...
Less than a year you would never know there was a revival... the question is when and who will be around when this all settles.
In the meantime... inner cities are becoming a no man's land where police fear to go... and who can blame them if the community is against them?
As mentioned before the the officer in the San Leandro Walmart shooting was at my parking lot doing reports when the call came... never in his wildest imagination did he think in 40 seconds his career over, life as he knew gone and District Attorney filing charges under a new manslaughter law... the person was acting erratically swinging a bat having a mental health crisis...
This will not go away any time soon.
The attacks against law enforcement have been going on for many years now. Officers have been, and are getting, targeted and assassinated in the streets. Again, this has been going on for years. What has changed is that the politicians have now jumped on the band wagon in large numbers at the local, state and Federal level. Before, it was only in a few places such as Baltimore, now it is country wide. Officers are resigning and retiring in large numbers and this will continue as politicians continue to target law enforcement. At the other end of the pipe line, the number of people signing up to work in law enforcement is declining in at least one NC city and I suspect in all or many cities it is the same. So the Thin Blue Line is getting thinner due to early retirement, resignations, and fewer people signing up to start a career in law enforcement. I wonder why?
Officers are not feeling they can be proactive because they do not trust the command staff or the politicians which leads to fewer arrests. But what do arrests do if the person charged is just let out of jail due to political interference in the criminal justice system or because of the pandemic?
It is going to take years of suffering before the political elite stop attacks on law enforcement and the crime rate improves.
The violent crime rate in at least one of the cities near me has gone up quite a bit in 2020 but the numbers also hide some of the truth. The lock down knocked down the violent crime for a month or two then the rate took off. The numbers I have looked at do not report December, so the 2020 homicide rate is not an all new high but there were quite a few shooting to end the year.
BUT, the overall shooting numbers are up, but the reality is the numbers are really up, because nothing was happening for a month or two in 2020. To put it another way, the violent crime rate went from a very low rate to out of this world very quickly but this is not easy to see if just looking at yearly numbers.
Some crimes did decrease and I think this is because of the lock down since it is a bit riskier to rob a house if someone is home. Unfortunately, the non domestic violent crime with weapons has really gone up. Surprisingly, domestic violence looks like it has dropped.
It is going to get worse before it gets better.
Later,
Dan
