Murder in America: 100,000 murdered since 2001
Mon Aug 13, 2007 at 11:29:43 PM PDT
Bob Herbert has written a powerful essay on violence in America, unfortunately hidden behind the firewall of the New York Times Op Ed page. If you have a subscription, read it. If you don't, I am summarizing some of his points.
I have written two diaries about this topic over this weekend: Murder in America Murder in America and Murder in America: Drive-by shootings Murder in America: Drive-by shootings. Fellow kossack RickWn weighed in the main point of these diaries:
local crime is just as important to a citizen's safety and security as is international terrorism
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I don't know that Bob Herbert reads my blogging, that he should be channeling the same concern with the rising violence in America. I am flattered beyond measure if he is, but I expect that he is just reading the same news stories I am about horrific crimes.
Herbert makes the profound observation that many many more Americans are being murdered than were affected by 9/11 and the whole war on terror.
It has been almost six years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the nation’s consciousness of terror was yanked to new heights. In those six years, nearly 100,000 people — an incredible number — have been murdered in the United States.
No heightening of consciousness has accompanied this slaughter, which had nothing to do with terrorism. The news media and most politicians have hardly bothered to notice.
That is correct. There is no escalation of crime and violence on george Bush's watch- all is well here in America. You are nice and safe as long as you are on a plane, since:
At the same time that we’re diligently confiscating water and toothpaste from air travelers, we’re handing over guns and bullets by the trainload to yahoos bent on blowing others into eternity in armed robberies, drug-dealing, gang violence, domestic assaults and other criminal acts.
Who are concerned about this issue? Well, folks in Omaha Nebraska are. They have has 30 shootings in 30 days. Omaha. Nebraska. My friend who is a 4th year medical student working neurosurgery rotation has had some pretty awful experiences this month at work. Spooked by all the violence, she called security to drive her home this weekend and worried she was bein too nervous. Security reassured her- it was dangerous and she was right to ask for protection.
Who else is concerned? Police Chiefs, especially in major cities. Bill Bratton of LA said:
"What we’d like to do is bring this issue of crime back into the national debate in this election year. What you don’t want is to let it get out of control like it did in the late ’80s and early ’90s."
Mr. Bratton is the former head of the Police Executive Research Forum. They just published a study called Violent Crime in America: 24 months of alarming trends. (Link opens large pdf file.) Here are some of the main points:
Among the jurisdictions filing reports with PERF, total homicides in 2006 were 10.21 percent higher than they were in 2004. Robberies increased 12.27 percent; aggravated assaults increased 3.12 percent; and aggravated assaults with a firearm increased 9.98 percent.
While some cities were reversing the trend, like Washington DC, Dallas and Denver, overall there has been an alarming increase.
The crime reductions of the 1990s cannot be taken for granted. The nation is receiving a warning signal that federal, state, and local governments must refocus their attention on crime in order to restore the level of safety and security that Americans experienced in the 1990s. And the volatility in crime rates—across the nation, and within given jurisdictions—suggests that it will be critically important to watch crime statistics closely in coming months and years.
The FBI is seeing the same trends, but they are not as fast at completing their larger studies.
According to the last two available years of FBI statistics (2004 and 2005):
• 32,840 murders occurred in the United States.
• Victims reported 818,592 robberies in America.
• 1,710,328 aggravated assaults were reported in the U.S., 289,106 of which involved the use of a firearm.
• The nation’s violent crime rose by 2% in 2005, the first increase in 13 years.
Herbert also cites Chuck Wexler, PERF's eecutive director, who reports that there are 100,000 cases of aggravated assault with a firearm, of which 60,000 result in wounding. Ironically, we are getting much better at treating gunshot victims, or our homicide rate would be 2 to 3 times higher.
"Over the past five years," said Mr. Wexler, "more than half a million people have been the victim of an aggravated assault with a firearm. We have become numbed in this society."
Where are these crimes coming from? One trend, young, heavily armed men, robbing the desirable items like i-pods and cell phones, from other young people.
The federal government played a big role in the effort that reduced crime substantially in the 1990s. But much of that federal support has since vanished, in part because of the tremendous attention and resources directed toward anti-terror initiatives, and in part because the Bush administration and much of the Republican Party have held fast to the ideological notion that crime is a local problem.
In 2004, Democrats campaigned on Bush's cuts in the COPS programs:
Cleveland has laid off 250 police officers, 15 percent of its total force. Since 1995, Cleveland had received $34 million in federal funds for new police officers, this year the city will only receive $498,000 for all police programs. "It's been very painful and emotional... We've had to cut some successful programs and go back to an older style of policing, doing patrols and answering calls for service," said Ed Lohn, Cleveland's police chief.
In Minneapolis, $6 million in COPS grants allowed the police department to hire 81 cops and boost the city's number of officers to 938 by 1997. But officials have had to cut 140 positions since then, including 38 this year. Officers are being shifted away from neighborhoods to handle emergency calls; robberies are up by 20 percent this year, and burglaries are up 3 percent. Minneapolis Police Chief Robert Olson observed: "Our long-term, grass-roots initiatives are starting to fade... We're seeing a resurgence in gang activity. We've got gangsters showing up in hospitals with bullets in them. The real impact will be seen in a year or two."
In New Orleans, the COPS program helped officials add more than 400 officers from 1996 to 2000, nearly 100 have been cut in the last three years. The city now has 1,610 officers. This year, homicides are up 16 percent, and rapes are up 14 percent.
In New York City, which received federal grants for 4,700 new officers and had nearly 40,000 cops three years ago, has dropped more than 3,400 since then. Crime rates in New York are still down slightly this year, but New Yorkers are becoming more vulnerable as they lose more and more police officers.
And finally, the money quote from Bob Herbert:
A similarly rigid ideological stance is undermining the effort to control the flow of guns and ammunition into the hands of criminals.
We need to have a more rational approach to this problem. I view gun control as a public safety issue, not an issue of personal freedom. The current wave of gun violence does not support the notion that more guns in the hands of the citizenry with concealed carry permits is making the country safer.
For an extremely radical point of view, read the highly entertaining article in Salon by Walter Shapiro entitled, "Repeal the Second Amendment."
Rather than ducking a debate with the conservatives over the eternal primacy of the Second Amendment, gun-control backers should embrace it. Since right-wing Republicans are zealously championing constitutional amendments on everything from abortion to a balanced budget, it would take intellectual jujitsu for them to explain why the First Amendment is worthy of improvement (by severing flag burning from free speech), but the Second Amendment unquestionably must remain sacrosanct. For only in Tom Clancy-esque mythology are weekend hunters carrying assault weapons a bulwark against tyranny. Only in a nation forged by 18th century concerns about liberty and states' rights do firearms have a hallowed place in the Constitution.
Or listen to this YouTube video from Rudy Giuliani, not afraid of the NRA.
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