Turbo2x t1_j2ewz6y wrote
Reply to comment by GaijinYankee in DC's murder rate has -11% YoY change from 2021. Wanted to post this for some more positive news around crime, since negative news tends to dominate this space. by donemessedup123
Hm if only there was some way to explain this, perhaps a mass death event that negatively impacted the material conditions and mental health of people across the country.
Seriously, people are reading too much into a statistical outlier when crime is overall trending down. We've got to get some distance from the pandemic and get people the economic and mental health they need as opposed to the "cops on every street corner, tough on crime" narrative you see parroted endlessly.
solidrecommendations t1_j2ez3oh wrote
This is a bad take. Regardless of the cause (and I don’t buy “Covid” as a cause for everything), people can still be upset and worried that crime is up and want it to be lower.
Turbo2x t1_j2ezeq5 wrote
yep that's why I suggested some things that need to be addressed going forward rather than "post 10 fearmongering crime articles on the DC subreddit every week" which seems to be the strategy right now
solidrecommendations t1_j2ezlqk wrote
Nobody is forcing you to read the articles. To me, it’s just information to consider and absorb. Ignoring it won’t make the problem go away, but you can if you choose.
[deleted] t1_j2f0qc8 wrote
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fullstackbuffoon t1_j2f89vu wrote
Pretty ironic considering you’re ignoring the impact of a multi-year global health crisis on the mental wellness and economic stability of a whole lot of people as if those two factors aren’t significant drivers of violent crime.
solidrecommendations t1_j2f91yq wrote
Crime was already on the upswing in DC before the pandemic. I’m sure it’s a contributing factor concerning the increase in some types of crime, but to attribute everything to Covid is convenient and naive. I’m not ignoring it … I’m just not buying it as an explanation.
fullstackbuffoon t1_j2fa0s6 wrote
No one attributed everything to Covid; that’s you creating strawmen to defend your position. You are hand waving very real factors in the rise of violent crime, and ignoring other factors like police refusing to do their damn job as a result of nationwide movement toward more accountability.
solidrecommendations t1_j2faic2 wrote
The other guy was attributing everything (or most) of the increase in crime to Covid … that’s who I was responding to. When did I say I was ignoring other factors? I’m just saying I don’t believe Covid is a significant factor.
carbon56f t1_j2fd5jn wrote
I get what you're saying, but reddit, especially this subreddit, nor twitter, nor facebook are real life. And its a huge problem in the 21st century that we mistake these spaces as being representative of real life.
Gumburcules t1_j2fnz36 wrote
Whoa, let's not pretend like posting fearmongering crime articles is all people here are doing.
Many of them are making completely unnecessary posts about their personal life every time something remotely bad happens to them, or even when they think something remotely bad might have possibly been about to happen to them!
Turbo2x t1_j2fofzt wrote
Someone looked a little aggressive while I was walking home at night, this is why the city is declining and I'm moving to Arlington!
noquarter53 t1_j2f03ch wrote
Not sure if you can make the case that crime is trending down when murders increased 6 out of the last 10 years pre pandemic.
A professional, trustworthy police force is just as valuable, and there's research that shows more visible cops reduce crime.
>adding a new police officer to a city prevents between 0.06 and 0.1 homicides, which means that the average city would need to hire between 10 and 17 new police officers to save one life a year.
Mental health and economic opportunities are important, but there's no shortage of jobs in the DC area. And, I would speculate that DC dovotes more resources towards mental health than a lot of cities.
Turbo2x t1_j2f4eqz wrote
I love when people cite this study because I get to gush over how notoriously flimsy it is! They estimate cops reduce between 0.06 and 0.1 homicides which is a huge variance that they just handwave away and hope no one notices, but everyone rolls with the 0.1 figure because it sounds better. The lower end of this figure means you have to spend over $1.1 million plus benefits and pensions to stop 1 homicide, which is absurd. The lower estimate of spending is only $664,000. Meanwhile they ignore the other finding of the working paper which says that adding more cops just leads to a bunch of bullshit arrests of minorities on low-level offenses.
Also it makes the mistake of assuming correlation = causation and ignores that murder rates have gone down as cities became more prosperous. It's a baaaaad study that people only trot out because it fits their narrative.
This passage
> the results imply that larger police forces are unlikely to be an important driver of lengthy prison sentences or mass incarceration, for both Black and white civilians
Should really disqualify the paper from ever being taken seriously. The authors even recognize that they didn't really find anything statistically significant, but second-hand reporting makes the data seem much more solid than it actually is:
> While we find that investments in law enforcement save Black lives, the number of averted homicides (1 per 10-17 officers hired) is modest and might even be zero in cities with large Black populations.
noquarter53 t1_j2fgrv5 wrote
$1.1 M doesn't sound like that much to prevent a homicide, to me.
Both morally and economically, that feels like a worthwhile investment.
Gumburcules t1_j2fotin wrote
Unless you're hiring cops as temps that $1.1MM would be per year, for 20+ years, then like 60% of that forever.
Phizle t1_j2fj6zh wrote
It sets a pretty low bar for other solutions to be more efficient
noquarter53 t1_j2fjm56 wrote
What other solutions? Comprehensive economic and sociol transformation?
If there were an easy, efficient answer to this problem, it would have been implemented by now.
We should be ok with all-of-above strategies and be prepared to stop doing things that have low evidence of efficacy (including shrinking police budgets if it's proven that they aren't helpful).
KillLaKillmonger t1_j2fmxeu wrote
Police do not stop crimes nor is their such a thing as a trustworthy police force in America. It never has been especially for 40%+ of the population of DC.
KillLaKillmonger t1_j2fn2da wrote
You almost get it which says alot in this subreddit
[deleted] t1_j2fa6g6 wrote
Lol that’s literally the opposite of the correct interpretation. 2021 was an outlier and crime is trending up. There’s a one year drop from 2021->2022, but that’s not the trend.
Turbo2x t1_j2fatou wrote
crime is trending up!!! when you only look at the last 2 years and not the previous 4 decades of data
solidrecommendations t1_j2fbvyx wrote
Both can be true dude … crime can be trending down over 40 years and up over 10. That can still be cause for concern. Nobody wants to go back to the early 00s or 90s.
[deleted] t1_j2fc4br wrote
The nadir was 10 years ago. Up since then
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