Something seriously needs to be done to clean up crime, and the first thing is tougher laws and visible police presence, the second thing is to get rid of all the corruption and dirty cops who look the other way. But in Milwaukee, and probably in Oakland the problem goes all the way up to the top, including the local politicians.
The problem is that cities are responsible for hiring and paying for police. And too many cities won’t cut the spending or raise the taxes to pay for an adequate police force.
This graph spells it out completely— LA isn’t listed but it would be placed between Oakland (bottom of the graph’s list) and Cincinnati (2nd from the bottom).
http://www.orpn.org/cities_DOJ.gif
Oakland has 16 cops per 10,000 residents. New York, in contrast has just over 50 cops per 10,000. NYC has the lowest crime rate of any major city. If a city has a crime rate above New York’s (that would be all of the major cities and most of the smaller ones), the first step should be to expand the police department to the size (per capita) of NYPD.
Protecting life and property is the first obligation of government. If the cities aren’t willing to spend the money, state legislatures should step in and impose the necessary taxes on those localities to pay for new police officers (or for the cost of bringing in state policemen).
