Yesterday the New York Times ran this headline that in my opinion was just a matter of time ‘A YEAR AFTER DEFUND POLICE DEPARTMENTS GET THEIR MONEY BACK.” Indeed! and I’m not just speaking for myself anyone with the least bit of brain matter could predict what the reality of defunding the police would really mean. Abrupt reversals have begun to take hold around the entire U.S in response to an explosive rise in levels of crime and violence. For those cities and their politicians who thought HEY! THAT’S A GOOD IDEA MAYBE WE’LL JUST ELIMINATE COPS ALTOGETHER, a complete reversal has taken hold.” In case you’ve been exploring the center of the earth in the last year, many city governments actually kicked the idea around but settled ultimately on just plain old defunding.
The city I live in now Austin, Texas one of the first to entertain the idea of defunding the police has restored its budget and raised it to new heights in response to a soaring murder rate never seen before. Many politicians saying they didn’t want to become another Chicago(YIKES).
In Burlington, Vermont the city once led by Bernie Sanders as mayor went from cutting the police budget to offering cops a $10,000 bonus to stay on the job. In Dallas, Texas fast increasing levels of crime led to hiring an additional 250 more officers to try and bring about some semblance of control, their murder rate has doubled.
Of course, there are many many more cities that have currently joined in the dump the defund movement. One can only imagine how the hell they thought it was a good idea in the first, but I dare anyone to get an honest answer from any of those witless politicians. The finger-pointing and blame will be an Olympic event and so many backs will be stabbed. Caesar would have been shocked.
Every year the FBI releases its report on Violent Crime in the U.S. It’s never a pretty thing but this year it’s a bit frightening, to say the least. Although it does little good to take heart in this year’s FBI numbers some in Chicago have done just that. The following is my post on the matter and just how unreliable even the FBI can be as far as numbers go.
“The recent release of the annual rankings of America’s most dangerous cities leaves out some very important information as far as Chicago’s FBI rankings with other cities. At first glance, it does appear that Chicago ranks below other cities such as Detroit, St Louis, New Orleans, Memphis, Baltimore, and a few others. What it does not include is the number of people shot and wounded by gunfire. With a population of a little over 2 and a half million people, the number of people shot in Chicago is over nine thousand folks. No other city in America can come close to that no matter the population per capita- as my old partner used say per capita per shappada- folks are being shot down.
The FBI numbers do not list the number of teens shot down on Chicago’s streets. Even veteran and retired cops are shaken, it numbers in the hundreds and hundreds. What other city in America has over 189 expressway shootings that run through the city? What other city has had 59 mass shootings in which four or more people are gunned down in one incident? What other city has hundreds and hundreds of teens undiagnosed for ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES (ACT) entire neighborhoods are living in fear of the rolling violence they are surrounded by? What other city has distributed hundreds of BLEEDING CONTROL KITS IN HUNDREDS OF CITY FACILITIES ACROSS ALL OF CHICAGO? Those FBI rankings on murder and just how dangerous some cities are and where they rank most certainly do not tell the real story. Chicago’s silent statistics are a perfect example.
The blame game that Chicago’s politicians engage in to distract from the violence does nothing to solve the problem and as hard as it is to admit for most people Chicago’s violence is getting worse. It’s a CRUDE thing to say and as hard as it may be to admit IT’S THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE SHOT STUPID. Those FBI numbers might seem to suggest to some who want to believe them that Chicago is not so bad after all look at those other cities REMEMBER FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS BUT STATISTICS ARE PLIABLE.
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