I just found out a friend of mine got shot three times in the stomach last night in my neighborhood during a mugging. He's in the hospital, possibly facing major surgery.
This seems like a terrible time to launch into a diatribe on gun control, so I'd appreciate it if no one in the comments did, no matter what side you're one--indeed, I'll delete the comment promptly if you do. But it seems like a very good time to launch into a diatribe on the low quality of DC policing. DC has a lot of cops, a lot of wealth, and no excuse for its extraordinarily high crime rate. I was born on 94th Street and Broadway at a time when the Upper West Side above 86th street was considered a no-go zone by the town's wealthier inhabitants. My father worked for the mayor during the blackout and associate crime wave, yet my mother has never felt as unsafe as she has since moving here.
Hell, I've lived in West Philadelphia during its 90s nadir. I've never felt as unsafe in a place as I do in DC. Almost everyone I know here has had some sort of personal contact with a criminal intent on robbing them, whether successfully or not. I'm lucky that I live near a well-lighted street--but frankly, the sheer menacing stupidity of a criminal who trails two people several blocks isn't reassuring, it's frightening. The fact that he thinks this tactic might work speaks to a certain lawless aura in the city. And I live in the safe part.
When DC does try to "do something", it's something stupid and quasi-fascist like locking down neighborhoods instead of putting more cops on the beat and using the advanced police tactics that are now the norm in every other city. From what I know, Fenty seems like a better mayor than DC's previous disasters, but the city government remains corrupt and incompetent. No one should have to spend their lives feeling this afraid.
I'm very sorry to hear about your friend. I hope that he is able to recover quickly.
Aaron
Corrupt? I think Fenty is fair game for criticism, but I haven't heard anyone charge that his administration is corrupt. Please explain.
The hell with dc, I would never live there and I can't even drive into town to have a drink for fear of getting thrown in JAIL under their zero-tolerance policy.
Washington really embodies practically everything that is wrong with our tax-eating big cities and their feudal governments. It is so wrong and so nearly hopeless; the only way it could possibly turn around is if the whole city gentrifies the way Manhattan has, but the sheer physical peril of living in The District drives away many of the well-off, and the punitive taxes and pathetic services don't help much either.
I would love to live in a city but until we can get past the whole problem of getting followed around by bigass scary thugs and not being ALLOWED to carry my own gun -- that is to say, never -- I will continue to pursue my environment-destroying big-box big car nine millimeter red meat exurban way of life.
Sorry about your friend, Megan. You mentioned considering buying a house a while ago. Do think about buying a car and moving to Virginia, the Mother of our Country. You won't get jacked.
One thing I liked about Chicago: the criminals lived in fear of the cops. (The downside was everyone else was just a little nervous around said cops.)
I lived there 6 years and never once felt the city was under-policed. It may have been corrupt and slow, but not under-policed.
Those Daleys know something about law enforcement, it seems, even if they are not so big on the rule of law.
I second the prior comment. It's time to move.
Very sorry to hear that, Megan.
Sounds like you need a Mayor Daley out there, where at least the corruption is competent and able to lower crime, but I'm not sure what the answer is. It's a disgrace that our Nation's capital is so unsafe.
All my prayers for your friend, Megan.
Sorry to hear about your friend.
However, until crime becomes a major campaign issue ,(as in the pols fear losing their jobs unless it is addressed), it will remain a problem. As you've pointed out crime can be addressed aas it has been in many places, (see NYC). So, my guess is that either the powers that be find an advantage in high crime and the fear it generates or they just don't care.
Sorry to hear about your friend, and I agree with everything grrgle wrote.
The problem with DC was the problem with NYC, Chicago etc. Too many criminals near the victims. I am a lifelong Chicagoan. The crime rate for the city is higher than many places yet it does not reach the middle and upper classes, mostly due to segregation. I don't go to bad neighborhoods and criminals are arrested/roughed up if they go to good neighborhoods. The downside: life REALLY sucks to be poor. Crimes are mostly done by minority young men 15-35. (and if you think that is racist, go to Cook County jail and look around. I have.) By virtue of being a racist town the white population gets to feel good about living relatively crime free - but the minority communities suffer greatly. Also, white people don't get busted for drug crimes at anything near the rate as minorities, mostly due to racism but also a wealth gap - richer white folks can do drugs in their own apartments, poor black folks do it on the street because they live with Mom.
Megan, I’m horrified to hear about what happened to your friend. He’ll be in my family’s thoughts and prayers hoping for as swift and as complete a recovery as possible.
Our neighborhood wasn't as safe as all that Meg. I mean, we were kids and our parents were young and didn't go out much. I am sure that if you were only to go out once in a while and mostly stayed at home you would feel a heck of a lot safer.
But you are also right, DC has too many different policy forces, not enough foot traffic and there seems to be no effort to gentrify the areas which are scary.
Please give my best to your friend.
I was born on 94th Street and Broadway at a time when the Upper West Side above 86th street was considered a no-go zone by the town's wealthier inhabitants.
Did you write this while being fanned and fed pealed grapes?
At the risk of being a heretic, I suggest that D.C. doesn't need more cops.
D.C. needs fewer criminals.
The cops put the goblins in jail every chance they get - it's the judges the citizens elect and the juries citizens sit on that send 'em back on the street.
So, if anyone wants something done about crime, the next time one sits on a jury or votes for a judge... well, you know what to do.
Not much to say on this one - just best wishes for your friend.
Maybe you can perk him up a little by letting him guestblog his experience when he recovers, if he doesn't have a blog of his own!
Someone has to ask: was DC this unsafe prior to Homerule?
Note that corruption is not, necessarily, a cause of lack of safety on the streets. It has other downsides. But it is entirely possible (as others have noted) to have a massively corrupt city government which still knows enough to realize that, in most places, maintaining public safety is necessary to keeping their noses in the public trough. The sad part about DC is that it is not, obviously, a requirement there.
Ugh. I suppose gentrification has only gone so far. At the end of the day, you still need to be west of Rock Creek Park in DC to be safe.
That's awful about your friend.
What percentage of DC residents would be willing to trade an increase in police brutality toward suspected criminals for a decrease in crime? The answer will probably tell you a lot about why DC policing is historically bad.
My impression is that in Chicago, there has long been a large group of voters (mostly white) who are happy to permit police brutality against suspected criminals (mostly black and brown) in exchange for relatively low crime. In my home town (Pittsburgh), we have a very high threshold for police brutality and a very very low crime rate.
I've lived in NE DC (ward 5) for 8 years and never been a victim of a crime. None of my friends in the district have ever been a victim of a crime. Now when I lived in Baltimore during the same mid-90s nadir, one of my friends would get mugged on an almost weekly basis, so perhaps that colors my judgement, but I think of DC as a relatively safe place.
That's terrible. My thoughts are with your friend and his family.
I live in one of those gentrifying neighborhoods in D.C. Sometimes people think gentrification is rich people buying up poor people's homes and turning them into million dollar condos. Not so. My neighborhood is filled with middle class (people making between $40,000 and $100,000) professionals. We live here because it's more affordable than other parts of D.C., close to public transportation, and has restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores. People invest in the community. A lot of people are first time home owners, and even the renters take greater pride in the appearance of the street and the safety of the community.
Despite that, the neighborhood has an alarmingly high crime rate. Business are regularly harassed, homes are broken into, and in the summer in particular, there are shootings on a weekly basis. This is largely due to the presence of a handful of clubs and bars, and most of the crime occurs between midnight and 5am, spiking around the time that bars close. Meaning, the crime is entirely predictable, is caused by people who don't live in the neighborhood, and is a function of having a lot of intoxicated people who suddenly have to leave their present location.
A strong, regular, and familiar police presence in the neighborhood, particularly near bars and clubs, particularly on weekend nights, would go a long way. So where is it? I pay taxes. I rarely see cops in my neighborhood. Why is that? Where are they? And why do I have to play Russian Roulette when I walk down my street on a Saturday night?
I don't think that locking people up for being colored is the solution, and that is basically all that any so-called tough on crime policy ever amounts to. It works, as described above in Chicago but it just temporarily concentrates and corrals the hopelessness. It does create safe enclaves with concentrated amenities like Manhattan but it is ultimately a false economy because it does so at a great and often unjust cost to those displaced.
We don't need the government to get tough on poor people or minorities we need it to stop fucking with them. Fat chance. Oh well.
I hope your friend pulls through. Sounds like there must have been a struggle. I hope they caught the perp.
Instances like this make better policing and a widespread use of CCTV like in London sound like a no-brainer.
In European cities you can pretty well figure on circumnavigating certain parts of town at late hours -- or take a cab. And for some reason, American urban universities seem to be located in the biggest urban hell-holes outside the third world. Is your friend a grad student?
Bush needs to declare the District a failed state and intervene...
It always impresses me when NBC is able to catch one predator an hour on their TV show and the cops never seem to do more than just file a report. It seems that it should be easy enough to have a bunch of under-cover police catch many of these crimes.
But you are also right, DC has too many different policy forces, not enough foot traffic and there seems to be no effort to gentrify the areas which are scary.
I can remember visiting DC as a child in the 80's, and I lived there for two summers ('05 and '06), and I can say that there has been major gentrification, especially in the areas just north of the Mall.
On the other hand, a friend of my once called the police because some crazy guy was hassling us (for Eating While White, although she's technically Hispanic) in the outdoor seating of a Cosi Judiciary Square. Police HQ was quite literally less than a block away, and visible from where we were sitting. 30 minutes later the cops called back to ask if the guy had gone away. Helpful bunch.
Best wishes to your friend for a quick recovery, that is horrible.
For anyone touting the Daley system of law-and-order corruption, call me naive if you want but the citizens of DC (and Chicago, and NYC, and N.O., &c.) should have cities that are both safe and uncorrupt. Sadly DC seems to have neither.
Learned Hand -
94th and Broadway didn't gentrify until the early-80s, and even then, there were some "rougher" elements, which are still there a couple of blocks away. Until the mid nineties/early 2000, there was a rent-by-the-hour hotel across the street, a halfway house-transitional home for individuals with AIDs a block away, the projects three blocks away are still there. There was also until the mid-nineties, a group of young men who used to hang out at the corner starting around six o'clock who would be there drinking, and occasionally urinating in the street.
The upper west side was the original answer to those who had been shut out by upper east side coops. If you take the borders of the upper west side to be 72nd street to approximately 110th - after which you're in Columbia's turf- for a long time, the 86th street subway was the border between gentrified and non-gentrified. In the early to mid eighties the border moved to 96th street, but with the rougher elements I mentioned before, especially once you moved off Broadway, and it has only been since the mid nighties that gentrification really moved between 97th to 110th. This doesn't mean there weren't respectable buildings between 97th and 110th before the mid-nineties, there were, just that the neighborhood was what it was.
I'm sorry for your friend.
I lived in DC from 1992-1999 in U St and on Capitol Hill when they were much less safe then the are now.
There are 3 problems that I see now in the city:
1. Gentrification is happening but it's a small city so unless you live West of the Park you are very close to some very bad neighborhoods.
2. Weak enforcement of laws by the judges and the jury system.
3. No political will to change things. The city is still mostly poor people who see more stingent policing as harrasement even though they would benefit the most as they live in the worst neighborhoods.
and to grrgle: Virginia sucks. Clueless social climbers, racists and rednecks do not make a good place to live.
Instances like this make better policing and a widespread use of CCTV like in London sound like a no-brainer.
Once you pay the Dane-Geld...
CCTV seems like a good idea while there are problems. Unfortunately, even if the problems are mitigated, the CCTV never goes away -- it's there, it's easy to use, and it has to justify its continued existence somehow. So people get harrassed by the cops over perpetually smaller and smaller things.
Forget about invasive monitoring. Keep a good police presence on the street, give them both teeth and professionalism, and then give citizens the right to defend themselves when the police aren't present. Anyone who develops criminal intent needs to have a good reason to fear both the cops and the citizens, while the citizens in general should not have to fear the cops. It's a balancing act of imperfect outcomes, but it can be done well enough that citizens need not live in fear. Unfortunately, DC does not seem to have a toothy or professional police force, and they have denied their citizens the right to defense. Criminaltopia.
How much of this police incompetence is due to the fact that, unlike New York, LA, Houston, Boston, etc., the administration of D.C. is dominated by African-Americans?
In cities that are not so dominated, police have the authority to crack down on street crime at the price of "racism" complaints from the local "civil rights" extortionists.
But in organizations that are so dominated, race-based patronage takes precedence over even the most minimal life-or death competence:
cf. King-Drew
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-kingdrewpulitzer-sg,0,1507651.storygallery
cf. the DC schools
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/interactives/dcschools/
"And for some reason, American urban universities seem to be located in the biggest urban hell-holes outside the third world. Is your friend a grad student?"
I blame that on four things: unscrupulous off-campus landlords; overlapping authority between campus police and actual police; privacy requirements for universities; and the cottage industry in fake IDs and underage drinking. As it is, slumlords are (in many cases) free to let student housing rot, bringing down property values all around it and bringing in all the bad elements that go with it. University security details are often employees of the university, rather than actual police officers. Universities aren't always required to report the crimes the university cops do catch, to the actual police. And the high demand for fake ID can attract a lot of unsavory elements to the area.
A combination of the last three things led to a huge snafu at Georgetown University while I was there. One of the students, David Schick, died in a brawl in the library parking lot. He'd apparently been drinking. The parking lot is next to a notoriously poorly-lit, never-patrolled, unsafe road. The incident was investigated by university cops. But due to some truly weird privacy requirements, the university claimed it was unable to release any of the information it obtained. The people involved were never charged, since the Metro cops didn't have jurisdiction and couldn't investigate, and the only witnesses were the people involved in the fight.
So yeah, if you have a neighborhood filled with low-quality housing, ambiguity over jurisdiction, the genuine possibility that there will be no long-term legal consequence to your actions, and the general disregard for the law that comes along with getting a fake ID and drinking underage, you can kind of see why crime might be high around universities.
What Mouse said. I live two blocks from a very high-crime area of Pittsburgh that features lots of drug deals, prostitution, nuisance bars, and gunfights. But my family and I feel perfectly safe, as do our middle-class neighbors. Why?
1. The cops are out in force all the time. The local convenience store is like a second police headquarters - there are always cops there at night, waiting for a call.
2. The vast majority of my neighbors are Italian-Americans with guns.
Guess I don't see the real danger on the slippery slope so long as the police are also perpetually monitored. That would seem to make legal defense easier in cases of abuse or police testicular exuberance.
The case for monitoring of public spaces is in part one of costs (decreasing price of the gear vs. man-hours walking an only limited beat) and partly one of inevitability. It is becoming increasingly common to assume someone with a camera or microphone might be watching or listening in, whether legitimately or not. As consumers, we've already surrendered to different forms of monitoring by private companies and organizations that are theoretically even less accountable to us than are mismanaged public institutions.
(Also, we're leaving out any firearms discussions in this context at Megan's request.)
A very enlightened critique of Virginians, zengolf. I bet none of them read Vanity Fair.
We should only like the clueless social climbers who say in the District. A district that is, of course, a model of racial harmony and tolerance. And, also, I shouldn't consider the redneck term racist or elitist in any sense, right? Just checking.
I am very sorry to hear about your friend.
I am not very familiar with DC, but New York was pretty pathetic on crime until Guliani became mayor. There is a lot to be said for his policies.
They would have irritated the heck out of me had I lived in NYC, but I don't. I suspect there isn't going to be a painless answer for DC either. It seems New Orleans is going back to the way it used to be as well. As long as the citizens tolerate the status quo, they will have it.
Shot 3x in the stomach, sorry to hear that.
DC needs more than Police. You guys need a genuine across the board desire to improve the criminal system. I stayed in Silver Spring MD a few times and its a rough place in its own way. But I've been around DC, I mean the waterfront and anything along the blue line except Arlington at a few glances, I got off the metro one time and went straight back down the escalator after seeing the surrounding area.
DC is not a safe place from the lighting, to its overabundance of homeless. I know its not popular but there is an economic incentive to steal if you don't have a home or income. Also you have quite the drug problem for a town that really doesn't contain all that many people who can do drugs without coming up on a urinalysis. Which means the drug problem is all coming from a much smaller segment of the population. A segment seemingly isolated in pockets throughout the city.
DC needs the same thing that most corrupt parts of the world need. Good, competent, non-corrupt leadership with the ability and will-power to start fixing things.
I lived in the D.C. area for many years. D.C. was the town of Marion Barry, the coked up whoremonger. And when it all that came out, they re-elected him to the city council under the one of the truest campaign slogans ever: "He May Not Be Perfect, But He's Perfect for D.C."
When crime began to spiral out of control in the late 80s, D.C.'s answer was to hire more cops--including people with criminal records.
No one told you these things before you moved there?
I'm so sorry to hear about your friend!
Lived in Center City Philadelphia for about 15 years. Center City is now a much more vibrant place than when I lived there, but still Killadelphia is a nickname one hears - and that tragic recent murders of two young men coming home from jobs at Starbucks have made the newer young Philadelphians very nervous.
The other night I went to a show in town and before and after it we walked literally from one end of Center City to the other, once at night and once in the evening. The evening was an intimidating experience. During neither walk did we spot a single police officer.
Where the hell are they? the City of Philadelphia pays a LOT of supposed cops. I don't even care if they sit in their cars (like they used to when I lived there, GOD FORBID they step out into the wilds of Logan Square!) - just be visible!
The most important thing to keeping these "renaissances" of downtown areas going is the safety issue. The cops need to be out there doing their jobs. In my case, all they did when I tried to talk to them is tell me if I were smart (we'd just had a series of things happen in our very nice Logan Square nabe) I'd move out of town.
Sorry about your friend. I hope he turns out ok.
sorry for all the typos! hope it was still semi-understandable English -- "night/evening" equals "afternoon/evening" if that helps!
anyway I hope your friend recovers quickly and his attacker(s) are caught and punished appropriately.
I'm sorry for your friend. I wish him a speedy recovery and second the recommendation to him (and you and your mom) to join us on the south side of the Potomac. That remark by zengolf leads me to identify him as a Marylander. You'd be bitter too if you lived there. ;-)
DC police are notoriously bad (as are PG County cops, another reason to stay out of MD) in almost every metric. You might recall the court case that held that DC police have no obligation to actually serve and protect the people. They have certainly been eager to make the most of that. What's interesting is that every few years they get a new chief (much like every few years the school system gets a new head) that promises to institute the policing strategies employed in other formerly high-crime urban areas. Somehow nothing ever changes.
I would imagine that the percentage of violent crimes committed in D.C. by first time offenders is fairly low, and I imagine that most of the repeat offenders have previous convictions for violent crime. It would seem that locking up first time violent offenders until they were old would cause the violent crime rate to drop quite a bit. Please don't complain about the cost of incarceration. The central purpose of the state is to protect the law abiding from the lawlessly violent, and as long as the state is involved in all manner of other activities, there is self-evidently enough resources to carry out the primary task.
Also, the notion that most young African American men cannot refrain from engaging in violent crime, as was implied above, is really offensive. It is also offensive to state that one cannot have a police force which polices effectively unless one is willing to tolerate police brutality. Make no mistake, a police force in which illegal brutality is tolerated will not target that brutality only on violent or even nonviolent criminals. It will visit brutality on the wholly innocent, and will engage in all other manner of corruption. The Chicago Police Department, like the Daley machine, has mostly been a disgrace for decades. I hear the new Police Chief in Chicago, a guy who was recruited from outside, is trying to change things. I wish him well.
Sorry to hear of your friend, Megan.
Alexandria is nice, or at least it was 10 years ago when I visited. For the first stops off the metro, you don't need a car much. I know you are an urbanite, but sometimes enough is enough.
Best wishes to your firend for a full and quick recovery. I hope they catch the guy and put him away for a long time.
That's horrible and I'm sorry to hear it. I hope he's all right.
Most of my friends in DC are young women living alone. Stories like this always makes me very nervous. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Fairfax?
The answer is right here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.#Demographics
Places with falling populations (and therefore declining equity) have rising crime rates. Not really rocket science. Just look at NYC for comparison; NYC population dropped and violent crime went up, until a peak in the 80s. Then, as population began to rebound violent crime began to sink. Pretty simple really. You see the same trend in Chicago. The population decline reversed and equity started to go up, and violent crime went down. It really isn't hard to figure out why people whose biggest asset is declining in value year over year become criminals. Sheesh.
On my visits to DC, I have quickly perused the police blotter in some local DC paper (I forget it's name, but not the Post), I have noticed that muggings in DC tend to be joint events, where one mugger attacks the victim and another grabs for the money, wallet, etc.---and they all seem to be gun toting events.
I fought off a mugger in Chicago once, I don't think I would try it in DC. I have remarked more than once to friends, DC muggers aren't playing around.
It is also offensive to state that one cannot have a police force which polices effectively unless one is willing to tolerate police brutality.
On the other hand, it is almost certainly true that you can't have an engaged, effective police force without increasing complaints of brutality as compared to the old hands-off days. Unless the politicians, the media, and the public are prepared to do the dirty work of sorting the legitimate complaints from the self-serving nonsense, long-term improvement are impossible.
"The other night I went to a show in town and before and after it we walked literally from one end of Center City to the other, once at night and once in the evening. The evening was an intimidating experience. During neither walk did we spot a single police officer."
Judging from your blog you walked literally seven blocks down Philadelphia's version of Rodeo Drive, which is literally one quarter of the way across Center City. How many cops did you expect to see during your ten minute stroll, and did you expect them to hold your hand as you crossed the streets? I regularly walk unaccompanied on and near the street where the Beau Zabel murder happened and haven't had the slightest issue in 7 years, and the risks that you took were far smaller. There are real issues in this city, but any area where a panicky suburbanite might find themselves walking is far safer than the statistics (which are of course improving every year) would suggest, and you're running a far greater risk once you get on the Schulkill.
Regarding falling populations and rising crime rates has anyone identified the causality here? I could easily see it the other way around. Crime goes up and people flee the city. Crime comes back down and people feel safe enough to move in.
I have lived in Virginia, and DC is still relatively better than many parts of the suburbs. PG county in Mayland is especially scary.
I grew up in Chicago, and I must admit that it is safe, and the police are terrifying. I do prefer getting kicked around at 17 to being arrested for some minor charge.
Now I live in lower Manhattan and it appears to have no police and no crime. If DC gentrified to this level it would improve.
Truly awful. Best wishes for your friend.
Absolutely, Rob. Every time some city attorney decides it is easier to settle than to litigate a dubious brutality suit, effective policing takes a step backwards. Of course, when a police force allows a reputation for brutality to fester, as Chicago has with it's horribly mismanaged force, the jury pool gets poisoned eventually, making settlement all the more likely, no matter the merits of the suit.
Freddiemac:
It really isn't hard to figure out why people whose biggest asset is declining in value year over year become criminals.
Seriously? You really think that people turn to crime because their houses or condos have declined in value? What percentage of muggers would you estimate have ever owned real estate?
Megan:
Could this be a race thing? That is, because the population is so heavily black, any attempt to crack down on crime will be perceived as racist? Note grrgle's comment at 12:05.
Joe Magarac,
I moved from DC to Pittsburgh (after living in NY) and, oh yeah, am shocked by the difference.
I assumed a lot has to with the differences in populations. There are a lot of very poor people in DC and a visible minority of yuppies and middle-class students all packed together. Whereas Pittsburgh has half the population it once did (and is thus a prime eg. of a place that lost a great deal of its population but which is not experiencing a surge in crime) and is much more working-class overall. Less people and if you attack someone chances are they're not going to be a yuppie.
Then, of course, as you say, guns play a big role too. The person you mug in DC is almost certainly going to be unarmed. Not here.
Where in Pittsburgh do you live? Bloomfield?
It, also, seems a lot of bad places in the Pittsburgh area have their own cops (not Pittsburgh city cops). So they know the local drug dealers and folks, in a way a true big city cop wouldn't. In New York you might be a cop from Staten Island coming in to deal with people in Brooklyn, a borough of millions. Where, I'm pretty sure, the cop in, say, McKees Rocks, PA is going to live there and know most of the people. It's almost a small town for him. It's a lot tougher for the cop in the bigger, much more anonymous area.
E-mail if you have a moment: havil2008@aol.com I'm very interested in Pittsburgh and, of course, Joe Magarac is a figure of legend. I'd be really interested in your takes on some things. I had no idea, for instance, that Pittsburgh cops had that kind of repuation. I'd love to learn more. Thanks.
This is awful. I'm very sorry to hear it. I of course respect your wishes to keep gun politics out of it, but I will say that I was mugged at gunpoint in D.C. -- at the Columbia Heights metro at 5:00 p.m! -- a few months ago, and that's what drove me back into the libertarian movement. Draw your own conclusions.
Out of curiosity, why did the guy shoot him? Was your friend resisting? Did the perp seem high on anything?
My sympathies to your friend.
The perpetrator picks the place and time. This makes it very difficult to plan against them unless you are planning for a response in your own home. On the street, you are probably just going to get robbed unless a fellow citizen comes to your assistance. So what's left is deterrence. Apparently, it's not very effective in DC. If you are going to live there, then work on improving it. What can you do to improve upon this situation? (There, I stayed off of firearms, but my blood pressure is dangerously high as a consequence.)
"Regarding falling populations and rising crime rates has anyone identified the causality here? I could easily see it the other way around. Crime goes up and people flee the city. Crime comes back down and people feel safe enough to move in."
Don't confuse correlation with causation. I don't think the decline in cities was due to crime in the first place. Each region is different, but in some regions the decline in cities was referred to as "white flight", so that may explain part of it right there.
"Seriously? You really think that people turn to crime because their houses or condos have declined in value? What percentage of muggers would you estimate have ever owned real estate?"
Not just homeowners, but the families of homeowners.
Imagine that you bought a house in generic big city in 1970. Say you payed 50k for the house. Now it is 1980 and your neighborhood has lost a lot of residents and your house had declined in value significantly. Maybe it is only worth 40k. You lost 10k in assets and your mortgage is underwater. If you lose your job then the house is gone. Is it so surprising that people, when faced with desperate economic situations, will rob liquor stores? Seriously this is happening right now.
Example: Stockton California http://stockton.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm
One of the hardest hit areas in home foreclosures is experiencing a big spike in crime. This doesn't surprise me. Why does it surprise you? In places where residents bought homes and their value increases significantly have experienced lower crime rates (see NYC).
This is also happening in DC, as the link I provided demonstrates. For the first time since the 50s DC's population is growing, and the crime rate in DC is contracting. This isn't hard Brandon, you just have to think. Is thinking hard for you?
"Don't confuse correlation with causation."
I'm not. That's why I asked if the causality had been identified.
Bear with me - for once I have something serious to say. I got mugged a couple of weeks back myself - in broad daylight on New Hamsphire Ave; I was jumped from behind by four guys. I was lucky, if you want to put it that way: they hit me in the head with something and then ran, leaving me shaken and a little hurt, but at least no poorer for the experience. This was my fifth year of gentrification, and it's going to be my last: I am putting my house on the market and moving to the burbs.
I was struck, in the period that followed, how the police were able to drive me around the neighhborhood; they seemed to know where the local gangs hung out, and they seemed to know some of the personalities. This highlights the problem - it's a failure of institutional and governmental will, not lack of knowledge or understanding of the problem.
I wish I could say I shared your confidence in Fenty, but he was my council member before he became mayor, and he is nothing if not a player in the same DC political system that got us to this pass. Like the others, he has the same blinkered belief that crime is inevitably the simple product of poverty, rather than, say, family breakdown, a defective culture, or just basic brutality. He can't bring himself to undertake serious measures to rememdy a problem that he imagines stems from a natural condition. So there's no possibility that the cops are simply going to begin busting and holding gang members for jaywalking, or use stuff like that as a pretext to stop, search and seize - a neighbor tells me they arent' even busting people now for possession if the quantity of marijuana is smaller than the amount that qualifies the holder for "possession with intent to distribute." If anything, they're undertaking efforts that are the exact reverse of the ones they need to undertake - and there's no way you're going to solve the crime problem that way.
Make that "a natural and terribly unfair" condition.
BTW, you might check out some of the debates on the Yahoo listserves for ANC 409 and Petworth - the stuff people are posting is astonishing (if you believe, as I do, that most of the middle class people who have moved into DC in the last few years are well-educated, conventionally liberal middle class types).
Megan,
I would suggest you visit DC court sometime for an answer to your question. The fact is that judges and juries in DC routinely refuse to put criminals in jail. Jury nullification is rampant in the District. Black judges and juries are loath to put another "young black man" in prison and thus turn them lose to pray on people like you and your friend. In addition, in most cities, the police at least protect the good neighborhoods. It is understood by criminals in large cities such as New York or Chicago that while it is one thing to commit a crime in your neighborhood, it is entirely different to do it in a good neighborhood. I guarantee you any criminal who goes into Williamsburg (NYC) or Rittenhouse Square (Philadelphia) and robbed and shot someone would be hunted down and sent to prison for a very long time. Criminals know that and thus don't try to ply their trade in those areas. In DC there is no special emphasis put on crime in the tourist or good areas of the town. Criminals are free to range and prey anywhere in the city and face no special scrutiny for preying on people in respectable neighborhoods. Like Willie Sutton robbing banks, criminals in DC rob people in your neighborhood Megan because "that is where the money is".
Unless and until the DC government and culture changes, (not likely), the only solution is to arm yourself. If people who did this kind of thing were routinely shot in the attempt, it would stop. Sadly, the same black judges and juries who would let a black thug go in the name of keeping another young black man out of prison, would no doubt throw the book at a white person who shot said black thug trying to defend themselves.
Welcome to the District Megan. You are in the minority as a white person and are most definitely treated as such.
Megan: Best Wishes for your friend. I live in MPLS, where our crime rate has gotten out of control too.
A quote from your post: "but the city government remains corrupt and incompetent."
As part of the Republican minority who reads your blog, I think part of the problem in DC is because it's a one party town. Anytime one party completely controls a constituency, that party has little reason to improve their governance. Look at LI, which was a GOP stronghold for years. Their property taxes are some of the highest in the nation b/c the GOP won every election and did not have to be held accountable for their governance. As long as D.C. only elects Democrats without considering Republican candidates, there will be no competition and no read motivation for the Democrats to reform themselves.
Ahem. I was born and raised in South Philly my dear. I lived in Center City and Roxborough for 15 years.
You can bite me, frankly.
Where I walked was the BUSIEST and yes also the nicest part of town - and btw I chose to do that ON PURPOSE to avoid crime - and that is exactly the place where you should have a police presence to not only deter crime but also make the suburbanites and tourists feel comfortable (since, believe it or not, the city needs the money of such awful snobs as I).
Philadelphia chooses not to do this. They also haven't got cops out on the beats in the neighborhoods EITHER. Not sure where they are most of the time? But it's not out on the streets.
Live in denial Townleybomb, and most certainly if it makes you feel better, vent your misplaced anger at me or anyone else who chose to leave the city to avoid crime, but after breaking up one mugging, nearly being the victim of a tire iron to the head in broad daylight in front of the Franklin Institute, and having a car stolen - ALL IN ONE MONTH - I chose to follow the advice of my local detectives and leave for greener pastures.
You, Townleybomb, have been living in Philadelphia during an incredible economic boom. It's not exactly going to get BETTER when economic times become hard, which they are about to do.
At any rate, I sincerely love my hometown, I love Philadelphia, and I know that having cops more visible can and will deter crime. I just wonder why such a simple thing is not done?
As LC Greenwood said, differences in population explain why two cities, both of which have declining population, can experience very different crime rates. Freddiemac's argument that there is one key to understanding crime rates - declining population - is wrong.
It's also wrong to say that a police force that is willing and indeed eager to dispense a little rough justice in the process of arresting suspects is brutal or corrupt. Police work involves capturing people who don't want to be captured: it isn't going to be pretty. If the bulk of the DC populace wants a police force that doesn't hurt the men it arrests - which apparently is exactly the case - arrests will be low, and crime will be high.
If a Pittsburgh cop roughs somebody up in the process of arresting him, people here will cheer. But my siblings in the DC area assure me that there is no cheering when the same thing happens in DC. Call that police brutality or call it effective policiing, but it works.
If I felt like doing the legwork I could paste dozens of links to Pittsburgh-area news stories in the past 5 years in which police suspects of all races, be they drug dealers or war protesters, were beaten up while taken into custody and complained about it. Nobody else cared, nothing was done, the cops stayed on the beat, and crime is very very low. But when the same thing happens in DC, half the population gets outraged, the police step back, and crime stays high.
Freddiemac - I'm not disputing your thesis, but I'm not sure how the link you provided gives any evidence to support your thesis.
Stockton had crime rates (both violent and property related) well in excess of the national average in 2006. Great. But to provide evidence for your thesis, wouldn't you need to show a _trend_ in Stockton crime? Indeed, your post indicates that there has been a trend (a spike), and there may well have been, but the data isn't to be found where you say it is to be found.
I hope your friend makes it, Megan. I wish him (and you) all the best.
Goodluck, and cheers for fast and full recovery.
"At any rate, I sincerely love my hometown, I love Philadelphia, and I know that having cops more visible can and will deter crime. I just wonder why such a simple thing is not done?"
Cops can't be everywhere. The only way to stop violent crime like this is to lock people up and never let them out. D.C. for a variety of reasons, black racism being one of them, refuses to do that. What is worse, once criminals know thta a city is easy on crime, they tend to congregate there making things even worse.
Why do you say "crime doesn't pay?" Did the person who did this to your friend get caught? Or if he got away, was he not able to steal very much?
By the way, could you tell us where this happened and why it happened?
Was this intended as a serious point? Les Miserables meets FreddieMac?
No, Joe, it is wrong to claim that a police force that believes it has license to dole out "rough justice" will be disciplined in doling it out, thus only affecting criminals. That's not how human beings work. Yes, arresting criminals is rough work. So what? Once you have them arrested, put them in jail, and keep them there for several decades. I'd bet that similar crimes in Pittsburgh and D.C. receive dissimilar sentences, or, as a D.C. resident noted above, jury nullification in D.C. plays a role.
In the city in which I reside, a man was arrested for murder yesterday. It was reported that he was convicted of robbery just two years ago, and the judge handed down a sentence which resulted him being on the street last week, free to commit homicide.
Locking people up for extremely long periods after they have identified themselves as being lawlessly violent is how one reduces lawless violence, not giving license to the police to beat on people after they are arrested.
Will Allen -
You had me at "so what?" I submit that a tolerance for aggressive policing and a willingness to impose tough sentences are two peas in a pod. Folks who call "tolerance for aggressive policing" a "license to the police to beat on people" probably don't impose tough sentences on criminals.
in 2004, crime in Stockton was down:
http://www.stocktongov.com/stateofthecity/2004speech.cfm
http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex=10934
The number of violent crimes recorded by the FBI in 2003 was 3,625. The number of murders and homicides was 37. The violent crime rate was 13.6 per 1,000 people.
http://stockton.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm
From this website violent crime increased to 14.8 per 1,000 people. An increase in violent crime. Not surprising, given this link:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/14/real_estate/California_cities_lead_foreclosure/index.htm
Sorry, too busy to do proper googling.
Joe,
Some of the roughest, nastiest police in the country are in New Orleans. What good has it done them? While it sounds great to beat the crap out of criminals, it is usually a sign of an ildiciplined unprofessional and ineffective police force.
John -
I don't mean to suggest that a police force that beats up everyone it arrests - and even a few people it doesn't - is good or is likely to reduce crime. Freddiemac is the guy peddling a single-statistic explanation for crime rates, not me.
I do mean to suggest that police work is sometimes going to involve hurting people, and if a population reflexively objects to that it is going to have less police work and more crime. It is probably also going to shrink from imposing tough sentences on criminals, which as Will Allen and others correctly note will also allow for more crime.
Sorry for training the spotlight on Pittsburgh so much; I'm done. My sympathies remain with Megan and her friend.
TAPPED is informing us that said friend is none other than Brian Beutler.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2008&base_name=person_of_the_day_brian_beutle
Get well soon Brian
Freddie, seriously, do you think that your typical homeowners are going to knock over liquor stores to meet their mortgage payments? Please.
How about this for an alternative explanation: home foreclosures are more to happen to those with poor judgment (and/or shouldn't have had mortgages in the first place), who for the same reason are more likely to commit crimes in the first place. Furthermore, abandoned houses breed crime like nits make lice.
As a wise man (ahem) said upthread, correlation is not causation.
No, Joe, you called for giving police the license to dole out physical punishment, not as a means to effect an arrest, but as a means of achieving justice. That certainly implies beating on people who don't need to be beaten in order for them to be arrested safely. It has exactly nothing to do with aggressive policing. It is corrupt.
I can't speak from experience regarding Pittsburgh, but I can regarding Chicago and some other cities, like New Orleans, which was mentioned above. There is zero correlation between a police force's willingness to engage in violence, and effective policing. You can get you head laid open in zero seconds flat by one of New Orleans' finest, the same folks who were boosting Cadillacs from car dealers' lots, and fencing them in Baton Rouge, as Katrina advanced on the city.
"Freddie, seriously, do you think that your typical homeowners are going to knock over liquor stores to meet their mortgage payments? Please."
No. I never said a typical homeowner will rob liquor stores. But then again the typical homeowner doesn't experience falling equity now does he?
"How about this for an alternative explanation: home foreclosures are more to happen to those with poor judgment (and/or shouldn't have had mortgages in the first place), who for the same reason are more likely to commit crimes in the first place. Furthermore, abandoned houses breed crime like nits make lice."
Evidence? Do you have any evidence at all that foreclosures over the last 40 years are in any way related to poor judgement? Are we taught in Econ 101 that people are by and large rational decision makers?
Isn't the current run up of foreclosures cause by declining equity? Seems that way to me.
I like how you poo poo my argument without presenting a single shred of evidence or even examining the evidence at all. Rather, you cling to a plausible scenario I presented to those who are clearly too dimwitted to interpret evidence and need ancedotes. Falling equity is strongly correlated to rising crime. Rising equity is strongly correlated to falling crime. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
Will Allen -
I called for no such thing. I agree that "there is zero correlation between a police force's willingness to engage in violence and effective policing." But I also claim that there is a high correlation between a populace that considers reasonable use of force excessive, a populace that imposes short setences on violent criminals, and a populace with a high crime rate.
Joe, look, when you write.....
"It's also wrong to say that a police force that is willing and indeed eager to dispense a little rough justice in the process of arresting suspects is brutal or corrupt."
.....you are writing that a police force can engage in violence for purposes not related to achieving a safe arrest, but rather for the purpose of dispensing "rough justice", and not be brutal and corrupt. This is an erroneous statement.
If you has simply written what you are now posting, that there is a...
"high correlation between a populace that considers reasonable use of force excessive, a populace that imposes short setences on violent criminals, and a populace with a high crime rate."
...then I wouldn't have responded, because I agree with the latter statement.
"I would suggest you visit DC court sometime for an answer to your question. The fact is that judges and juries in DC routinely refuse to put criminals in jail. Jury nullification is rampant in the District."
Yup yup yup. Sat on a jury a few months back - the cops had apprehended defendant on his back porch - a narcotics officer across the street vectored officers in to arrest the suspect, and directed them (over the radio) to the crack under his porch where the drugs were hidden. It was astronomically unlikely that a man would be "accidentally" sitting atop a stash of drugs worth thousands of dollars, but the jury refused to convict - they redefined "reasonable" doubt as "any" doubt, using the most contemptible dodges and evasions imaginable: One guy (a certifiable fool - typical smug DC middle class white liberal) even stated "Well, I'm a reasonable man, and I have some doubts, so there must be reasonable doubt."
At some point, you're wasting time and breath. Hasta la vista!
DC's two biggest problems are crime and schools. I think they are related. Especially when there is always an order of magnitude more violence during the summer. If I was in charge of everything I would make summer school mandatory for the bottom third of students or anyone who is not up to grade level. This would be expensive, of course, but I think it would dramatically decrease crime by keeping kids on schedule supervised and somewhat structured. It would also provide a powerful incentive for students to reach competency in their subjects since then they get the summer off.
I don't know what percentage of DC's violent crimes are committed by people under 18 but I would guess that it is very high. I would guess that most of the rest of violent crimes were committed by someone who was committed someone who committed crimes as a juvenile. Violent Criminals show warning signs at a very young age (like seven) I think hiring councilors and having a basic CBT and interpersonal skills training program for students that seemed to merit it would pay off as an education and law enforcement expense.
"Where I walked was the BUSIEST and yes also the nicest part of town - and btw I chose to do that ON PURPOSE to avoid crime - and that is exactly the place where you should have a police presence to not only deter crime but also make the suburbanites and tourists feel comfortable"
Accepting for a moment that your single 10-minute walk is enough to conclude that police are hard to find in Center City (which I can tell you from my constant presence there is false), do you seriously want to argue that finite police resources should be concentrated where crime is least likely?
"Philadelphia chooses not to do this. They also haven't got cops out on the beats in the neighborhoods EITHER. Not sure where they are most of the time? But it's not out on the streets."
I can't vouch for every cop in every neighborhood, but there are plenty here in S. Philly and they've responded very promptly to both of the minor incidents I've had to report. And of course, there was that cop who got shot on 8th street and still managed to take down the 2-man crime wave that pretty likely killed Beau Zabel, and a few others who've been injured or killed in the line of duty in the past few years. But hey, what do I know-- I only live here and read the newspaper. I haven't scuttled fearfully past Le Bec recently (that place has attracted nothing but the wrong element ever since they went a la carte and I don't want to end up cold on the pavement with a salad fork sticking out of my back), and I'm sure that all the statistics and evidence are wrong and we'll soon all be engulfed in the blood-dimmed tide while the five-oh hangs out in some donut shop somewhere.
How else is one to interpret the following:
than to take it to mean that a drop in home equity could promote liquor store robberies? Why else did include home equity and liquor store robberies in the same paragraph if there’s no connection between them? Suppose a story in a September edition of the Denver Post included a paragraph saying that the city hosted the Democratic Convention, and that the incidence of venereal disease had skyrocketed? Aren’t we being invited to conclude that there’s a relationship between these two observations?
Nope, and neither the time nor the inclination to look for it. But as I understand it, the recent subprime meltdown comes from geniuses who bought houses with ARMs that they could just barely service at historically low and/or introductory interest rates, as if they could go any other way than up. Poor judgment, coming and going, IMO.
Economists would love to believe this, because otherwise the whole field stands in the same relation to science that santeria does to medicine. Most people have only momentary lapses into rationality before they recover and get back to normal.
I thought it was caused by increases in interest rates as ARMs’ rates get adjusted upward, such that mortgagees could no longer service their loans, but I could be wrong. How does equity come into it, as long as one continues paying the mortgage, and doesn’t sell the house? I really don’t see that.I understand it perfectly well. I don’t doubt that rising equity correlates with falling crime. It probably also correlates with rising income and increased educational levels, and is popularly known as “gentrification,” as people more likely to commit crimes move out and are replaced by more upscale and law-abiding citizens. Unfortunately, the process also works in reverse.
So basically, what the hell is your point?
"How else is one to interpret the following"
As a plausible explanation for what the data presents. You are harping on this because you don't have an evidentiary leg to stand on and you know it.
"Nope, and neither the time nor the inclination to look for it"
Right, because like a typical conservative you are an intellectually dishonest mentally lazy cretin.
"But as I understand it, the recent subprime meltdown comes from geniuses who bought houses with ARMs that they could just barely service at historically low and/or introductory interest rates, as if they could go any other way than up."
Well, you understand incorrectly. Hardly surprising.
"I thought it was caused by increases in interest rates as ARMs’ rates get adjusted upward, such that mortgagees could no longer service their loans, but I could be wrong."
You are wrong. It is because equity started to drop and people could not refinance, and decided to walk away rather than pay interest on a mortgage that is "underwater". It was on 60 minutes, where were you?
"How does equity come into it, as long as one continues paying the mortgage, and doesn’t sell the house? I really don’t see that."
Because people won't pay interest on a house that is declining in equity. Why would they? It makes more financial sense to walk away in many instances.
"I don’t doubt that rising equity correlates with falling crime."
So why are you arguing? Oh wait, it's right here:
"It probably also correlates with rising income and increased educational levels, and is popularly known as “gentrification,” as people more likely to commit crimes move out and are replaced by more upscale and law-abiding citizens."
Probably. But do you have any evidence? Any at all?
"So basically, what the hell is your point?"
Are you really that stupid? Really??
Best wishes for a full recovery by your friend.
Were there any witnesses that testified that they saw the man stash those drugs? If so you should have mentioned it. Without specifics like that, it is reasonable to doubt the defendant's guilt because someone else (possibly even the narcotics officer) may have stashed the drugs.
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response.
How so? (Who’s the ISP on Olympus, anyway?)
Uh, why would people need to refinance? That’s the point. Isn’t it because they took an ARM at historically low interest rates, and when interest rates rose – as they surely would – and as house prices consequently declined– as they surely would – people would need to refinance but would not be able to?
You bet!
"Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response."
You're welcome.
"How so? (Who’s the ISP on Olympus, anyway?)"
Insufficient understanding of the evidence and lack of information. We have our own ISP.
"Uh, why would people need to refinance?"
People don't need to refinance. You are not reading correctly. No surprise. You don't have to need a refi or have an ARM to walk away from a property when you are paying 6% interest on an investment that is losing value at 10%. It is just a business decision.
"Isn’t it because they took an ARM at historically low interest rates, and when interest rates rose – as they surely would – and as house prices consequently declined– as they surely would – people would need to refinance but would not be able to?"
Evidence?
"You bet!"
Plainly obvious.
You don't have to need a refi or have an ARM to walk away from a property when you are paying 6% interest on an investment that is losing value at 10%. It is just a business decision.
It's a business decision that few people make when their car loans are underwater, which for most car loans is a substantial majority of the life of the loan. Indeed, the entire automotive industry positively depends on people being less rational than you describe. How else to sell millions of negative-expected-value assets every year?
A house is not merely a paper asset like a share of stock to be shed when your computer decides to send a stop-loss order. Moving is a HUGE pain in the ass and a major expense. The credit score hit from walking away is a major disincentive. In short, the idea that homeowners who can make payments will just walk away in droves is...implausible, at best. Some might, but you're far more likely to walk away because you're in distress (can't make payments) than because of some coolly calculated "business decision."
And the idea that people will knock over liquor stores to make mortgage payments is similarly implausible, especially when combined with your assumption of hyper-rational homeowners making a business decision to walk away. The expected return on armed robbery is almost surely negative if you count the odds of getting shot by the shopkeeper or caught on tape and arrested. For that reason, armed robbers tend to be idiots with poor impulse control. Such people are unlikely to have a mortgage to begin with.
Fred & Ockham (correctly spelled, the double "c" was aggravating).
Well I decided to check this thread and sure enough. I didn't see much about the topic. The questions I think everyone looks at and wants an answer to is what do we do about crime and the criminal? This foregos the economic motive or the educational motive. So, looking at statistics, that even if magically reversible, or malleable, would require a decade or longer to actually see any change seems like something for another place another time. Stalin had a five year plan whats yours?
I don't think people take honest looks at crime in the short-term anymore. Because it is not a happy problem. Your choices seem to be clamping down, prosecuting, and incarcerating people. Or not, and going with a long-term approach that side steps the immediate concerns. DC needs a police force that can and will alleviate crime. And a justice system that won't undo the hard work of law enforcement.
Then you have to look at what your going to do to keep them from coming back. And when you look at the rehabilitation statistics thats a bleak picture. We don't have reliable statistics from a time where drugs were not illegal, we can surmise that way back when your record didn't follow you anywhere and if you worked hard someone would pay you. And the work more or less allowed a decent quality of life. Now your record will go everywhere, and yeah someone may pay you but it probably won't be an adequate job.
So people focus on what drives crime instead of how to deal with it. People can't not be arrested for braking the law. If you made drugs illegal tomorrow, yes people serving time for possesion and distribution would be free. They would also be permanently separated from what was till then their main source of income. What then? Now you have a large portion of people who can't make money. Think of it as globalization, Pfizer can grow, sell, and qc any narcotic substance better than anybody on a corner. So loosening the laws seems inclined to drive people to more desperate measures.
Ultimately yes your both right. Money and education will move people out of illegal enterprises (maybe into white collar crime?). But that doesn't do anything for the next five years.
Benn,
People of Oc?am's era rarely spelled even their own names the same way twice. So dial back the intellectual pretension.
But to follow suit, does "braking" the law slow it down? And it's "you're, not "your."
Pretension is irritating, isn't it?
There’s not a person in a thousand who actually makes that calculation. Sorry. Look at how many people take “consolidation loans.” QED. A home is not purely an investment, as Rob pointed out.
I was going to respond at greater length, but my esteemed colleague Rob has already done superbly in my absence, so what he said. My only emendation is to his last sentence:
where I would replace “are” with “until recently were, and now once again are.”
freddiemac wrote: Imagine that you bought a house in generic big city in 1970. Say you payed 50k for the house. Now it is 1980 and your neighborhood has lost a lot of residents and your house had declined in value significantly. Maybe it is only worth 40k. You lost 10k in assets and your mortgage is underwater. If you lose your job then the house is gone. Is it so surprising that people, when faced with desperate economic situations, will rob liquor stores? Seriously this is happening right now.
Plausible, sure, if we use the term loosely enough. But happening right now? On what evidence is this based? You can't fairly demand that someone else refute it with evidence until you've defended it first with something other than a correllation/causation conflation, right?
Someone who bought a house in the 1970s and held onto it until now has almost certainly paid off their mortgage. If they still have payments, it is very probably because they took out a second mortgage for some reason. In any case if the homeowner has lost his or her job and is desperate enough that the mortgage is entering default, s/he is probably a good candidate for a bankruptcy petition and subsequent walk-away -- both in eligibility, and in having sufficient financial accumen to find and exercise the option.
I've mentioned before that I have a friend who clerks in Denver district's criminal courts. I'll have to ask that friend about this alleged wave of foreclosed 30-year homeowners robbing liquor stores and the like, because all the recent examples I can call to mind involved disgruntled former employees, other personal disputes between the accused and the owner or employees, attempts to get easy money for a drug fix, etc. Y'know, the kind of stuff those typical intellectually dishonest mentally lazy cretin conservatives are always jabbering about.
Look at how many people take “consolidation loans.”
That's a really good point. Such loans are typically taken to pay off unsecured debt, i.e. debt owed on what amounts to a non-existent asset (which naturally has zero value, seeing as how it doesn't exist and all).
Nobody willing to struggle to pay off high-interest unsecured debt is going to go to the trouble of moving to get away from low-interest secured debt as a "business decision."
C'mon, Mouse, there are lots of seniors $300 short of paying off their mortgages hobbling their walkers into liquor stores to score that last payment. AARP is probably about to offer a legal defense fund.
Megan, I hope your friend recovers, and I also hope that he will not be too affected (emotionally, physically, mentally) by the people who attacked.
Like with most things, crime is a complex issue, but the solutions start with the people at the top. There is a problem in DC with a certain amount of "race protection" or blacks supporting blacks (for one reason or another), but we also have to keep in mind that blacks are often the major recipients of black crime, so you can probably multiply what whites are experiencing by several orders of magnitude and you have the black experience. After all, they are often living right there with the criminals and the intimidation factor keeps nothing from being done.
However the solution to the overall crime rate has to come from many changes:
1. More blacks have to speak out in support of police, and against crime, with greater commitment by the pastors of local churches in support of police activity and presence.
2. More people, black, white, whatever, have to speak out against the "culture of intellectual poverty," and if you wonder what I mean, that would include a lot of the stuff floated in rap lyrics and accepted as normative in the black community. While I don't say ban the often inventive music, some of the ideas put forth should be examined and mocked and not merely accepted as street wisdom.
2. Community policing has to reach a new level, where kiosks and community stations are built into the development process so that on nearly every other block an officer can be found. The offices can be used for multiple purposes: safe zones, voter registration, information, etc.
Start in the good areas (that draw income, tourists, businesses) and work straight to the bad areas.
3. Everyone has to get out and vote to put in people who are concerned about solving problems.
4. Issues of poverty AND morality have to be addressed and certain things acknowledged by both blacks and whites.
That's why it blows my mind when I hear people in both parties saying, "If Obama is the this...I won't vote" or "If McCain is the that...I am staying home."
Our problems in our cities and the country as a whole are too serious for Limbaugh games and simplistic views that don't take into account all the factors that cause a given problem.
I've mentioned before that I have a friend who clerks in Denver district's criminal courts.
I've never seen you say that before, you lying conservative SOB. Can you prove you said it with a link?
Police and courts are boundary setters. Some of us, perhaps most, need a little help with our boundaries. From what I read in the above and reflecting on the Scooter Libby case, I'd hypothesize the boundaries in DC are Orwellian, i.e. some animals are more equal, or have more excuses, than others is the first 10 rules rather than what is the apparent behavior. It is real tough though being part of the food chain. Freddiemac, didn't get that Mugabe gig?, tell you what, if you lose $10,000 in the market, I'd still recommend you as a bodyguard in DC.
freddiemac != Freddie
At a time like this there is nothing to say other than I hope your friend is OK. Policy in the abstract is one thing, reality is another. My prayers go out to both you and your friend. Jim English
The scene around 2pm today, 2 blocks from the White House -- massive MPDC presence, yelling at anyone trying to get near the World Bank main complex which had been shut down because some dude said he had weird stuff in his backpack.
The scene 2 further blocks in any direction from this yellow-taped security zone: rampant traffic law breaking, with not a MPDC officer in sight -- the closures above being a major factor in the traffic chaos.
It's a matter of priorities. If it maps into WarOnTerror, it gets resources. If it doesn't, you're on your own.
Megan,
I just read Greg Sargent's article about Brian. I am really sorry for the worry you must be going through right now. The good news is that from what I've read, he's going to make a complete recovery. Thank God.
Another approach cities might try is to pay Welfare Mommas NOT to breed thugs, or 'hos that breed the next generation of thugs.
Get a job between the age 15 and 30 and stay without child and you get 1500 to 2000 in extra cash if you are from a "minority, disadvantaged background". Have any chilluns outside wedlock in those years and the Mommas lose their stipend.
And no cash money or free nice crib for the Mommas.
Barracks, 30 Mommas and their chilluns to a room, no cash just chits for a few amenities, chow happ food, no boyfriends allowed.
At age 5, kids move to 2 to a room bedrooms near the Barracks under the Momma's supervision, but also where government employees would attempt to rid the kids of the cultural dysfunctions that keep cranking out generations of black thugs, black men with no job skills, and 'hos.
Any welfare Momma that gets a job and can afford her own crib gets to move out of barracks, and private charity if offered, and all the boyfriends she wishes to service...just no government checks, not even for "the kids the Momma needs a pack of free money for".
The problem of thugs, lousy students, welfare mommas has proven to be so intractable that new ideas like barracks and separate quarters for kids and other new/old ideas need to be floated.
Radio host Ken Hamblin used to challenge his callers to name a single major US city that has prospered under liberal black leadership. D.C. is just another one of the many failures.
I am a native of New Orleans. New Orleans is actually worse than DC.
My wife was carjacked and brutally murdered in 1994 (abducted in a suburb of St. Louis).
I became very interested in crime and crime control. I am convinced it is all about the chances of the thug getting caught and punished. They are stupid but not so stupid that they cannot do a quick, intuitive cost benefit analysis.
Yes, there are some root causes but we can debate those all day long. The bottom line is a thug in jail can't kill your sister.
Freddiemac:
I don't dispute the correlation. I just find your explanation for it utterly implausible. I would be very surprised if there were any significant overlap between current or former real estate owners and people who commit street crime. Street crime is overwhelmingly an underclass phenomenon, and they rarely have the means to buy real estate.
An explanation I find more plausible is that when property values decline, the underclass can afford to move in, and they commit the crimes.
You know as well as I do that most crime in DC is people stealing to buy drugs. Continue to try to stop the War on Drugs. It is not working and just gets innocents hurt.
Steve
C'mon, Mouse, there are lots of seniors $300 short of paying off their mortgages hobbling their walkers into liquor stores to score that last payment. AARP is probably about to offer a legal defense fund.
I've suspected for years that those $50 checks I get at Christmas and on my birthday are blood money. Whenever I ask grandma where the money comes from she just says "my savings, and grandpa's life insurance" Riiiight.
I've tried asking her why she can't get off her ass and work for a living like the rest of us. She just tells me that "in her day women didn't have as many options as they do today" and then offers a lot of excuses about how she's a little old to be starting a career now.
Sometimes she'll lay it on real thick, and tell some long-winded cock and bull story about working at a factory during World War II and then raising four children. Save it for the rubes, honey, I'm on to you.
Very sorry to hear about your friend. Best wishes for a complete recovery.
Freddiemac:
Because people won't pay interest on a house that is declining in equity. Why would they?
Well, for one, if you walk away from a mortgage, your credit will be shot, and it will be a long, long time before you're ever again trusted with the funds necessary to buy a house. If you value owning your own home, it makes sense to continue making payments if at all possible rather than walking away.
Also, if you have a fixed-rate mortgage, your payments are fixed for the next 30 years (whereas they're likely to go up for renters), so it may even make sense from a purely financial perspective to tough it out.
ockham-
Does it matter so much to you that I left out an "e" in "breaking", or that I did not use the proper form of "you"? Im sure my grammar teachers would be so displeased. But since this is the world of lol, :), btw. I was chiding you for using the popular misspelling routinely.
Anyway the premise of the post, which you easily dismissed, still stands. The five year solution is to knuckle down on crime. It is not a 30 year solution but it is the 5 year one.
I agree, the DC cops, at least anecdotally, aren't doing their job. Or concentrating on the wrong things.
I'm not a DC resident, but I've visted a bunch of times. Almost every time, I J-walk---because that's just how you cross the street in 99% of the country.
The DC police always give me lip--some on the loudspeaker of their cars!
Meanwhile, the mugger in front of them walks away with his bag of dope and flashing a handgun.
The DC police are ridiculously badly managed; their priorities are all screwed up. I love cops, I think they get too much shit, but for the capital of our nation, it seems like these guys are the Keystones.
The beat cops are all right; it's their idiot leadership that's the problem. Case in point: the former, unlamented Charles Ramsey, who literally (I speak from firsthand knowledge) sounded like Clancy Wiggum in conversation.
He came down with his deputies to talk to a neighborhood meeting about crime. My neighbors were voluble and angry about the quality of law enforcement, justifiably so. One elderly lady shook a copy of William Bratton's book on zero-tolerance policing at Ramsey and asked him why he wasn't doing it. Ramsey's response: "When you do that, there are too many complaints from the minority community."
The funny thing about this anecdote is that both the person demanding better policing and the official refusing to provide it on the grounds that the black community objected were African-American.
I live in a city of 1,000,000 and never worry about crime. I walk around freely in the evening and the chance of someone accosting me is so low that I don't even think about it. Some people ask me when I'll return to America and I say, "When I buy a black and white TV."
I don't understand why it's ok to talk about DC policing but not ok to talk about gun control. Is Megan's position on the latter (which I don't even know) so fragile that it can't bear scrutiny when confronted with events in the real world?
Just by starting this thread, she's made the argument that it's ok to blame the police, but not ok to blame guns or gun control laws.
And maybe that's true. But without a discussion we'll never know.
Libertarians are odd sorts.
lampwick,
Perhaps an example will help. There is a law (or many laws) against abduction, a law against sex with a minor, and a law against murder. They recently found the body of a 12 year old girl who was abducted (by her uncle, for the purpose of bringing her into a sex ring), and then murdered. When presented with this story, I would claim that reasonable people wouldn't react with "well obviously we need more laws against abduction, rape, and murder". Yet somehow the standards are different when it comes to the illegal possession of a gun used for an illegal activity. Some people find this "odd".
Boston and NYC show clearly what can be done, if the public demands that the police department will do its job properly. The fundamental problem with crime in Boston and NYC is that the cities had large numbers of visitors and ordinary people commuting right through or close to busy drug markets. A lot of the crime were: (1) addicts stealing to buy drugs, (2) addicts trying to steal drugs from dealers, and (3) turf wars over control of drug markets.
Particularly in Boston, the police were powerless to stop it because when they made a valid arrest, the offenders were subject to the administration of the law by the state. Bad prosecutors and liberal judges let the poor, misunderstood little darlings back on the street. Similarly, I believe that DC and Philly have the same "revolving door" justice - if not worse. Criminals have no reason to change.
The solution in Boston (and, to a lesser extent in NYC) was to package up the cases and turn them over to the Federal courts. In particular, you filed charges against drug dealers for possessing a firearm in the commission of the drug trade or felons in possession of a firearm. Both are against the law in MA, but no one is ever prosecuted for it. If the arrest was valid (and they were), finding the firearm was perfectly legal. The conviction rate was extremely high: there is really no defense. The criminal then wanted to present evidence at sentencing to show that he wasn't really a bad guy and ask for mercy. After all, that worked in the past. Too bad: Federal court won't allow them because there was a mandatory ten years. Bye bye!
In a few cases, the police made an arrest, but the charge wouldn't stick. For example, in rare cases, the individual had a gun, wasn't engaged in the drug trade at that moment, and didn't have a prior felony conviction. They still had his name and address. He had a house or expensive apartment. A DMV search showed that he owned a nice car or even multiple cars. The District Attorney called the IRS and told the them. Guess what? He makes lots of money in the drug trade, but has never filed an income tax return. OK, so we won't file the charges for the weapon, but you're still going away for tax evasion. Bye bye to you too!
Some liberal idiots in Boston and NYC still complain about the way that the streets were cleaned up, and they are trying to undo what they see as the damage (e.g. the terrible tragedy of breaking up families by sending offenders to far-away Federal prisons). But it worked. Street gangs that controlled whole sections of city were destroyed. Their entire leadership, middle management, and a lot of their foot soldiers were sent to prison. (Now if they'd just keep it up.)
These kinds of arrests aren't flashy. The Boston police didn't undermine the gangs from within or make big drug busts with tables of drugs and weapons. They fought a war of attrition in the streets. The overwhelming majority of the crime is caused by a relatively small number of repeat offenders. If you put them away for a decade at a time, the problem gets very manageable.
EF Gamble - That's fine. But what sort of discussion of these issues begins with a threat to delete the posts of those who explore more than one viewpoint?
I just thought it was in poor taste to use her friend's misfortune as an excuse to constrain the terms of a debate in a contentious way.
A couple of random observations:
Re CCTV monitoring: Guess I don't see the real danger on the slippery slope so long as the police are also perpetually monitored.
The UK is considering a ban on wearing hats in bars so the monitoring cameras can do a better job. The slope is not just slippery, the government is spraying grease on it.
It's well known that violent crime is correlated with how many males between 16 and 25 there are in the population. I expect that DC is "younger" than many other areas due to the high poverty rate, as middle class and high income families have fewer children. Hence, higher crime.
There has been some talk about how jury nullification or lack of incarceration and ineffective policing can result in a crime wave. An anecdote from Houston might help illustrate this. After Katrina, Houston had a spike in the violent crime rate, fueled by displaced gang members from New Orleans who carried their beefs with them and tried to muscle into the local gang scene. The city was actively analyzing the crime stats and shifted police patrols to cover the areas where the problems were, added OT for more street patrols (partially paid for by FEMA money), and opened a few police storefronts in the affected areas.
I read an article in one of the national glossies (GQ or Vanity Fair, maybe) about a gang leader from NO that was arrested for murder in Houston. When the DA offered him a plea deal involving a long sentence in the state pen, he laughed and said this was a "60 day murder" and he'd be out soon. He had been arrested in NO a couple of times for murder or attempted murder and only spent 60 days in jail. Each time the witnesses ended up with amnesia or dead, so after 60 days without an indictment he was let go.
The DA looked him in the eye and explained to him that we take murder seriously in Harris County, that the indictment was forthcoming, and if he didn't take a plea they would convict him and stick a needle in his arm after a few years of fruitless appeals. After all, he abused our hospitality. When the indictment was handed up and the prep for trial started, he pled and is doing a long stretch in TDC.
Now, we may well execute too many murderers here in Texas. But a combination of effective prosecution and a reactive police force shut down the NO gangbangers from exporting the NO crime scene to Houston.
I echo the statements of others about the refusal of DC residents (making up juries) and judges to dole out harsh punishments.
Just a few days ago I read about a 62 year-old woman in DC who was sentenced to 8 years(!) for beating her 5 month-old great-great nephew to death. The woman, who plead guilty, showed no remorse, is a drug addict, and has a history or abusing kids. In fact, her own infant son died in the late 60s of mysterious causes (but the autopsy wasn't ever completed, thanks DC medical examiner!).
In my opinion this woman deserves the death penalty, but since the DC doesn't have it, I'd settle for life in prison, or at least 20 years, but 8 years? Why didn't the judge just go and punch the parents of the baby in the gut and piss on his grave? And of course I read about this in the back pages of the Metro section of the Washington Post, it wasn't even front page news! You can bet that if the baby was from an affluent white family in the suburbs then this would have made headlines across the country. But I guess when poor black babies in DC get beaten to death it's not important. It makes me cry to think about it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062502765.html
If DC was a state or was part of a state, it's problems wouldn't be half as bad. Being in effect a colony, it has a lot of the infantilism issues that any colony has.
Freddiemac:
"Because people won't pay interest on a house that is declining in equity. Why would they?"
Because they pledged to make the payments. We're in a pretty sorry state if we feel it's OK to break our commitments at a whim. Obviously, doing business with Freddiemac would be a losing proposition.
Personal honor still has meaning out here in the bookdocks.
Benn,
In the context of this discussion, chapters 3 and 4 of 'Freakonomics' are interesting. To wit:
# Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers
# Chapter 4: The controversial role legalized abortion has played in reducing crime. (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.")
cited from Wikipedia
re: lampwick 11:47
Like Hong Kong did? This is part of the Orwellian 'some animals have more excuses than others,' support the idealization of an underclass ideology.
I too am sorry to hear about your friend, and I hope he recovers. I live in Baltimore, which makes DC seem like Disneyland--it has many more murders per capita, and the streets are NOT well lit like DC (I lived in DC for 10 years before moving back home).
The problem with DC is structural. The vast majority of its good jobs are given to VA and MD commuters, and Congress repeatedly prohibits DC from taxing their income. To add insult to injury, so much of the prime real estate in DC is owned by the federal government, so there are no property taxes on it. With all that, a large enough or competent police force is unobtainable given budget constraints. Not to sound unsympathetic, but maybe you libertarians could hire your own private forces, or gate/wall in your communities, since most libertarians don't believe in goverment intervention for hardly any services--surely private enterprise could provide a solution. That is what Miami residents have done to protect their privileged.
I believe we were discussing inter alia foreclosures, poor judgment, and individual responsibility:
Her equity must have dropped precipitously. Better alert the local liquor stores.I'm a DC resident in a gentrifying neighborhood, and aside from agreeing with comments on jury nullification, a lot of the city's problems go to the politicians being scared stiff of getting Marion Barry and the people that follow him riled up.
I've lived here almost a decade, and one of the most irritating things about this city (which has many good qualities, I should add) is that every political issue gets turned into a black versus white thing, with blacks usually playing the aggrieved victims of a) insufficient policing, as in an officer should have been right there at the moment some punk blew another one away b) too much policing that results in "good boys who were getting their life back on track" actually being arrested for committing crimes, or c) claiming that we need more public money spent on providing make-work jobs for teens, ex-offenders, and so on. There is a pervasive mentality that people are owed something for nothing, and that some external force is responsible for all the ills of the black community and it's everyone else's duty to cough up more money to fund more generous public benefits.
The fact is that this city has a gigantic proportion of its population that is comprised of lower-income, low-education, low-IQ people that have poorly developed moral, family, and social values, and pass these onto the youngsters they raise (sort of) who intimidate all the decent and law-abiding folks, black, white or whatever. The more of them in jail the better for everyone.
My sympathies to your friend, along with wishes for a complete recovery.
If DC just had a crime problem, a new police chief might bring some improvement. But DC is failing on almost every level. Policing seems to be incompetent. The emergency response system has to be the worst of any major city in the U.S.--your friend is lucky someone actually answered the 911 call. The school system spends more per capita than most cities, yet its schools are both decrepit and ineffective. The streets are a mess. The best that can be said is that the garbage generally gets picked up.
An example: a few weeks ago there was a major power outage in central DC, on an otherwise warm and sunny morning. The result was chaos. The District has a system to run traffic lights on battery backup during outages, but no one could be found who could turn it on. Though the District may be one of the most heavily policed cities in the US once the various federal forces are factored in, no one thought to direct traffic at busy intersections. Imagine this: nearly seven years after 9/11, the city that must be a major terror target does not have officers assigned to direct traffic during a power outage. If the city can't handle a minor crisis under otherwise easy conditions, we can't expect it to handle any major problems requiring lengthy and complex solutions.
I wonder how many of DC's problems can still be traced back to Marion Barry's disastrous mayoralties. He hasn't been mayor for a decade, but I imagine there are still enough Barry cronies throughout the DC bureaucracy to gum up all the works.
I lived east of the park waaay back before the Matt Ygleisias types drank microbrew beer there. Not nice. Not so Mt Pleasant. The safest places were where Irish people (cops) lived. Does anyone still drink at Gaffney's Emerald Island Room off 14th & Colorado? There are few european ethnic neighborhoods in DC and from my experience along the DC-Boston corridor I know there is nothing like armed italians & irish to keep the peace
DC has gone to hell and we all know why. We can look at posts the other day on Zimbabwe and apply the same reality to DC.
When so many people think they are owed and need to "get paid" the same shit keeps happening. DC had it's own hip-hop hop going back to the 80s and gettin' paid was what the music was all about. Megan may erase this message but the truth is not so pretty.
DC has gone to hell and we all know why. We can look at posts the other day on Zimbabwe and apply the same reality to DC.
Indeed, what with the Kelo decision refusing to put any limits on government expropriation of private land, DC has seen all of it productive farmland stolen as part of the infamous Fenty "land reform" program.
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
When reading this chapter, it is wise to remember that the window of opportunity for being aborted is rather short compared the window of opportunity for committing crimes.
The analysis that would have proved his case would be to show that crime rate fell in the cohorts that had been culled by abortion, and only those cohorts. So the falling crime rate was first the falling juvenile crime rate, then the falling rate among eighteen year olds, then nineteen year olds, etc.
The chapter doesn't have that. May have be an oversight, but it was unfortunate. Because if you do the analysis by cohort, you find that it was exactly the older criminals where the crime rate was declining. Among the younger criminals, you show a decline in a cohort's rate only after large numbers of them had been locked up for crimes.
I'm not going to talk about gun control because Brian and I disagree on the matter, and I'm not going to use his shooting to advocate for a position he disagrees with. But neither can I allow the gun controllers to make their speeches while muzzling the gun rights side. So, no discussion. Sorry.
lampwick,
Can you possibly be maintaining that Megan has an obligation to provide a public forum for debate??? Please, have some decency for the recent innocent victims of crime here.
Surely you're misunderstanding the story, or I'm misunderstanding you--who would design a battery backup system in a way that required manual intervention?
now I sympathize with Megan's friend getting shot, but really- is crime THAT bad in DC? Google and Wikipedia turned up this:
According to F.B.I. statistics, in 2006 the rate of violent crime in Washington, D.C. was 1445.84 crimes per 100,000 population.[1] Among the cities reporting with 100,000 or more population, Washington ranked number 18 in its rate of violent crime. The top seventeen were Flint, St. Louis, Detroit, Memphis, Orlando, Oakland, Miami Gardens, Little Rock, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cleveland, Nashville, Miami, St. Petersburg, Stockton, and Springfield.
http://tinyurl.com/2u698c
As usual, once you introduce FACTS, then some of the comments look a little stupid. DC is apparently doing better than Philly, home of those law-abiding, hard working ethnics that control crime (supposedly ) in their cities. Its also doing better than quite a few of those southern cities, where manly, gun-toting folks know how to suppress crime by shooting would be muggers.
According to the Wiki article, the crime situation in DC is steadily improving from the crack epidemic years. While as a DC resident, I would like the crime situation to go from " improving" to perfect, that ain't gonna happen.
There are no simple answers to crime control, but more police, better lighting, more cameras, and more after school programs would be my preferred ideas. The ' lock ' em up" approach is the perennial simple solution,, but the USA already incarcerates far more people than western Europe, yet has a higher violent crime rate. better solutions, please.
Sorry about your friend. I hope he recovers. However even with gun prohibitation a resident of DC that walks can have a weapon ready in case of mugging. Muggers choose their target when there are no cops around. Tourist areas are busy and yes police are very hot to stop any young thug who thinks tourists are prey. Tourists are protected, last year we had 2-3 mugging on the Mall and they were caught very quickly. Tourism is life and treasure to the city so they take that seriously.
Any one who walks in DC at night has to be very aware of anyone who is around him and evaluate if those people are muggers or not. An easy tool for self-defense is a sock with bunch of pennies and carries that in the pocket. It gives a slight chance. Mugger now carries guns a lot. But the usual mugger does not shoot a victim. If victims thought that they would resist harder.
Best advice is MOVE. I have lived in the DC area all my life but I do not ever walk at night except once or twice in 20 years at teenager nightclubs and there were lots of people on the DC streets. I do go to the theatre on F ST and park in garages to avoid thefts to car and possible muggings even that area is very safe.
There is a reason that people who can move out do so. VA is very safe and close by metro.
Don't quote Wiki, use FBI numbers, and DC is consistantly in the top 3 cities for violent crime per capita. Find a big city in a concealed carry state that comes close...You cant.
Someone mentioned what you can and cannot say.
Imus gets ripped for insunuating that a Pro Football player is constantly in trouble with the law because he is a typical black, yet when he says "Oh no, I meant that cops are racist", it's OK?
Then in DC the cops are all black too. So we can't call them racist, but if we call them incompetent, is that racist? Can we call the voters of CD (mostly black) morons for constantly voting for dipshits? Or is that racist?