The Outstater
Getting Serious About Crime
HAVE WE FINALLY REACHED the tipping point on violent urban crime? A Crime Stopper info-commercial playing on the local airwaves is encouraging in that regard.
Such info-commercials don’t usually provide much in the way of crime-fighting strategies. They explore root causes, delve into social concerns, making certain to respect all cultures while pleading for cooperation with police, that sort of thing.
But Ken Fries, the northeast Indiana coordinator for Crime Stoppers, has had enough. His hard-hitting message comes after a 7-year-old was shot while asleep and an 86-year-old woman was shot at her front door. “For me, this was a shift because it’s got to stop,” Fries said. “We know summer’s going to get here, we know it’s going to get worse.”
Don’t underestimate what Fries is doing. He’s not just raising an issue, he is defining an absolute, recognizing that if we fail here we don’t get to file an appeal, resubmit a research paper, ask for a replay. Rather, somebody is shot in the head.
And note that the new Crime Stopper message doesn’t address inanimate objects (guns) or appeal to impossible levels of social engineering (egalitarianism). It is taking a “shock their consciousness” approach, to use Fries’s words. The violence just must be stopped he is telling the community in absolute terms.
The strong message suggests not only more cooperation with police but more effective law-enforcement strategies. Particularly, Fries, a former sheriff, will talk to you about the prosecution side of the crime-fighting equation. Police are solving homicides in his city at high rates, for example, but prosecution is problematic. Criminals walk free.
And, sad to say, one of the most effective crime-fighting strategies, “stop and frisk,” has been taken off the table by activist judges. There was a time when police were allowed to identify — yes, “profile” — those likely to be up to no good, say, young men roaming around at 3 a.m. They could be stopped and lightly searched for weapons, burglary tools, drugs and such.
The criminal element reacted by becoming more circumspect, that is, by not carrying guns so as not to risk detainment. They aren’t stupid, only criminal. Ergo, more proactive policing, fewer weapons on the street, fewer bullets in the air.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reported a drop in homicides from 649 in 2001 to 335 in 2013 as a stop-and-frisk strategy went into effect. Subsequently, crime continued to decline with 2018 recording the lowest homicide rates in 70 years.
It’s not criminology, it’s mathematics.
Would such a strategy disproportionally affect certain demographic groups? Yes, because historically crime itself disproportionally affects certain demographic groups — at least in some areas for limited stretches of time.
But economists like to say that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The trade-off with stop-and-frisk and profiling, which by definition is prejudicial, is that streets become safer. That means neighborhoods are more willing to cooperate with police, younger brothers are less likely to fall into the thug life, 7-year-olds and 86-year-olds can go about their lives.
Again, what we are doing isn’t working. For a generation now, the judges, social scientists and legislators have had their say and have failed — miserably. Gun-control only means that criminals have control of the guns, and a search for root causes is the same as doing nothing at all. Cultural differences do not negate common law.
To a greater degree, then, day in and day out, we must trust those in law enforcement to protect and serve our communities, to be our crime stoppers — that are get ready to move out. — tcl
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