell me- where is mine?

I live in a highly populated city in a large western US state. We haven't had a pension system for over 20 years.

Via the state retirement system, I have a 401(k) that's consistently worth less than I deposit in it, year after year. Maybe some places in the east still have that type of deal, but I don't know a single cop out west that has a retirement worth a damn. That's why we all get jobs post-retirement (and usually end up dead within 5 years anyhow) or moonlight until we're asleep on our feet.

FredLewers said...

The Yankees left. The illiterate goat herders are still there.

sooperedd said...

Regulators...mount up!!!

Will said...

The police moving away from proactive methods is not a new thing. It is driven by politics for sure.

In the mid 90's during a gun class, a few of us got talking with the head instructor about L.A. crime, and the Rodney King riots. He talked about doing a ride-along one evening with LAPD, probably a couple years after that riot. He said the first inkling that things had changed was when the shift lieutenant asked him what he was carrying. His response was his 1911 .45acp, and the Lt asked "is that ALL?!" (instructor had a badge from an AZ dept, IIRC)

Riding around, he asked where the gangs hung out. Driver made a few turns, pulled to the curb with an alley next to him, and turned on the rack side spotlight. He said it looked like the StarWars cantina scene, with weapons everywhere. He asked the driver: what now? Driver replied: we get the heck out of here!, turned off that light and put his foot in it.

Driver explained that prior to the riot, if they saw a known gangbanger hanging on a corner, they would roust him, and run a check, possibly take him in. He said that the word came down from the mayor's office to not cause another riot, which meant to essentially stop doing their job. So, he said now when they see a badguy hanging around in town, they just wave and drive on by. That instructor was Chuck Taylor.
BTW, Chuck was packing a Glock G23 that year during classes.

AFAIK, Los Angeles has not gone back to a pro-active police stance, so the city has been going to the dogs for near 3 decades now. Lots of Big Blue cities copy that town, so the rot has spread widely.

Aesop said...

"To think that half the pilots will shoot down the other half because patriotism or whatever.... is pure fantasy. They will strafe, rocket and bomb whatever target they are told to, and then go t[o] their heavily protected base, have a few beers and swap stories. Cops have an ingrained them/us attitude, even more so military pilots.."

Cops have that attitude because, to date, they operate in a permissive environment, with 'safe spaces", so they can. Such would cease to be the case one minute after the first strafing run, anywhere. They'd be targets for everyone, everywhere, and they'd all quit or be dead in about a week after that happened, and there would be no reinforcements coming to save the day. Custer had better odds, and look how he did.

The point, ye who know not, is that the military have no "heavily protected base(s)".

Not one. Not anywhere in CONUS.

We spent 7 years in 'Nam, and Da Nang was rocketed every other day for 6 1/2 of them. And that was nearly 50 years ago. Their bases stateside are all within walking distance of the very people they'd supposedly be happily strafing.

The trucks and train tracks they'd get their supplies over run through "enemy" territory, and most of the origins are already in red states to begin with.

The day after the first strike, the base that launched it would be a smoking pile of rubble, after serving as a resupply point for the insurgency.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, man, Red Team was regularly breaching nuclear weapons storage bases in the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, when we still had a military worthy of the name, with less than a dozen guys, and a budget of one credit card. The QRF for most bases looks more like Meal Team Six than Seal Team Six, 364 days a year, and twice as much on Christmas.

There's not a flight line in the entire state of CA except China Lake, and maybe Vandenberg AFB, that can't be hit by rifle fire from the civilian surroundings, 24/7/365. Any jackholes who flew such a mission would be taking heavy fire from the minute they walked out the door until the minute they landed, and so would the maintenance, ordnance, and refueling crews. You can bunker in the a/c, given enough time, but the flight line crew don't have Ironman suits to work in. And once you run out of bomb humpers, wrench monkeys, and gas goobers, you ain't flying nothing, nowhere, no how. That's how it works in the real world.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
That's besides the fact that the pilots, the aircrew, their families, and the housing they live in would be targets 24/7, and we don't have the assets to fix that, anywhere.

Mail a few family members' body parts to HQ, and that squadron is grounded for the duration. Venture off base, and get your throat cut, and it's over, for good. Anybody else you let in is doing recon for attacks, to a guaranteed certainty.

And then, their supply lines get cut, the base is besieged, and they switch sides in about a heartbeat, or fly far, far away, with only what they can carry, leaving their families, and all their infrastructure and remaining supplies behind, or burn them in place. And on our best day, we never had more than 30 days of warfighting inventory. Start burning that up, and there won't be any air cover anywhere after about a week.

They could laager up somewhere, but the entire US military, all four services, would be hard-pressed to control just Massholia, CT, and Rhode Island, even if they shoved the entire populace there out, assuming they would even go there and could even get there in the first place. And they'd be out of fuel, ammo, food, and everything else they'd need in a few short weeks.

Watch The Outpost, or Custer's Last Stand, and get back to us.

Our bases were designed for DoD convenience, not defensibility. If, for example, 1stMarDiv were to defend Camp Pendleton and repel boarders, they could do that. But they couldn't be adequately supplied, and they'd be combat ineffective more than 5 klicks off the base, forever. Dependents would make that even worse, and the total lack of civilian workers would hamstring them in about a day. The same is true of every other base in the military, and that'd be the ones who have ground troops with some chance of holding out. Navy and Air Farce bases, with no real ground defense force beyond their meager security contingents, would be uninhabitable inside a week. Starting with no cold beer, a minute after the inbound power lines went away.

Aircraft carriers and ships at sea could hold out, but only until they found out their families were hostages. Then they'd mutiny. In fact, they'd probably mutiny before that point in many cases.

And for civilian law enforcement air assets, it'd be even worse. They have no bases whatsoever, anywhere, nor any capability to initiate them, without the active assent of the surrounding populace: the very thing one air strike would cancel in about a minute.

You're gainsaying that reality by talking comic book tactics, not real life.
Please, please, just stop.

We ever get to MOUT in CONUS, and it's over. Everything.
We'll be starting over from scratch after that.
And putting corpses into trenches with bulldozers in the in-between.

I've lived amongst two full-on riots.

The LAPD folded over riots that were about free shoes and color TVs last time out, and they've never recovered.

And that was with most of the armed citizens protecting their homes from the rioters, and supporting the police.

You ever have a city that riots over free lives, and the police won't fold; they'll be annihilated, and their body parts used for hood ornaments for weeks afterwards.

Pour encourager les autres.