Drop in Gang Violence Drove New York City Shootings Below 1,000 in 2016 the New York Times headline proclaims. For those who are looking for a “solution” to Chiraq’s huge spike in firearms-related injuries and homicides, well, there you go. OK, sure, the NYT’s headline sits atop of picture of a gun (as above) rather than a gang. And it doesn’t make it clear why gang violence dropped last year, which would tell Chicago how to repeat the feat. But the body text is clear enough, even if the crucial info is relegated to paragraph six:
Scores of gang takedowns this year, resulting in about 900 arrests, took violent people off the streets and made it more costly to engage in gang-related crimes, police officials said.
“Precision policing targets those people who are responsible for the violence, which in a significant amount of cases are gangs,” said Stephen P. Davis, the department’s chief spokesman. “By going after the gang members, arresting them, we recognize the resultant reduction in violence.”
Perhaps a word or two about New York City’s incarceration rate would be valuable here? Arresting gang bangers is one thing. Allowing them to return to the streets quite another. No? Oh well. How about some irrelevant data, then?
Murders and shootings on the street, in public housing and in commercial locations all dropped last year through Dec. 28. Murders on playgrounds climbed to 12, from three the year before, and also rose in dwellings and in vehicles. More broadly, murders indoors ticked up by 19, while outdoor murders fell by 49 . . .
The biggest share of murders were motivated by what the police call a “dispute.” Of those, the largest share had to do with words that were exchanged, followed by disputes over a man or woman, over money, and over a previous history. Five murders in 2016 were deemed to be motivated by a stare or a disrespectful act, two by gambling and two by road rage.
Just under a third of the shooting cases last year were closed with an arrest, and 22 percent of the cases were closed because the police had exhausted all leads. Forty percent of the murder cases were closed with an arrest, and eight others were termed an exceptional clearance, a category that would include cases in which the person suspected of being the killer was murdered before an arrest was made.
Exceptional clearance indeed. Now, if the media and politicians would just clear up any misconceptions about “easy access to guns” being responsible for the vast majority of The Big Apple’s firearms-related murders — as opposed to the existence of free range gang bangers — our work here would be done. And the judicial system’s just beginning. Again.
Simply another example of “fake news”. You know it will eventually be determined as such by “common sense” people.
Well there ya’ go. Do that Chicago idiots…oh wait BLM,fadda pflegm will have a fit ,Jesse Jacksonand all the black aldermen will pizz and moan. Oh and chaingangs,capital punishment and federalize most of it. Anyone suppose THAT will happen?!??BTW NYC if anything is more left than Chiraq…
“Exceptional clearance.”
sounds like a winning strategy.
Yes, if the political left would focus on criminal control instead of on gun control, they might be able to actually make some progress.
Of course there are two problems that they need to overcome. The first is that they would need to stop coddling criminal gang organizations and the second is that they would need to stop focusing on political vendettas against law-abiding citizens.
Given their track record on both fronts, I’m skeptical that they will be able to make a lasting commitment.
The court system in Chicago is an absolute joke. Criminals aren’t afraid of getting convicted. And they aren’t afraid of the police either, because thanks to BLM, the ALCU and Rahm, the police are more afraid of being sued if they go after the criminals.
NY is doing well because it hasn’t had quite the same political numbskullery that Chicago has had for years. If Deblasio stays and keeps doing what he’s doing NYC will probably start getting the same spiking homicide in a couple of years. But even if Chicago tosses Rahm out and the rest of the politicians that depend on the gangs to stay elected it’ll probably take a decade or more to undo the damage done to law and order there.
Forget Mexico, build a wall around Chiraq.
Don’t worry. Debbie “The Poodle” Wasserman Shultz has the solution: put everyone on the no-fly list.
It’s very simple. First, you bring in a whole bunch of wealthy people to dilute the effect of poor neighborhoods on crime rates. Then you keep on bringing in well-heeled residents, driving up real estate values and pricing the poor out of your jurisdiction. By the time families making $50K qualify for “low-income housing” you’d be amazed how good the crime rate looks.
And the problem being???
The real cause of “gang violence” is the criminalization of vast swaths of voluntary human behavior by nanny-state politicians resulting in black markets where violence is a viable currency.
No wonder the “gang units” in big city PD’s are nothing more than violent gangs themselves, except their (gun) violence is tolerated and celebrated. Don’t expect the NYPD bigshots to mention that in their congratulatory press releases.
While I agree that most drugs and prostitution (and also, less gun control) could be legalized for a positive results, in taxes and crime rates, we’d still have to incarcerate at the high levels we currently do. For many of those locked up, the drug charges are simply taked on from more serious burglary/assault/rape charges.
Crime rates in the US are no worse than other first world countries, the high incarceration rate here is a choice made by the criminal “justice” system. The high recidivism rate in the US demonstrates the futility of this approach, but alas, the prison-police-industrial complex stands to lose a lot of money with other methods.
Why are people so blind to history? John Locke accurately described this problem and its solution 327 years ago in his treatises on government and education.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education – John Locke – 1690
“Being abroad, it is true, will make him bolder, and better able to bustle and shift amongst boys of his own age; and the emulation of school-fellows often puts life and industry into young lads. But till you can find a school, wherein it is possible for the master to look after the manners of his scholars, and can show as great effects of his care of forming their minds to virtue, and their carriage to good breeding, as of forming their tongues to the learned languages; you must confess, that you have a strange value for words, when, preferring the languages of the ancient Greeks and Romans to that which made them such brave men, you think it worth while to hazard your son’s innocence and virtue, for a little Greek and Latin. For, as for that boldness and spirit, which lads get amongst their play-fellows at school, it has ordinarily such a mixture of rudeness, and an ill-turned confidence, that those misbecoming and disingenuous ways of shifting in the world must be unlearned, and all the tincture washed out again, to make way for better principles, and such manners as make a truly worthy man. He that considers how diametrically opposite the skill of living well, and managing, as a man should do, his affairs in the world, is to that malapertness, tricking, or violence, learnt among school-boys, will think the faults of a privater education infinitely to be preferred to such improvements; and will take care to preserve his child’s innocence and modesty at home, as being nearer of kin, and more in the way of those qualities, which make a useful and able man….
Virtue is harder to be got, than a knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. Sheepishness and ignorance of the world, the faults imputed to a private education, are neither the necessary consequences of being bred at home; nor, if they were, are they incurable evils. Vice is the more stubborn, as well as the more dangerous evil of the two; and therefore, in the first place, to be fenced against…for fear lest such a yielding temper should be too susceptible of vicious impressions, and expose the novice too easily to be corrupted. A young man, before he leaves the shelter of his father’s house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortified with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtue; lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and has steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation….
It is preposterous, therefore, to sacrifice his innocency to the attaining of confidence, and some little skill of bustling for himself among others, by his conversation with ill-bred and vicious boys; when the chief use of that sturdiness, and standing upon his own legs, is only for the preservation of his virtue. For if confidence or cunning come once to mix with vice, and support his miscarriages, he is only the surer lost; and you must undo again, and strip him of that he has got from his companions, or give him up to ruin.”
And how aptly does that describe what happens to young men who have been corrupted in the ‘hood and then sent to prison to spend years with ill-bred and vicious boys intent on mixing confidence and cunning with vice?
As for crime, Locke discussed this in Of Civil Government, Chapter II para 8:
“8. And thus, in the state of Nature, one man comes by a power over another, but yet no absolute or arbitrary power to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats or boundless extravagancy of his own will, but only to retribute to him so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint. For these two are the only reasons why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of Nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men for their mutual security, and so he becomes dangerous to mankind; the tie which is to secure them from injury and violence being slighted and broken by him, which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of Nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one who hath transgressed that law, AS MAY MAKE HIM REPENT THE DOING OF IT, AND THEREBY DETER HIM, AND, BY HIS EXAMPLE, OTHERS FROM DOING THE LIKE MISCHIEF. [Emphasis mine] And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of Nature.”
“Precision policing targets those people who are responsible for the violence, which in a significant amount of cases are gangs…. By going after the gang members, arresting them, we recognize the resultant reduction in violence.”
I love how “Precision Policing” is a thing. Isn’t that just supposed to be policing, going after the bad guys? That’s what they do down here anyways.
Is “precision policing” the new “racial profiling”?
Just police new-speak for mass round-ups and violating the constitutional guarantee of freedom of association.
The Chicago municipal leadership has been profiting from gang crime since before the first time the Cubs won the World Series.
Why would they put a stop to gangs?
They yes they don’t really want to fix the problem.
For their own reasons.
Just like Shannon Watts doesn’t really want to fix the problem.
It’s better to be sustained (paid) as a witness or complainer than show up and fix it.
Politicians live in this place. The cops had to try three times to get a dealer to come to Lafayette Square directly across from the White House so Bush Sr. could say drugs were sold right there. He held up a bag of cocaine so large that no dealer would carry to sell.
It’s a circus. Enjoy the show!