Quote:
Originally Posted by allovertown
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. |
Well then, I think we mostly agree on quite a lot. One thing that hasn't really been mentioned is drug epidemics and the war on drugs as well. That plays a big factor into the homicide rates as well - i.e., crack epidemic in the 80s/90s and opioid epidemic of today.
I want to say that I never surmised that Black Lives Matter movement, the protests, the riots and looting, COVID, the defund the police movement, etc. were SOLELY to blame for todays homicide rates. Please don't think that at all. I know that correlation does not imply causation. I know this is a VERY, VERY complex and complicated situation with so, so many factors at play. You can't point a finger at one thing, when it's really many numerous things. I'm simply stating that it's certainly possible, and not totally unrealistic to hypothesis that those factors could be playing into the increase in homicides and shootings (particularly among lower class and poor black men), among many other factors. There's so many things to name that you can't possibly name it all.
The bulk of the murder rate issues since the 70s/80s all the way to today really boils down to decades (centuries?) of systemic racism, failed welfare, failed public housing/projects, lack of opportunity and economic hopelessness, lack of living wages, lack of quality education, environment and surroundings, drug epidemics/war on drugs, lax gun laws and easy access to guns, broken prison system and criminal reform system, etc. etc.
Furthermore, it's CERTAINLY possible that a lax on crime mayor, police commissioner and lax DA has played into the uptick in homicides and shootings we saw from 2017 onward.
And lastly, 2020 and 2021. Once COVID hit, I don't think it's totally out of the question to point to things that have happened since then as sending the homicide rate skyrocketing in many cities across the US... especially with ALL of the other factors I already mentioned still at play. For instance, COVID exposed and put on full display the many problems with American society and our systems in place. A lot of us knew these issues were there, but COVID amplified it. People losing jobs and amplifying the fears and anger of everyone, plus amplifying the economic hopelessness, etc....
....that leads into the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests. While typically and mostly a good thing, that has inspired good people to do good things, and has sparked a movement for change which needs to be made and is long overdue, it's very possible that all of this has amplified anger and fears as well amongst certain people... case in point - the looting/rioting that happened during all of this and is still continuing periodically to this day.
Then, the defund the police movement. While no defunding has actually happened, it has done multiple things. Police morale is low and police are quitting retiring (amongst major city police forces) at a very high clip with city police forces having a hard time bringing on new hires to replace them. Police are more hands off for a fear of being accused of police brutality, racism, etc. On the flip side, there are people who already distrusted the police, now they REALLY distrust the police and actually no longer fear them, they disrespect them, etc. etc....
https://whyy.org/articles/philly-pol...morale-is-low/
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/10095...y-from-the-job
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/inve...olice/3060247/
https://klewtv.com/news/nation-world...quit-last-year
And please, don't think this is racist, or I'm "backing the blue," or a trumper or whatever. Again, I'm a registered democrat who voted for Biden. I just don't think it's out of the question to point to these things as contributing factors to what's going on TODAY.... and that everything that has happened and keeps happening is a snow ball effect that has made matters worse and worse. Not the sole and major reasons, but could certainly be playing into it. Obviously, we need police reform, we need stricter gun laws, we need prison reform, we need to end the modern Jim Crow and systemic racism, and provide poor people of color better access to food/groceries, living wages and job opportunities, cleaner neighborhoods and better housing, access to better education, safer gun-free and drug-free neighborhoods, a revamped welfare system, fully legalize marijuana, etc. etc..... the BIG problem is, we don't have those things NOW. We don't have these systems in place now. So, while I agree with what a lot of the black lives matter movement is trying to accomplish, the problem is these things will not be overnight changes. These changes will take decades to really start to create meaningful change. Therefore, being lax on crime NOW is not going to work. Police reform NOW is not going to work. We need the correct systems in place already before we make these needed changes... because the reality is that PEOPLE ARE DYING in the streets, and it's always been at an alarming clip in Philadelphia and other major US cities, but now it's worse than it's been in a long, long time. A modern America can and should be so, so much better for all of it's residents.
So, that's why, in my opinion, I don't think it's totally out of the questions to say these things could be contributing factors to the homicide/gun violence spike. I don't think it's out of the question to look at these as possible contributing factors to the spike, while understand there so much worse and deeper factors and reasons to why this has been happening for decades now. I don't try to lean too far one way or the other, but see both sides of the story and both spectrums. Take a little bit from the right and the left, and try to find somewhere in the middle. Hope I explained it a little better this time.
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