The Outstater
Politics Corrupts Crime Data
MOST EVERYONE CAN AGREE that protecting citizens and property is the justification for any legitimate government. So how is ours doing?
Well, you don’t know, and you can’t find out. The FBI says crime is falling. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) sponsored by the Census Bureau says it isn’t. Your local police chief, with his eye on the politics of the matter, will be of no help either way.
The Wall Street Journal takes the pessimistic view. It quotes the NCVS survey that the urban violent-crime rate, excluding simple assaults, which often go unreported, rose 54 percent between 2019 and 2023. These higher crime rates, the newspaper says, are not dropping post-COVID; they are the new normal.
But if you have given up on statistics, you can still trust your eyes and ears. It seems to me that success is being measured these days by whether or not you have an income that allows you to escape rampant crime. Suburban property owners are well aware of the march of crime in their direction. In recent years there have been shootings in shopping malls and grocery lots where they were unimaginable before. Don’t say that doesn’t affect real-estate listings.
Do you want anecdotal evidence? Two friends have been murdered in their middle-class homes by strangers, one in a burglary and the other in an armed robbery. My city is full of similar stories. Again, this is the new normal, a lower level of “protection,” something for which government expects us to adjust.
There is one statistic, however, that nobody refutes or, more correctly, nobody wants to discuss. It is the black homicide rate, seven times the white rate. In fact, in parts of Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis it exceeds 50 per 100,000. That compares with a global average of 6.1 per 100,000 and is higher than even the most cruel, unstable Third World nations. Moreover, a white individual here (59 percent of Americans) is twice as likely to be murdered by a black (12 percent) as is the reverse.
There are web sites that track these things. They are troubling. An editor of one, Steve Sailer, author of “Noticing,” has this to say about the crime narrative versus actual crime:
“We don’t live in a gnostic universe in which there is a false reality of mundane cause-and-effect and another of horrifying (politically correct) reality in which unnoticed racism determines all fates. In contrast, most commentators assume that issues of daily life, such as deciding where to live, are of a lesser more sublunary realm than the high public issues, such as the rightness, sanctity and effectiveness of the demands of Black Lives Matter.”
An example of that sanctity of “high public issues” is Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to “ShotSpotter” technology, which saves lives by directing police to the sound of gunshots.. Warren says it perpetuates “over-policing and unjustified surveillance” in minority neighborhoods. Indianapolis, on cue with its police force hitting a record low, announced this spring that it would not participate in the ShotSpotter program. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, always on the leading edge of mayhem, is cancelling it there.
Ignoring unfortunate realities makes it worse for everybody. In Indianapolis this last year, a beloved black merchant and a black civic activist were murdered — not encouraging signs that guarding racial sensitivities somehow serves a community.
In summary, if you are interested in harmonizing urban life, crime rates would be a statistic to hone in on — a priority even. All races, and especially middle-class blacks, would be less likely to avoid urban neighborhoods and even more likely to invest if they were less likely to be killed there. — tcl
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