Thomas Sowell's presentation on antebellum southern cracker culture emanating from the old cracker culture in the British Isles and having had a negative effect on southern blacks who migrated in great numbers to the North, etc. Blacks from the Caribbean, not exposed to the antebellum Southern cracker culture, have done very well in America compared to native blacks, especially as entrepreneurs.
During my last year studying at a University, I worked at a "stop & rob" convenience store in a lower socioeconomic white neighborhood in the early 70s, where whites called me n*gger and monkey. I then worked for the California Youth Authority for 6 years and the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation for 28 years before retiring 17 years ago.
Biden was instrumental in influencing the 1994 racist crime bill under Clinton, wherein white drug offenders at the federal level were caught with 500 grams of cocaine and were given the same 5-year sentence as black drug offenders found with 5 grams of crack cocaine. States were given lots of federal money after implementing the 3-strikes laws.
When I started working for CDC&R in 1981, the prison population was 27,000. After I retired in 2007, it was around 170,000. As of January 18, 2023, was 95,600. This was a result of prison realignment, diversion programs, and changes in penalties. Overcrowding and increasing costs were significant problems. It costs an average of about $106, 000 per year to incarcerate an inmate in prison in California. About three-quarters of these costs are for security and inmate healthcare.
I have extensively traveled the world--- over 150 countries, including the third world. Where there was poverty, there was extensive crime. The world's color caste system, significantly influenced by the Europeans, has dark-skinned people at the bottom.
The root cause? Lol!!!!
Thomas Sowell: "Recent scholarship traces the roots of southern violence to the Scots-Irish, who brought a relatively violent “cracker culture” with them to the United States in the eighteenth century. The tolerance for violence inherent in cracker culture was believed to be transmitted throughout the South to other whites and was maintained, in part, through evangelical Christian doctrine.
Some southern blacks were also influenced by “cracker culture,” leading to the emergence of a “black redneck” phenomenon influencing homicide among blacks. Using county-level data circa 2000, this study empirically evaluates the merit of the cracker culture/black redneck thesis. Negative binomial regression analyses for a full sample of counties suggest that a measure of southern cracker/black redneck culture is an important factor affecting contemporary rates of argument homicide among both whites and blacks. When counties are divided into south and non-south sub-samples, the results are also consistent: a cracker/black redneck culture effect is evident for both racial groups in the south and is also apparent outside of the southern region. We interpret these latter findings as possible support for the thesis that southern cracker/black redneck culture has been transported through migration to non-southern localities."
A legend in his own mind. Not since the Hoteps met Dolamite, have we've seen your level of luxury and sophistication.
He has certainly suffered the slings and arrows of misfortune, leaving him like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. Left only with his obsessive thoughts of homo erotica. And leaving the rest of us to ponder, where did they touch you Monti?
Two types of errors - false positive & false negative. Every system has some of both errors, and most systems have been locally optimized, at their budget, so that getting fewer innocents arrested means getting a lot more criminals not arrested.
Far more college educated Blacks need to be joining police departments. That means being both mentally and physically fit. The college grad Blacks who don't live in majority Black areas, yet claim to speak for Blacks, should be told to "get real". Get their addresses changed to be in Black area school districts and try to help that local community, including living an exemplar life - being a good example to the kids nearby. Of course, helping improve the terrible local community by joining it, means suffering more individually than if they integrated into a safer, whiter place.
More Blacks should be carrying guns, and shooting the Black criminals trying to victimize innocent Blacks - the shooting will deter those shot (especially the dead, but even the wounded that recover) from future crime, and show that innocent Blacks support other innocent Blacks against the criminal Blacks.
Most Black criminals are young men, men raised by their (slut-) mothers who love them but do not provide a good role model; often not a good lifestyle model. As kids, they are victims of bad parents. Also bad schooling, like in Chicago, where the students do not learn how important to society and the community it is to obey laws. Growing up means that, even if you were a child victim, your behavior as an adult must be to obey the law, and report (most) criminals.
By around age ... 11 (or 10? or 12?), the constantly disruptive male students should probably be separated from the students who are studying. We need to find boarding schools or other male dominated organizations for boys, to help them learn what it is to be a man, a good man. Which their mothers, nor female teachers, are good at teaching.
A Community Service corps, as a junior Army training, would help the military find more good recruits, but also help the boy victims become good men. Lots of examples of the military structure helping the capable enlistees become much more productive and far less criminal. Pushing an underage version of that should be an option for more boys.
Off topic, but Glenn I assume that you and John will most likely discuss the ongoing implosion at Ibram Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research during your next conversation? The topic certainly has been trending and I'm hopeful that it's the long awaited nail in the coffin that finally discredits Henry Rogers as the charlatan that he is. Even The Young Turks did a segment on the controversy just now.
IQ. Look up which jobs you may be qualified for if your IQ is 85. Now look at 1 standard deviation up and down. (Low of 70, high of 100) And remember, you must apply yourself to keep this employment. Show up, do a decent job, hope you aren't replaced by someone more proficient or a machine.
Education. Look at the proficiency scores for Chicago schools, where they spend about 30k per year, per student. Horrendous.
Marriage rate for educated black females. Females tend to marry up socially, and males down.
The male pool is extremely limited, compared to the available females.
Blacks have been unable to compete in almost all areas where there is a standardized test. Necessitating a lowering or elimination of tests.
Black females are unqualified for many of the positions they hold and have made extremely poor decisions. Mayor's, judges, district attorneys, educators, public service administrators, parents.
Exactly what score would you give a parent who's offspring are synonymous for the lowest test scores, carjacking, drug dealers, robbing, looting, drive by shootings, rapes, and last year alone killed 4 times as many black people than were killed on September 11, 2001.
The future grim, there is nothing you can do to change this, that hasn't been tried over and over previously. That is why I say, this is as good as it gets.
Just read "Bewre of Dog." Of the many thoughts that came to my (alleged) mind, one stood out. Police in the US RESPOND to crimes AFTER they have been commited NOT BEFORE. We don't want a police force that allows our behavior. They exist to find criminals AFTER the crime has been commited. It is up to the courts to address that illegal act and proscribe punishment to the perpetrator. It's the threat of legal punishment that serves to deter crime. Police serve to remove criminals from lawful society to face judicial punishment.
As has been mentioned, the discussion of cops is really a reflection of our recognized NEED for cops.
We should consider why we need them. The old saying is, "To measure honesty, consider what a person will do when no one is looking." Every cop out there was hired out of need. And that's a shame. Now, let's examine why we need them, and not blame the cops for having been hired.
Yes, there are bad cops. And they need to be discovered and dealt with. But it is obfuscation to blame our current situation on some crooked cops. The crime is there, crooked cops, or not. WHY are those criminals there? Who raised them? Who taught them? Who taught them (or not) right from wrong? Those are the questions that need asking and answering, and yet we barely address them.
Send a Social Worker to a mentally ill persons home is the silliest thing I have heard since the good rev West and his farakahn rifts was on. Glen get someone with real life experience to argue the left she posits not one solution, and acts like disappointment is not part of the process. She is hardly a serious debater unless you go for demonizing others. Jimmy Dore a nut and grifter has been calling the squad out for years. Nothing happens because the squad is a made up group like the band “The Monkeys” playing what is written. But your guest is adorable like your lovely wife.....
Way too many questionable assertions were made in this video.
Let's start with clearance rates. Rajiv Sethi touched on this in a comment that was posted to the full discussion video, but it bears repeating that overall crime clearance rates are much higher than what Sabrina Salvati says.
Here are national figures from the FBI for 2017 by type of crime:
I'm sympathetic to the idea that clearance rates should be higher. As Dr. Sethi pointed out, the reasons behind low clearance rates are complex and include more factors than Sabrina Salvati acknowledged.
The mother of a young woman who was killed while attending a Fourth of July block party in Baltimore has emphatically answered the question of whether cops prevent crime:
BALTIMORE -- The mother of Brooklyn Homes mass shooting victim Aaliyah Gonzalez wept before a city council oversight hearing Wednesday, leading many people in the chamber to tears as she described the pain of losing her daughter.
She told council members she would never be able to hug her 18-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, again and recounted the horror of seeing her body on Gretna Court, playing audio of the moment that changed her life forever.
"This did not have to happen," Krystal Gonzalez said. "It didn't have to happen if there were more than two or three patrol cars out there."
She demanded accountability from city leaders for the violence that left 28 injured and killed two people: her daughter and 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi.
"Knowing that there were calls—endless calls—for help and no one showed up," Gonzalez said.
"Knowing that Foxtrot—I now know the name of the helicopter—was hundreds of feet in the air and will tell you as they look down… that everything looks normal, what is your normal? I challenge you: What is your normal? Let them take each other out? Is that your normal?"
Read the full story and watch Krystal Gonzalez's testimony before Baltimore City Council if you have any doubts about the importance of law enforcement and whether they help prevent crime.
Or read the 173 page after action report if you want to do a deep dive:
It provides insights into all the things society asks of law enforcement these days.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board, which leans left, recently wrote an editorial about their depleted public safety apparatus. St. Louis doesn’t have enough dispatchers to coordinate and support the work of cops on the ground:
It’s a common refrain among St. Louis residents today: Why are city police so non-responsive to all but the most dire emergencies? Why do they seem to ignore the reckless drivers who speed through red lights, the vandals who destroy property, the drunk-and-disorderly bar crowds?
It’s almost like the cops have been told that anyone committing any crime less than a major felony gets a pass.
And now, we have that in writing.
A stunning new report by the Post-Dispatch’s Dana Rieck reveals that city police officers have, in fact, been routinely told — in writing — to back off confronting non-violent lawbreaking they come across because there aren’t enough police dispatchers to coordinate their activity.
The piece goes on to say that St. Louis needs more dispatchers, more cops, and more support staff.
Let's address the Dollar General shooting in Florida. It provides another example of the importance of policing/security. Here's an excerpt from a CNN report:
The shooter, who lived with his parents in Orange Park in Clay County, left his home around 11:39 a.m. and headed to Jacksonville in neighboring Duval County, Waters told CNN on Saturday.
Surveillance footage shows at around 12:23 p.m., the suspect pulled into a Family Dollar store, Waters told reporters at a news conference Monday. He entered the store, purchased some items and then returned to his vehicle at 12:29 p.m. About a minute later, a security vehicle entered the lot and parked in front of the store. The suspect eventually drove away at 12:39 p.m.
At 12:48 p.m., he stopped at Edward Waters University in New Town, a predominately Black area of Jacksonville, where the sheriff said the suspect put on a bulletproof vest. A TikTok video captured him getting dressed, Waters said.
A student flagged down campus security when they saw the shooter because he “looked out of place,” Edward Waters University President and CEO Dr. A. Zachary Faison Jr. told CNN.
The man immediately got in his vehicle and started to drive away after being confronted by a security officer, who followed him until he left campus, Faison said.
“We don’t know obviously what his full intentions were, but we do know that he came here right before going to the Dollar General,” Faison said. “Members of our university security team reacted almost immediately. I think the reports are in less than 30 seconds after he made contact and drove onto our campus.”
You appreciate the importance of policing/security if you were at Family Dollar or Edward Waters University when the alleged shooter arrived. You wish cops or security had been present if you were at Dollar General.
Absent a reassuring police presence, business owners in Philadelphia have hired armed guards to ensure the safety of their employees and customers. Here's a video from ABC's Philadelphia affiliate that illustrates the point:
Interviews with customers, most of whom were black, suggest they felt safe while under the watchful eye of armed guards with long guns as they stood in lines that extended outside the restaurant to buy cheese steaks.
Glenn Loury is right. The answer is better policing, not no policing.
For anyone who wants to understand the reality of crime, I highly recommend Glenn's prior guest Rafael Mangual and his book Criminal Injustice. It's one of the best works I've read and Rafael deserves a prize along the lines of the MacArthur genius award.
Mangual casts doubt on the frequently espoused idea that crime is primarily the result of poverty. As he notes, poverty rates are actually slightly higher in NYC today than they were in the early 1990s when crime peaked in the city. Furthermore, I would point out that there seems to be very little correlation between per capita GDP and homicide rates in East Asia, let alone any stronger evidence of causation. In my opinion, there's too much variation in crime rates among different groups even after accounting for SES for poverty to clearly be the primary factor driving crime.
The simple fact of the matter is that the police ultimately aren't the problem, even if policing is imperfect and in need of some reform. Communities with low rates of crime have a much different relationship with the police than communities with high rates of crime. Policing is ultimately a symptom and not the underlying cause.
This is an example of a certain kind of fallacy I've been wanting to find a name for, specifically unwarranted assumptions that some (but not other) aspects of the status quo are invariant to a proposed change. In this case, it's the distribution of crime being invariant to the presence of police. The argument 'police rarely stop crimes in progress, therefore they do not present a significant barrier to crime' is not valid because people avoid committing crimes in places where police might stop them. Another example is 'false accusations of assault are rare, therefore we should lower standards of evidence,' which is not valid because false accusations are disproportionately disincentivized by standards of evidence.
I have two points: there is no data to support that poverty has anything to do with criminal behavior. Assuming that poor people commit crimes is abhorrent. That is stereotyping without any evidence. If Ms. Salvati believes poverty is a leading cause of crime in the US she needs to read and travel more. What is considered poverty in the US would be upper middle class in many other countries. I know because I have lived there.
Two, there used to be lots of people that did not commit crimes - not because they were afraid of being caught but because laws are made to protect society and crimes hurt people and they did not want to risk hurting someone. You do not speed down streets because you might hit someone not because a policeman is waiting. Maybe the breakdown of the family by progressives and removing God from schools might have something to do with the honor deficit we now see. You could never have enough police to create a safe society if the majority of people do not need police.
Thomas Sowell's presentation on antebellum southern cracker culture emanating from the old cracker culture in the British Isles and having had a negative effect on southern blacks who migrated in great numbers to the North, etc. Blacks from the Caribbean, not exposed to the antebellum Southern cracker culture, have done very well in America compared to native blacks, especially as entrepreneurs.
https://youtu.be/FT4NQ9D0M6w?si=F-I98mljSbpnETKm
During my last year studying at a University, I worked at a "stop & rob" convenience store in a lower socioeconomic white neighborhood in the early 70s, where whites called me n*gger and monkey. I then worked for the California Youth Authority for 6 years and the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation for 28 years before retiring 17 years ago.
Biden was instrumental in influencing the 1994 racist crime bill under Clinton, wherein white drug offenders at the federal level were caught with 500 grams of cocaine and were given the same 5-year sentence as black drug offenders found with 5 grams of crack cocaine. States were given lots of federal money after implementing the 3-strikes laws.
When I started working for CDC&R in 1981, the prison population was 27,000. After I retired in 2007, it was around 170,000. As of January 18, 2023, was 95,600. This was a result of prison realignment, diversion programs, and changes in penalties. Overcrowding and increasing costs were significant problems. It costs an average of about $106, 000 per year to incarcerate an inmate in prison in California. About three-quarters of these costs are for security and inmate healthcare.
I have extensively traveled the world--- over 150 countries, including the third world. Where there was poverty, there was extensive crime. The world's color caste system, significantly influenced by the Europeans, has dark-skinned people at the bottom.
The root cause? Lol!!!!
Thomas Sowell: "Recent scholarship traces the roots of southern violence to the Scots-Irish, who brought a relatively violent “cracker culture” with them to the United States in the eighteenth century. The tolerance for violence inherent in cracker culture was believed to be transmitted throughout the South to other whites and was maintained, in part, through evangelical Christian doctrine.
Some southern blacks were also influenced by “cracker culture,” leading to the emergence of a “black redneck” phenomenon influencing homicide among blacks. Using county-level data circa 2000, this study empirically evaluates the merit of the cracker culture/black redneck thesis. Negative binomial regression analyses for a full sample of counties suggest that a measure of southern cracker/black redneck culture is an important factor affecting contemporary rates of argument homicide among both whites and blacks. When counties are divided into south and non-south sub-samples, the results are also consistent: a cracker/black redneck culture effect is evident for both racial groups in the south and is also apparent outside of the southern region. We interpret these latter findings as possible support for the thesis that southern cracker/black redneck culture has been transported through migration to non-southern localities."
Oh poor Monti.
A legend in his own mind. Not since the Hoteps met Dolamite, have we've seen your level of luxury and sophistication.
He has certainly suffered the slings and arrows of misfortune, leaving him like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. Left only with his obsessive thoughts of homo erotica. And leaving the rest of us to ponder, where did they touch you Monti?
Two types of errors - false positive & false negative. Every system has some of both errors, and most systems have been locally optimized, at their budget, so that getting fewer innocents arrested means getting a lot more criminals not arrested.
Far more college educated Blacks need to be joining police departments. That means being both mentally and physically fit. The college grad Blacks who don't live in majority Black areas, yet claim to speak for Blacks, should be told to "get real". Get their addresses changed to be in Black area school districts and try to help that local community, including living an exemplar life - being a good example to the kids nearby. Of course, helping improve the terrible local community by joining it, means suffering more individually than if they integrated into a safer, whiter place.
More Blacks should be carrying guns, and shooting the Black criminals trying to victimize innocent Blacks - the shooting will deter those shot (especially the dead, but even the wounded that recover) from future crime, and show that innocent Blacks support other innocent Blacks against the criminal Blacks.
Most Black criminals are young men, men raised by their (slut-) mothers who love them but do not provide a good role model; often not a good lifestyle model. As kids, they are victims of bad parents. Also bad schooling, like in Chicago, where the students do not learn how important to society and the community it is to obey laws. Growing up means that, even if you were a child victim, your behavior as an adult must be to obey the law, and report (most) criminals.
By around age ... 11 (or 10? or 12?), the constantly disruptive male students should probably be separated from the students who are studying. We need to find boarding schools or other male dominated organizations for boys, to help them learn what it is to be a man, a good man. Which their mothers, nor female teachers, are good at teaching.
A Community Service corps, as a junior Army training, would help the military find more good recruits, but also help the boy victims become good men. Lots of examples of the military structure helping the capable enlistees become much more productive and far less criminal. Pushing an underage version of that should be an option for more boys.
Off topic, but Glenn I assume that you and John will most likely discuss the ongoing implosion at Ibram Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research during your next conversation? The topic certainly has been trending and I'm hopeful that it's the long awaited nail in the coffin that finally discredits Henry Rogers as the charlatan that he is. Even The Young Turks did a segment on the controversy just now.
Things to look at that may predict the future.
IQ. Look up which jobs you may be qualified for if your IQ is 85. Now look at 1 standard deviation up and down. (Low of 70, high of 100) And remember, you must apply yourself to keep this employment. Show up, do a decent job, hope you aren't replaced by someone more proficient or a machine.
Education. Look at the proficiency scores for Chicago schools, where they spend about 30k per year, per student. Horrendous.
Marriage rate for educated black females. Females tend to marry up socially, and males down.
The male pool is extremely limited, compared to the available females.
Blacks have been unable to compete in almost all areas where there is a standardized test. Necessitating a lowering or elimination of tests.
Black females are unqualified for many of the positions they hold and have made extremely poor decisions. Mayor's, judges, district attorneys, educators, public service administrators, parents.
Exactly what score would you give a parent who's offspring are synonymous for the lowest test scores, carjacking, drug dealers, robbing, looting, drive by shootings, rapes, and last year alone killed 4 times as many black people than were killed on September 11, 2001.
The future grim, there is nothing you can do to change this, that hasn't been tried over and over previously. That is why I say, this is as good as it gets.
Just read "Bewre of Dog." Of the many thoughts that came to my (alleged) mind, one stood out. Police in the US RESPOND to crimes AFTER they have been commited NOT BEFORE. We don't want a police force that allows our behavior. They exist to find criminals AFTER the crime has been commited. It is up to the courts to address that illegal act and proscribe punishment to the perpetrator. It's the threat of legal punishment that serves to deter crime. Police serve to remove criminals from lawful society to face judicial punishment.
As has been mentioned, the discussion of cops is really a reflection of our recognized NEED for cops.
We should consider why we need them. The old saying is, "To measure honesty, consider what a person will do when no one is looking." Every cop out there was hired out of need. And that's a shame. Now, let's examine why we need them, and not blame the cops for having been hired.
Yes, there are bad cops. And they need to be discovered and dealt with. But it is obfuscation to blame our current situation on some crooked cops. The crime is there, crooked cops, or not. WHY are those criminals there? Who raised them? Who taught them? Who taught them (or not) right from wrong? Those are the questions that need asking and answering, and yet we barely address them.
Coming from a guy that made a career out of glorified babysitting.
Keep it up Monty, don't ever change. Keep the stereotype alive.
Well, this was interesting.
Then I watched a mob in Philly loot the Footlocker, Apple Store, and Lululemmon.
Hint, it wasn't the Amish.
The stereotype lives on. This is good as it gets.
Send a Social Worker to a mentally ill persons home is the silliest thing I have heard since the good rev West and his farakahn rifts was on. Glen get someone with real life experience to argue the left she posits not one solution, and acts like disappointment is not part of the process. She is hardly a serious debater unless you go for demonizing others. Jimmy Dore a nut and grifter has been calling the squad out for years. Nothing happens because the squad is a made up group like the band “The Monkeys” playing what is written. But your guest is adorable like your lovely wife.....
Way too many questionable assertions were made in this video.
Let's start with clearance rates. Rajiv Sethi touched on this in a comment that was posted to the full discussion video, but it bears repeating that overall crime clearance rates are much higher than what Sabrina Salvati says.
Here are national figures from the FBI for 2017 by type of crime:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/clearance-browse-by/national-data
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter - 61.6%
Rape - 34.5%
Robbery - 29.7%
Aggravated assault - 53.3%
Burglary - 13.5%
Larceny-theft - 19.2%
Motor vehicle theft - 13.7%
I'm sympathetic to the idea that clearance rates should be higher. As Dr. Sethi pointed out, the reasons behind low clearance rates are complex and include more factors than Sabrina Salvati acknowledged.
The mother of a young woman who was killed while attending a Fourth of July block party in Baltimore has emphatically answered the question of whether cops prevent crime:
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/baltimore-city-council-public-safety-committee-holds-hearing-on-brooklyn-homes-mass-shooting/
Here's an excerpt:
BALTIMORE -- The mother of Brooklyn Homes mass shooting victim Aaliyah Gonzalez wept before a city council oversight hearing Wednesday, leading many people in the chamber to tears as she described the pain of losing her daughter.
She told council members she would never be able to hug her 18-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, again and recounted the horror of seeing her body on Gretna Court, playing audio of the moment that changed her life forever.
"This did not have to happen," Krystal Gonzalez said. "It didn't have to happen if there were more than two or three patrol cars out there."
She demanded accountability from city leaders for the violence that left 28 injured and killed two people: her daughter and 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi.
"Knowing that there were calls—endless calls—for help and no one showed up," Gonzalez said.
"Knowing that Foxtrot—I now know the name of the helicopter—was hundreds of feet in the air and will tell you as they look down… that everything looks normal, what is your normal? I challenge you: What is your normal? Let them take each other out? Is that your normal?"
Read the full story and watch Krystal Gonzalez's testimony before Baltimore City Council if you have any doubts about the importance of law enforcement and whether they help prevent crime.
Or read the 173 page after action report if you want to do a deep dive:
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/brooklyn-homes-baltimore-mass-shooting-report-police-response/
It provides insights into all the things society asks of law enforcement these days.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board, which leans left, recently wrote an editorial about their depleted public safety apparatus. St. Louis doesn’t have enough dispatchers to coordinate and support the work of cops on the ground:
https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-city-police-are-told-in-writing-to-stand-down-for-lack-of-dispatchers/article_9941e22c-58af-11ee-8e1b-4bc2df438f51.html
Here's an excerpt:
It’s a common refrain among St. Louis residents today: Why are city police so non-responsive to all but the most dire emergencies? Why do they seem to ignore the reckless drivers who speed through red lights, the vandals who destroy property, the drunk-and-disorderly bar crowds?
It’s almost like the cops have been told that anyone committing any crime less than a major felony gets a pass.
And now, we have that in writing.
A stunning new report by the Post-Dispatch’s Dana Rieck reveals that city police officers have, in fact, been routinely told — in writing — to back off confronting non-violent lawbreaking they come across because there aren’t enough police dispatchers to coordinate their activity.
The piece goes on to say that St. Louis needs more dispatchers, more cops, and more support staff.
Let's address the Dollar General shooting in Florida. It provides another example of the importance of policing/security. Here's an excerpt from a CNN report:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/28/us/jacksonville-florida-shooting-what-we-know/index.html
The shooter, who lived with his parents in Orange Park in Clay County, left his home around 11:39 a.m. and headed to Jacksonville in neighboring Duval County, Waters told CNN on Saturday.
Surveillance footage shows at around 12:23 p.m., the suspect pulled into a Family Dollar store, Waters told reporters at a news conference Monday. He entered the store, purchased some items and then returned to his vehicle at 12:29 p.m. About a minute later, a security vehicle entered the lot and parked in front of the store. The suspect eventually drove away at 12:39 p.m.
At 12:48 p.m., he stopped at Edward Waters University in New Town, a predominately Black area of Jacksonville, where the sheriff said the suspect put on a bulletproof vest. A TikTok video captured him getting dressed, Waters said.
A student flagged down campus security when they saw the shooter because he “looked out of place,” Edward Waters University President and CEO Dr. A. Zachary Faison Jr. told CNN.
The man immediately got in his vehicle and started to drive away after being confronted by a security officer, who followed him until he left campus, Faison said.
“We don’t know obviously what his full intentions were, but we do know that he came here right before going to the Dollar General,” Faison said. “Members of our university security team reacted almost immediately. I think the reports are in less than 30 seconds after he made contact and drove onto our campus.”
You appreciate the importance of policing/security if you were at Family Dollar or Edward Waters University when the alleged shooter arrived. You wish cops or security had been present if you were at Dollar General.
Absent a reassuring police presence, business owners in Philadelphia have hired armed guards to ensure the safety of their employees and customers. Here's a video from ABC's Philadelphia affiliate that illustrates the point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRL32CEyMH8
Interviews with customers, most of whom were black, suggest they felt safe while under the watchful eye of armed guards with long guns as they stood in lines that extended outside the restaurant to buy cheese steaks.
Glenn Loury is right. The answer is better policing, not no policing.
For anyone who wants to understand the reality of crime, I highly recommend Glenn's prior guest Rafael Mangual and his book Criminal Injustice. It's one of the best works I've read and Rafael deserves a prize along the lines of the MacArthur genius award.
Mangual casts doubt on the frequently espoused idea that crime is primarily the result of poverty. As he notes, poverty rates are actually slightly higher in NYC today than they were in the early 1990s when crime peaked in the city. Furthermore, I would point out that there seems to be very little correlation between per capita GDP and homicide rates in East Asia, let alone any stronger evidence of causation. In my opinion, there's too much variation in crime rates among different groups even after accounting for SES for poverty to clearly be the primary factor driving crime.
The simple fact of the matter is that the police ultimately aren't the problem, even if policing is imperfect and in need of some reform. Communities with low rates of crime have a much different relationship with the police than communities with high rates of crime. Policing is ultimately a symptom and not the underlying cause.
by the way, love the thumbnail
This is an example of a certain kind of fallacy I've been wanting to find a name for, specifically unwarranted assumptions that some (but not other) aspects of the status quo are invariant to a proposed change. In this case, it's the distribution of crime being invariant to the presence of police. The argument 'police rarely stop crimes in progress, therefore they do not present a significant barrier to crime' is not valid because people avoid committing crimes in places where police might stop them. Another example is 'false accusations of assault are rare, therefore we should lower standards of evidence,' which is not valid because false accusations are disproportionately disincentivized by standards of evidence.
I have two points: there is no data to support that poverty has anything to do with criminal behavior. Assuming that poor people commit crimes is abhorrent. That is stereotyping without any evidence. If Ms. Salvati believes poverty is a leading cause of crime in the US she needs to read and travel more. What is considered poverty in the US would be upper middle class in many other countries. I know because I have lived there.
Two, there used to be lots of people that did not commit crimes - not because they were afraid of being caught but because laws are made to protect society and crimes hurt people and they did not want to risk hurting someone. You do not speed down streets because you might hit someone not because a policeman is waiting. Maybe the breakdown of the family by progressives and removing God from schools might have something to do with the honor deficit we now see. You could never have enough police to create a safe society if the majority of people do not need police.