Posted on 05/01/2017 7:25:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Trump took a lot of heat for using the word “carnage” in his inauguration speech.
But the word is all too accurate in many of America’s major cities. Once proud and productive cities, such as Detroit and New Orleans, have become dens of dependency, with generations hooked on welfare and despair.
The citizens of those cities are taking out their frustrations on each other at rates not seen in decades. In cities of 250,000 people or more, killings rose last year at the fastest pace in 25 years.
Chicago alone accounted for almost half the 14 percent increase in homicides in the nation’s 30 largest cities. The 762 murders recorded there last year marked a nearly 60 percent increase over 2015 and the highest total since the mid-1990s.
Yet Chicago, at 27.9 killings per 100,000 population, is only in the middle of the pack when it comes to murder in the big city. St. Louis, the murder capital of the nation since 2014, is nearly double that at 59.3 homicides per 100,000. Baltimore (51.2), Detroit, New Orleans and Cleveland all rank higher than the Windy City.
Nor was Chicago alone in reporting a large increase of homicides. Killings in Louisville increased 40 percent in 2016 over 2015; Memphis saw a 59 percent hike and San Antonio homicides climbed 61 percent.
It’s getting so bad, multiple cities are pleading for the federal government to send help.
In Baltimore, the new mayor, Catherine Pugh, asked the FBI to assign agents to work with the city’s police department to help solve some of the more than 100 murders that already have occurred in the city this year – the fastest start for killing in Charm City in more than two decades.
It’s not that Baltimore police don’t know how to solve crimes. It’s that the leadership of the city have not stood by their officers, and the criminals have taken note.
When Freddie Gray died in a Baltimore police van in April 2015, the local chief prosecutor rushed to charge six officers in his death, only to see the charges fall apart, like her political career. Meanwhile the accused officers’ reputations and personal lives were left in ruins, cops there retreated and criminals have filled the void. With carnage.
With wary police understandably on their heels, homicides are on a record pace and summer, which “tends to be very violent in Baltimore,” according to the mayor’s own spokesman, is just around the corner.
Calling in the feds is serious business. As newly confirmed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, most recently the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, knows well, the FBI formula won’t involve much "soft" policing. The FBI is a capable machine, well equipped to collect intelligence, identify and prioritize offenders and criminal groups, and apply the range of techniques designed to disrupt and dismantle violent crime. We did it throughout my three decades in the organization.
But for those tools to be effective, they must be complimented by aggressive prosecution and meaningful incarceration. And that means going into communities and making clear those who perpetrate violent crimes will be caught and sent to prison for lengthy periods of time.
Police know where these neighborhoods are. In St. Louis, half the city’s homicides occur in just eight of its 79 neighborhoods, and one of those neighborhoods has nearly 300 killings per 100,000. In Chicago, five police districts, which include just 8 percent of the city’s population, account for nearly a third of its murders.
Many of these communities are predominately African-American. But, as recently defrocked Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy has pointed out, focusing on these communities is not racist, as Eric Holder’s DOJ would contend, but a commonsense approach to fighting crime where it occurs, in its most serious forms.
Eighteen months ago I spoke at a criminal justice reform event in New Orleans. I approached two NOPD officers patrolling near the event, in the French Quarter, and asked them about policing in that city, one of the many working under a DOJ consent decree and now one of the many where violent crime is rising.
One said, "If a person walked up and punched me in the face then ran, I would have to call a supervisor for permission to chase him. If I caught him and struggled with him before that permission, I would be the one in trouble.” He quickly added, "There's no future in this job. I'm quitting as soon as I get my degree."
Federal help to these dangerous cities is a stopgap measure. The FBI has its own investigative duties, and local communities should be righting their own law enforcement ships.
They need to invest in enough cops – and invest in their training, leaders, equipment, tools and tactics. Cities are failing because their leaders have failed to do this.
Combatting surging violent crime in Baltimore and Chicago and New Orleans is not about “Officer Friendly” community engagement. Limited federal resources aren’t designed for that.
This is about real law enforcement that gets violent criminals off the streets, limits the next wave of victims and turns desperate communities back to the good people who live in them. President Trump and his attorney general understand that.
Meanwhile, the bureaucRATS that run those cities, pay themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salaries, benefits and pensions.
Some serious irony here, the dims wanted to nationalize police forces, now they end up with Jeff Sessions in charge.
They never learn to be careful what you wish for.
It’s like the police cameras. They are now complaining that the police are reviewing footage before filling out their statements, saying it is unfair.
-- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
We abandon police departments and are surprised when crime explodes.
‘Charm City’’s Chief of Police and State Atty just instructed all prosecutors to ‘think twice’ before charging illegals this weekend!
The FBI could do the country a great service by raiding the political offices of these cities.
I laugh at and ridicule incessantly these LIB-run hell-holes. People that vote these degenerates into office are getting their just desserts. Hahahahahaaaa. Pathetic.
And this was the intent of One Big Ass Mistake America. Obama and Holder and other race baiters crafted and designed anarchy and lawlessness in the hell-holes of America.
It was their intent to create such chaos that the federal government would have to be called in and take control. And by starting in the ghettoes, they would move onward to the rest of America replacing local and state control and authority with a totalitatrian Federal regime.
Thankfully this was yet another one of Obama's collosal failures.
Very appropriate quote
I would venture to say the operative word here is "all". It is PC racial cowardice to deny the facts.
***the dims wanted to nationalize police forces***
This has been the Dem desire since 1969. I still remember independent newspapers warning of this back in 1970.
police are reviewing footage
= = =
How about the footage goes straight to some ‘cloud’.
It is held by some neutral agency (sorry for that fantasy) until reports are done. Couldn’t be altered or cherry picked.
Better yet, footage goes straight to some live broadcast. FOX will be available soon.
um... Obama flooded the cities with crooks that were in jail for life just before he left office.
Amazing that crime spiked just afterwards!
No mention of New York City? The murder rate is 3.91 per 100K there. That’s 14% of the Chicago rate, and 6.6% of the St Louis rate.
That’s what gentrification will do.
Maybe the first step these cities take is a simple one, call ICE when they have a criminal illegal in their custody. Get criminal illegals out of their communities. Stop the silly nonsense of we are a sanctuary city. Until you do, you are a cesspool.
Roughly 76 of 79 St. Louis neighborhoods are made up.
St Louis’ solution? Merge stats with safer suburban areas.
They need to rethink what they are asking for - with Trump and Session they may find out that they are on the fast track to get drained....get rid of crooked ‘leaders” and all kinds of good things can start to happen.
and we add hosts of illegal criminal alien gangs and expect all to be peaches and cream ...
That was waaaay back when democrats wanted to use police AGAINST traditional American via the 'Southern Poverty Law Center' mentality that saw 'hate crimes' and a crime equal to murder.
AND
...'hate crime' were defined as 'speaking against any democrat or democrat victim group....'
We dodged a bullet on this one.
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