Quote:
Originally Posted by summersm343
Dude. Come on. I deleted the post because you were getting heated and starting to directly and personally insult a moderator. I should've known better by not posting anything. That's my mistake. I deleted my post and yours and others to prevent this from escalating, and people being suspended, banned, etc.
I'm sorry if I missed it, but I didn't see any reason at all from you to why the homicide rates have sharply increased over the past two years. All I saw was you directly attacking my explanation on my opinion of things.... which I don't believe are "absurdly wrong headed" and "illogical" and "racist" as you claim.
Here's my general overview of my beliefs to how we got here:
1970s onward (at least) - Systemic racism and lax gun laws cause an absurdly high homicide rate across the United States
1990s onward (roughly) - Systemic racism remains. Some cities start to turn around, pass stricter gun laws, increase socio-economic standing. Other cities (like Philly), are still struggling, and homicide rates are still high in those cities
2000s onward (roughly) - Now focusing on Philadelphia specifically - the city starts it's turnaround. However, systemic racism remains, and it's in a state with lax gun laws. Despite this, the Nutter administration starts to pass specific policies which help to turn the tide on violence, crime and homicide.
2017 onward - New Mayor (Kenny), New Police Commissioner, New DA. All very lax on crime. Enact certain policies and changes which start to tick the homicide and crime rate upward again. Systemic racism remains and we're still in a state with lax gun laws.
2020 and 2021 - SIGNIFICANT spike in homicides and crime. Homicides approach and pass record levels. In my opinion, this has to do with the long standing systemic racism and problems/poverty, etc., the long standing lax gun laws in this country and the State of PA, the current mayor/police commissioner/DA and their lax on crime approach, AND the events that transpired in 2020 (COVID, protests, rioting/looting, defund the police, loss of jobs, anger from all of this, etc.). All of these have contributed to the spike in homicides the past 2 years.
So there. There's my recap. What's your point of view on why these past 2 years have seen a record level of gun violence in Philadelphia? I'm not looking to attack you. I'm looking to hear what you have to say so we can talk it out like adults.
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Let me start by staying I never called you a racist and never personally attacked you. I attacked some of your statements because they lack a basis in fact and I said you were making arguments that racists make and as someone who I don't believe is racist, I thought you might be interested to know how you sounded.
I don't believe your point of view that you just laid out, is especially off base. There have yet to be significant studies on the cause of this current crimewave, but it's safe to assume that in the years to come as these studies come out, the primary causes will be the same as basically every crime wave of the past century. Economic hopelessness. Easy access to guns. Desperation caused by addiction. Inadequate healthcare of all forms but especially mental healthcare.
I believe you mentioned all of these as factors and I agree. And of course Covid is sort of the magic bullet that exacerbated every societal ill.
But while we agree on much, we start to separate when you start blaming the current DA, Mayor, etc. for being soft on crime. I won't elaborate on what my specific thoughts are on these public figures, and I don't mean to imply any of them are doing a perfect job or couldn't improve, but this whole debate started by you pointing out that the problems Philadelphia is experiencing with crime are currently universal across this country. Most places in this country have not elected a progressive DA with positions like Krasner. So why would you assume this is a cause? Besides,
there is also no correlation between putting more human beings in cages and actually making a community safer. People don't see that the DA isn't persecuting low level crimes and decide to murder someone. That's simply not how any of this works at all. But whatever, at least government policy is something that can actually affect the crime rate. I don't agree with these assertions but if you were just blaming Krasner or whatever, I'd think you were wrong but wouldn't have bothered responding.
The main problems I had with your original post, and the reason why I responded as I did, was the outrageous claim that the black lives matter protests were not just a cause of the crime wave but you seemed to imply they were one of the main causes. There is just no statistical basis for this. And as someone who just posted that you believe that institutional racism is a cause of crime, how can pushing to end institutional racism make crime worse?
If anything, I could understand blaming the specific crime that occurred during the protests on the protests. I don't think that the crimes of opportunity and looting that occurred during the protests should lead a reasonable person to conclude that protesting against racial injustice is a bad thing to do, but at the least I could understand the connection. But how, over a year later, are you blaming murders that are currently happening on protests for racial justice that occurred last summer?
And what I found especially annoying about your initial statements, was that you blamed the defund the police movement on the increase in crime. This is of course, absurd, because the police have not been defunded. Not here in Philadelphia, or really anywhere. The few places in America that have made consistent decreases to police funding throughout the course of this crime wave, are dwarfed in quantity and scale by the rest of America which has not defunded the police.
Please understand how frustrating it is, to push for police reforms with
significant statistical backing for your position and to be told that we can't defund the police because crime will rise. And then, even though the police haven't been defunded, and in fact
America is basically spending more than ever on policing, and then when crimes rose anyway we have to hear people like you blame defunding the police on why crime is increasing... even though we haven't defunded the police. Do you realize how crazy it is to blame the crime increase on something that hasn't happened?
So again, I don't think you're a bad guy. But blaming the crime increase on something that hasn't happened and protests for racial justice is both statistically unfounded and a terrible look. I hope you will take these criticisms as they are intended, simply as a critique of your statements and not some type of overarching judgement on you as a person.
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