Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Brickleberried t1_j2agbor wrote

The major problem with policing in this country is that we need more policing, but completely different style of policing. However, whenever we try to get more policing (in terms of budget or officers), they use it badly. That means the only two functional choices is more, brutal policing or less, good policing. That's a terrible choice.

159

High_DC t1_j2auq15 wrote

I think that a lot of it was also related to short-term pandemic effects. A lot of people were out of work. A lot of teenagers were out of school. A lot of stimulus dollars ensured a fairly high circulation of cash.

We've seen the homicide rate drop significantly just in the past six months, and I'm expecting to a see a pretty sizeable year-on-year decrease for the first half of 2023. Check back in six months to see how accurate that is!

27

violet-shift t1_j2b9q01 wrote

Yeah, like holy shit people seem to be bad about realizing this. From what I've read there was a noticeable uptick in crime over the last two years across the entire country, including both cities and rural areas, in democratic and republican dominated areas.

Given the timing and scope, the default assumption here should be that its pandemic related, and like you say -- we're seeing signs that violent crime may be dropping now.

e: Wikipedia has some per state data on homicides -- in that list almost every state had a noticeable uptick from 2019 to 2020. Hopefully someone is doing actual analysis of this data somewhere, but certainly eyeballing it seems to agree with what I've read. (With Puerto Rico being an outlier, but I have no idea how Covid affected them.)

30

Most_kinds_of_Dirt t1_j2cerlq wrote

>Despite politicized claims that this rise was the result of criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning jurisdictions, murders rose roughly equally in cities run by Republicans and cities run by Democrats. So-called “red” states actually saw some of the highest murder rates of all. This data makes it difficult to pin recent trends on local policy shifts and reveals the basic inaccuracy of attempts to politicize a problem as complex as crime.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crime

It's also important to note that this increase was for homicides, not overall crime. Overall crime has continued to decrease both nationally and in DC.

DC crime stats:

Category 2011 2016 2021 2022 YTD
Homicide 108 135 226 201
Sex Abuse 174 346 176 158
Assault w/ a dangerous weapon 2,520 2,278 1,675 1,383
Robbery 4,207 3,000 2,040 2,064
Violent Crime (total) 7,009 5,759 4,117 3,806
Burglary 3,948 2,122 1,172 1,042
Motor Vehicle Theft 3,820 2,700 3,515 3,730
Theft from Auto 7,839 12,175 8,690 7,779
Theft (Other) 10,206 14,574 10,915 10,777
Arson 39 6 4 4
Property Crime (total) 25,852 31,577 24,296 23,332
All Crime (total) 32,861 37,336 28,413 27,138
9

Effective_Golf_3311 t1_j2e76to wrote

I love this use of the murder rate. My ~100k pop city jumped nearly 400% during 2020 and 2021 due to some drug beefs gone bad but now it’s gone from 4 murders to one in 2022.

But that stat allows us to pretend that jurisdictions like mine were the problem. Meanwhile we can fill mass graves with the hundreds upon hundreds of bodies of young black men murdered in our major cities — red or blue — and we lack a desire to do anything about it so we’re just gonna blame the orange man.

0

well-that-was-fast t1_j2bkfmi wrote

> I think that a lot of it was also related to short-term pandemic effects. A lot of people were out of work.

I agree with pandemic effects but think it's more mental health, not financial. It's a long jump from people being unemployed to becoming murders, and were talking about 50+ cases (100+ from 2012).

This is more about people who were able to mentally keep things together until society underwent a lot of scary upheavals very quickly and they were unable to find help adjusting.

9

LeoMarius t1_j2bog20 wrote

A lot of people left DC because they were teleworking and not originally from here. That made many neighborhoods empty that were normally bustling with activity. Homeless camps set up and made the area less safe than when there were people regularly walking around.

They are just starting to come back to the area because offices are reopening.

6

harkuponthegay t1_j2c08x2 wrote

>made the area less safe than when there were people regularly walking around.

Homeless people are people though. (??)

If the homeless encampments are there then there are probably people who live there that are walking around.

To be honest I don’t think that homeless encampments had much of an effect on the homicide rate, nor do they make an area inherently less safe— there’s no reason to be afraid of homeless people, they aren’t some boogeyman—they’re no more violent than the rest of us.

You may not like them aesthetically, but they are not dangerous. It’s not the homeless who are running around shooting each other over petty gang conflicts.

−14

LeoMarius t1_j2c0hpm wrote

Funny, because I got mugged by one. Must have been my imagination.

16

harkuponthegay t1_j2c1lu4 wrote

I doubt that you knew the housing situation of the person who mugged you (assuming you’re not just making shit up).

Did that happen in DC or back in university park Maryland?

−17

Biogeopaleochem t1_j2anzsn wrote

Well do you want to solve murders or write traffic tickets? Only one of those makes money.

12

WhiskeyTigerFoxtrot t1_j2aounx wrote

Know what makes way more money than sporadic parking tickets? Safe neighborhoods. Businesses don't move into or operate in places with high crime.

There's 100% an economic incentive to solving murders, if you want to be a cynic and focus purely on the finances of it. There's also that whole, you know, justice thing.

45

darthjoey91 t1_j2arrkk wrote

But the money from safe neighborhoods doesn’t go directly to individual cops’ bonuses.

−9

WhiskeyTigerFoxtrot t1_j2atmbn wrote

...huh? How do you think police "bonuses" and compensation work? They don't get paid more money for writing more parking tickets...

Most officers are lucky to get a desk toy and a $20 gift card for Christmas as a "bonus." Bonuses generally come either as a sign-on bonus to attract new officers (something we desperately need as incentive since the media demonizes cops and makes it unappealing) or for completing certifications. LAPD for example gives you a bonus for being a Spanish speaker. You can earn a bonus by being marksman certified or bomb squad or having another unique skill.

You're just regurgitating ACAB rhetoric because it aligns with the zeitgeist we're in right now.

8

Quick-kick95 t1_j2asohw wrote

DC doesn't make a lot of money from officers writing tickets. Most of the traffic enforcement money comes from automated cameras, not 50 dollar parking tickets.

18

Kitchen_Software t1_j2atatn wrote

Your point is valid, but to be pedantic: MPD doesn’t deal with parking tickets IIRC. That’s parking enforcement.

MPD would be (only?) moving violations. But I don’t think you could get one of those in DC if you tried.

3

BubsterX1 t1_j2dk02e wrote

This is correct. And those traffic cameras make tens of millions of dollars. The well-placed cameras (well-placed in the sense that people are expecting the speed limit to be about 35 based on the structure of the road) can individually generate several million dollars each year.

1

Macarogi t1_j2b2ozp wrote

>policing ... policing ... policing ... policing ... policing. That's a terrible choice.

Correct. Violent criminals need to be prosecuted and incarcerated. Police can't do that.

7

GuyNoirPI t1_j2b4f8r wrote

Correct, police can’t do that because they can’t solve crimes because they have horrible clearance rates.

3

mart_nargy t1_j2awvew wrote

The good policing you envision isn’t going to prevent murders. At best it’ll make it more likely the murderers are arrested.

6

kellyzdude t1_j2b26ui wrote

As with any complex problem, it requires a multifaceted solution. Improving policing overall to deal with the crimes that do happen (and providing a minimal deterrence), but also encouraging social improvements in an effort to prevent the crimes from occurring in the first place.

We need both, thinking that either one in isolation will solve the crime problem is delusional.

6

Barnst t1_j2d74r2 wrote

> At best it’ll make it more likely the murderers are arrested.

Making it more likely that murders are arrested is one of the best ways to prevent murders. Certainty of being caught has consistently been found to be one of the most powerful deterrents to crime.

3

mart_nargy t1_j2dg27y wrote

For the serial killers, yes. But that won’t work for the random kid who got pissed off and shot someone. And even the best police can’t make evidence or a witness appear out of thin air (well, they can, but that’s a whole other depressing story). So I’m skeptical that more police will actually lead to more arrests, which is why i said at best. I happen to think that reducing the number of guns in hands is a better way to reduce the number of murders.

1

Barnst t1_j2dsizs wrote

You have it backwards—serial killers aren’t deterred by good policing because they are motivated by a psychological need to kill. The random kid who gets pissed off is exactly who is more likely to be deterred by the knowledge they will likely just get arrested.

There are confounding variables in terms of how likely they are to be charged and how severe the sentencing is, but you really quickly hit diminishing returns there. Otherwise, the deterrence effect of the certainty of getting caught is one of the most consistent findings in research on crime reduction.

And good policing does result in more evidence. One of the factors that makes it hard to catch killers is distrust between the police and the community, which means people are less likely to come forward to help the investigation. Again, there is some really solid data demonstrating this over time. Heck, there is even some research showing that better policing directly reduces murders—one reason that beefs get so bad is distrust in the formal system to deliver justice, so people take matters into their own hands.

The whole point is that it isn’t simply “more” cops, but better cops. Adding more cops when the cops are shit doesn’t help and can hurt.

And, sure, I agree that reducing the number of guns would be great too, but sadly I suspect we have far more policy control over the cops. And how do you expect to remove illegal guns from hands without more and better policing?

3

herereadthis t1_j2eflmo wrote

Read the article.

The police union says the reason why homicides are higher is because police aren't allowed to choke people anymore.

Do you really think we need more police?

0

Brickleberried t1_j2ej78w wrote

Read my comment. Nothing you said disputes anything I said. In fact, it supports what I said.

3