Oh yes they do, and way way more. They just use different, more organized, with better PR, methods...
Posted on 06/10/2009 5:06:35 AM PDT by marktwain
I miss America.
Seriously.
If you ask me what I miss most, I'll probably tell you I miss youth. But it's not the youth that I miss, it's the attitude that existed when I was younger.
Growing up in the middle of the past century - at the end of the last millennium (gosh, I do feel old now), it was perfectly acceptable to leave your doors unlocked, the keys in your ignition, and your mower in your front yard.
Today, police don't even leave their cruisers unlocked when they get out to work a traffic accident. Times have changed - drastically.
But the 2008 crime statistics released by the FBI have put a somewhat more rosy face on what is really not a great situation. Crime is down in big cities, but it's up in small towns.
On the surface, it might look like the urban governments are getting things under control. Actually, that's the furthest thing from the truth. Fact of the matter, urban crime has spread to small town America because the cities are basically not worth the trouble anymore. Anyone with the means to leave many of the most dangerous areas already has left.
Predators, like hunters, follow the prey. With the urban exodus, the problems creep into small towns like crabgrass into a bermuda lawn. One day it looks good, then it's infested.
If you live in a city with a population of more than one million people, you saw murders drop by 4.3 percent. Cities from 500,000 to one million saw an eight percent drop. On the surface, that's pretty good news.
Unless you live in a town with fewer than 10,000 residents. There, murders jumped 5.5 percent, rape was up 1.4 percent, and robberies were 3.4 percent more likely.
Nationwide, all violent crime actually seemed to have dropped. Most appropriate, maybe, the precipitous drop in car thefts. A thirteen percent drop in car thefts proves what consumers have suspected for some time. There's no market for used cars - even hot ones.
The western region of the country did best in the declines, and the northeast actually had the only rise in crime, 1.6 percent.
No further inferences or wise cracks about crime seem appropriate in a time when many Americans feel they're experiencing a hijacking of the country. But you can check out the FBI's crime statistics preliminary stats at this address:
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june09/ucr_statistics060109.html.
Republished from The Outdoor Wire.
This is your typical “spreading the wealth” situation, Thanks to Section 8 housing. Here in Illinois they shut down the big housing projects in the inner city Chicago and declared small apartment complex’s in small down state towns section 8 housing and viola, they can’t live in their hood any more so they go down state and start a new “smaller” hood.
Yet, ironically, the racial group with the largest percentage of churchgoers also commits the disproportionate amount of crime.
Say what you will about the secular whites in the northeast: they don't rob, rape and murder. Meanwhile, the ghetto is filled with churches that are usually packed on sunday.
Still plenty of neighborhoods like that.
When the criminals move into a neighborhood, thanks to the liberal democrat lending policies, they can and often do terrorize the existing residents. That is what causes the phenomenon of white flight. The residents who stay are not defended by the police.
This multiculturalism causes a distrust of the police forces, and all other authority as well as distrust of neighbors. The distrust is rising among what I term the less criminal elements of the population. The term less criminal is used because it is impossible to obey all the laws and dictates that have been put in place by the anti-capitalists.
While I agree with your point about guns I think there is more at work here. I know 4 people (including Mrs. Mad) this year who have had a robbery committed against them. Since none were violent they simply did not report them to the police because it is such a time waster and generally a pain in the a$$. In addition the militarization of the police makes it so that every time you go to a police station you are treated like a criminal. Even victims are view as hiding something. Now, I go along way around to avoid any contact with the cops. I do not like being interrogated when I am the victim.
The article is full of crap. Crime is down MOST sharply in suburbs, where urban flight has gone to. Where crime is rising is in non-metropolitan small towns.
Is it the ruralization of the illegal alien? The spread of recreational drugs for boredom, such as crystal meth? I don’t know, and I don’t claim that those are reasonable guesses. But it is NOT that criminals follow their victims into the suburbs. During the worst years of the crack epidemic and white flight from D.C., Georgetown went years without a single murder.
Two words....”Doctor Spock”!
Sounds like municipalities, town meetings, and city councils need to reign in these militarized cops.
Since cops are local, we don’t really have much excuse to not speak up at our town meetings.
I think you express some very real concerns, but they don’t explain the crime data. Crimes are down the most sharply for the crime categories which must be reported: murder/non-negligent homicide and vehicle theft.
Oh yes they do, and way way more. They just use different, more organized, with better PR, methods...
I spoke too soon. The BIG problem we have in the northeast is that taxation falls almost entirely on 1. High wage earners (Finance and Pharma) and 2. Business owners. Meanwhile, the middle and lower middle classes are disproportionately comprised of state and local employees (to say nothing of the highly unionized “health care” industry). Basically, Numbers 1 and 2 are squeezed to the max in order to support the public sector “middle class.”
I agree. I avoid the ever higher social spiral downwards of the Cop Tribe. Not to mention the usual repellent bureaucracy.
I live in, and amongst uber white, upper income, leafy antique towns. Walking into a station is like walking into a prison. Absent surly desk Sgt, counting the years to retirement. Forms slid through two inches of plexi. Total disinterest if not annoyance of a ‘civilian’ entering the inordinantly large Security Apparatchiks perimeter.
Yes I saw that in the data. I have no good explanation and the system has been around for years so that it should have stable collection techniques. One other explanation is that hardcore drug use has gone country. Big city crime labs may have some effect on criminals moving to smaller locales.
Exactly.
They have to go after ‘high earners’.
Small and medium business can not exist in the Darwinian tax, regulatory environment. They can not afford the professional lawyers, tax accountants, zoning, and other burdens.
Hence most towns have the same large corporations that have enough capital to distribute those costs amongst many stores and demand good service prices from the professionals.
It used to be in my town if you had a building lot, amongst other lots in a established development, then the building permit would be a 30 minute thing in the building department. Now, in the same, but now way, way older development, if you had that lot, it could be two years and 30K or more dollars, with the fees going to chummy rule supporting lawyers, architects, environmentalists.
The professional class, or paperwork shufflers, or our new Mandarin class is very supportive of the growth of town bureaucracies into little FedGovs.
Take away our guns, and home invasions will skyrocket, libs will say they’re trying to figure out why, but can’t come up with an ans. yet. The fed/guv knows this and is counting on it IMO.
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