He did it! He figured out crime. Bret Stephens finally turned his sparkling intellect to crime, and what causes it, and he totally figured it out.
“Undeterred Criminals Plus Demoralized Cops Equals More Crime”
So …. I guess we should start deterring criminals and moralizing cops more?
Stephens starts off strong, defending an officer who fatally shot a 13-year-old.
But aha! Look at this masterful rhetoric—first, he fakes you out with the “progressive” take, then he comes right back at you with what really happened:
Two years ago, a white Chicago police officer named Eric Stillman fatally shot Adam Toledo, an unarmed 13-year-old Mexican American with no criminal record, while the boy was complying with the officer’s orders following a late-night foot chase. The killing brought greater awareness to police brutality in Latino communities, yet no charges were filed against Stillman. Since then, Chicago has been able to turn a corner on violent crime, thanks partly to investments in after-school youth programs. Murders are down by 20 percent from two years ago.
That’s one version of events, the version favored by the progressive left.
Another version goes like this. On March 29, 2021, at 2:36 a.m., Stillman and his partner responded to a call that shots were being fired. Stillman pushed Ruben Roman, a 21-year-old with a criminal record, to the ground and chased Toledo, who was holding a 9-millimeter handgun, down a dark alley. Stillman yelled “drop it.” Toledo tossed the gun behind a fence and turned toward him. The officer fired the fatal shot less than a second after Toledo got rid of the gun. Stillman then immediately jumped to Toledo’s aid and called for an ambulance.
Oh wow, instead of letting the 13-year-old he just shot just bleed to death on the ground, the officer called 911. Now that is top notch policing.
Stephens then parrots the baseless idea that police can’t do their jobs because they’re demoralized, which is somehow the fault of protestors protesting George Floyd being suffocated to death by a cop who somehow didn’t know that you’re supposed to flip detained suspect on their sides.
It does seem like there’s been a lot of resignations in police departments. But has anyone maybe considered that all the cops we hired in the 1990s during the tough-on-crime splurge are just like …. retirement age now?
A recent academic analysis found that 11 out of the 14 cities it studied suffered from higher-than-expected losses to their police after the George Floyd protests of 2020, with Seattle losing the highest proportion of its force. One possible unfortunate result, the study suggests, is that, as good cops depart, the quality of newer recruits also suffers. That may help explain the appalling police brutality in the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis in January.
This fucking asshole makes my blood boil—he can just kind of say whatever and rake in the cash. Where is his evidence that the cops in the Tyre Nichols case were recruited due to a shortage of more competent police officers, due to low morale? This argument would get an “F” on a High school paper.
In New York, where major crimes rose by 22 percent last year, complaints of shoplifting have nearly doubled over the past five years — while the arrest rate since 2017 fell by almost half. A report by Hurubie Meko in The Times notes that a mere 327 shoplifters accounted for one-third of all arrests and that they had been “arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.” Why? “Law enforcement and trade groups have blamed a proliferation of organized shoplifting crews, repeat offenders and the new state bail law that they argue has enabled such offenders to avoid jail time.”
More top-notch reporting. Law enforcement and “trade groups” might not be the best sources for a story about law enforcement. And does Stephens know what bail is? It’s pre-trial release. Why would someone commit more crime, while on pre-trial release, that will lead to more time behind bars post-trial? (post guilty plea actually). The data show that levels of violent reoffending by people out on bail are miniscule.
In other words, lax enforcement when it comes to petty criminality has led to big-time criminality. And the consequence of supposedly “victimless” crimes like shoplifting has created a palpable sense of disorder, menace and fear — each conducive to the anything-goes atmosphere in which crime invariably flourishes.
Wait—did Bret Stephens just come up with broken windows theory? Brilliant. Bretlliant.
I love how conservatives (and conservatives posing as Democrats, like Eric Adams) imbue “disorder, menace and fear” with sentience and agency, like they’re Greek gods. If you’re scared of shoplifters, get therapy. If the existence of shoplifters encouraged you to commit more serious crime, well, get committed to a mental hospital.
Tana, where do you live, and how much contact do you have with the American black underclass? I live in a 90% black neighborhood and crime is out of control. Yes, the overwhelming majority of my neighbors are good people, but when 10% or more of a population are violent criminals (a guesstimation of mine, but probably accurate), that's a LOT.
This sizeable minority terrorizes all of us. They walk around in summer heat wearing hoodies and ski masks. They willfully litter all over the place. They smoke weed and blast mumble rap through their bluetooth speakers LOUDLY on board the subway. Hundreds of them travel in packs aboard 2-stroke dirt bikes and ATV's on public streets, doing wheelies in traffic. They swarm convenience stores, picking the shelves clean and knocking everything over. They randomly attack innocent people in packs.
I don't understand why anybody would tolerate this lawlessness. The only possible explanation is that those who do live in "Yuppie Green Zones", where this luxury belief system tends to flourish. Yes, we need to attack all of the root causes for the long-term fix. But for now the only way out of this in the short to medium term is through the overwhelming application of force by the state. Stop-and-frisk would uncover thousands of illegal firearms. Pulling over cars with broken tail lights and expired inspection stickers would too. Arresting drivers for DUI when an officer smells weed (I frequently see people smoking weed openly while driving, which is DUI) would go a long way toward turning up criminals with warrants. Basically, just do the opposite of what BLM wants and everything will be better for those of us who matter.
Don't bother pointing and sputtering while calling me racist. I don't care.
“Where is his evidence that the cops in the Tyre Nichols case were recruited due to a shortage of more competent police officers, due to low morale?”
https://nypost.com/2023/01/28/memphis-cops-in-tyre-nichols-murder-hired-after-pd-relaxed-job-standards/?utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_campaign=SocialFlow