Heather Mac Donald on crime and policy in California’s blue cities
One would think that the most basic task of those running a large city would be to preserve civic order. Not a perfect order, of course; that would require a level of control and a restriction of freedom that would be onerous. Crime is always going to exist. But there are certain standards to which we in the Western world have grown accustomed and which make life pleasant and relatively safe.
In many blue cities in the last few years, that is no longer a priority. Or rather, as Heather Mac Donald describes here, it is something to which the leaders of these cities pay lip service while simultaneously supporting policies that sharply undermine it. And many of the citizens of these cities vote to keep these very same politicians in power, or at least don’t vote to remove them.
The driver of all of this seems to be the over-representation of black people in the sentenced and incarcerated population (it’s actually black men because women commit far fewer crimes than men, but strangely enough no one seems incensed about the male/female disproportion in the prisons). But actually, there are differences in crime rates and violent crime rates among all sorts of groups: ethnic, cultural, national, socioeconomic, and sexual, for example. We don’t really understand the reasons for the differences, but I think the reasons are far more about culture than something innate.
But to the left, the black over-representation must be explained by discrimination and disparate policing and justice-dispensing in a legal system skewed against black people because of bigotry. And to fix that – or to pretend to fix that – it is necessary to dismantle that system and sacrifice the law-abiding people of all races (with non-criminal black people suffering disproportionately, I might add).
Mac Donald explains:
Since Floyd’s death in May 2020, the mainstream media and Democratic elites have relentlessly sent the message that blacks are the victims of endemic racism. President Joe Biden claims that the criminal-justice system treats blacks unfairly. That message inevitably spreads into such underclass enclaves as South Central Los Angeles, where it produces more alienation and contempt for the law.
California’s policymakers had targeted alleged criminal-justice racism long before the George Floyd race riots. In 2011, the legislature banned state prison sentences for most property and drug felonies, since those sentences had a disparate impact on blacks. That law—Public Safety Realignment, or AB 109—sent “realigned” convicts to county jails, where overcrowding soon spurred the release of thousands of repeat felons back onto the streets…
Proposition 47, passed in 2014 with the help of George Soros money, downgraded felony theft to a misdemeanor if the thief sated himself with $950 worth of stolen goods…
The Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 (Proposition 57) eased standards for early release from prison. District attorneys warned that the measure would benefit habitual felons with violent records. Sure enough, the state prison authority has started using Prop. 57 to cut sentences further for incarcerated gun felons. A 2018 law prohibited violent teenagers, aged 14 and 15, from being tried as adults, no matter how heinous their crimes.
These earlier decarceration and decriminalization measures reduced California’s prison population by 25 percent from its peak in 2007 through the end of 2019, the last year before the Floyd earthquake. Crime responded accordingly…
The Floyd convulsion further constricted policing.
I suggest you read the whole thing, but I want to highlight the following [emphasis mine]:
Racism is not the explanation for these correctional disparities; differences in criminal offending are, however taboo it may be to say. In 2021, blacks constituted 51 percent of all robbery suspects in Los Angeles whose race was known. Blacks are 8 percent of L.A.’s population. Whites, 29 percent of L.A.’s population, made up 5 percent of 2021 robbery suspects whose race was known. Blacks in L.A. are 37 times as likely to commit a robbery as whites. Blacks were 34 percent, and whites 4 percent, of homicide suspects whose race was known in 2021, making blacks 31 times as likely to commit homicide in L.A. as whites. Those suspect identifications come from the victims of, and witnesses to, violent crime, who are disproportionately minorities themselves.
Unless one posits a huge epidemic of unreported white-on-white crime or white-on-black crime, these statistics don’t lie. But the left is determined to either deny them or explain them away as the result of an irredeemably racist society policed by racist cops and administered by a racist judiciary and prison system. That is so deeply ingrained on the left that reality must bend under its weight. Efforts of voters to recall some of the DAs responsible for implementing what Mac Donald calls “crimino-centric” policing and justice have only been successful in a couple of cases (she also calls these policies of the left “The Great Abdication”). The majority of voters appear to be onboard; part of Mac Donald’s article describes how that has ended up happening so far.
It is a tragedy of a now-familiar sort: imagology trumping reality, a phenomenon I described back in 2005:
Here’s a quote from Kundera’s 1990 work Immortality that I think bears another look. He is talking about the ascendance of imagery (which he refers to as “imagology,” meaning suggestive images and slogans) over ideology, or even over reality:
“For example, communists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience…”
It is even worse now than that, because I would guess that the voters of Los Angeles, for example, know “through their own experience” – either experiential or observational – that problems exist. But virtue-signaling requires them to deny them or to believe that a preposterous and dangerous “solution” will somehow make things better. As Los Angeles’ DA Gascon once said:
On taking office, Gascón asked the public to close its eyes and imagine the end point of his decarceration push: safe neighborhoods “with parks, playgrounds, and . . . kids playing.” What Angelenos see at present if they open their eyes is more like a Third World country, as Governor Newsom himself said in January 2022.
If imagology and ideology is more important to people than reality, you get a very nasty reality that you must continue to deny.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that those in charge want crime and chaos to increase. Perhaps they even count on election fraud to keep them in power. If that is so, what would be the motive? Power? Revenge? Or it this?:
Related.
Portland man smokes fentanyl on the street as people watch.
https://twitter.com/TheRealFarley/status/1637248329506488325
Also related (even mentions Portland!): Drinking coffee is built on and perpetuates white supremacy: If you have a white coffee drinking friend, he or she may have even let you in on the old coffee joke white coffee drinkers share when PoC aren’t around: “there are three things that are necessary in order to make a cup of coffee, and they are: first, a black man to roast the coffee; second, a yellow man to grind it; and third, a white man to drink it.” . . . Every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism. From the moment the whites viciously stole coffee from Black and Brown People to the present-day Karen sipping her morning cup of white supremacy, whites have been able to drink the fruits of our labor and our culture with impunity. . . . And let’s not forget that so-called progressive coffee shops fail to pay a living wage. The average salary for a barista in Portland, OR is a measly $23,000. To put it short: think twice before entering your local anti-capitalist coffee shop. Despite their anarchist demagoguery, they’re trying to exploit people of color just like the 19th century colonialists.
Read the whole thing for your daily dose of idiocy: https://afru.com/coffee-industry-racism-white-supremacy/
Didn’t coffee originate in the Arabian peninsula? I know Mocha is named after the port in Arabia from which it was shipped. So, isn’t their claim of racism based on cultural appropriation?
As Mayor Pete told me in Carroll, Iowa, anyone who cites stats or otherwise asserts that Blacks commit too many crimes as a percentage of the population, is a racist.
We can’t be honest about race and crime in this country.
This weekend on TV, Capital One repeatedly ran commercials featuring Charles Barkely, Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee. Clearly, racism stopped these three from getting a fair shot.
BTW, I’m loving seeing Mayor Pete fail in his job. I want him to run for another office. I’ll look him up at a rally and remind him what a failure he has been.
Glib and gay. That’s Mayor Pete.
Didn’t coffee originate in the Arabian peninsula?
Coffee was also grown in what is now Eritrea and Ethiopia, so there’s a whole lotta appropriation going on.
As Mayor Pete told me in Carroll, Iowa, anyone who cites stats or otherwise asserts that Blacks commit too many crimes as a percentage of the population, is a racist.
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The homicide rate increased during his years as Mayor of South Bend. Like Michael Dukakis, that’s not the sort of thing that interests him.
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It’s a reasonable wager he ran for President because there was an incumbent congressman in NW Indiana who was not ready to retire and Pete’s unsalable inventory as a state-wide candidate.
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There isn’t a whole lot of there there with that man, and I doubt there is anything he does which is not in some way in the service of image manufacture. It’s just that events are getting ahead of him.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that those in charge want crime and chaos to increase. Perhaps they even count on election fraud to keep them in power. If that is so, what would be the motive? Power? Revenge? Or it this?
Some people genuinely (and either stupidly or insanely) buy into the Malthusian population myths or junk science.
See this.
Avatar director James Cameron, a climate change activist, said he can “relate to” Marvel villain Thanos’ plan to kill billions upon billions of people as well as other creatures in the universe for the sake of population control.
I recall Cameron’s old film The Abyss, which I really liked, had an alternate ending where most or all humans of the world are wiped out.
While the above points don’t directly connect to rampant crime, I suspect that anything that damages the economy and the crime itself will reduce birth rates.
So what are the odds that the chaos, mayhem and violence are orchestrated by the usual suspects so as to demonstrate to Gov. DeSantis—and to the nation—that he has LOST CONTROL OF THE STREETS.
Kinda like what they did to Trump a while back.
Out-of-control partiers?… Or just another “mission” for those Democratic Party shock troops?
(And what happens when all those POLEECE start responding?…. St. George Floyd by the dozens?)
The Democrats will surely get a kick out of that!
Why is it that these blue cities continue to vote blue, despite the crime?
One thought is that, though people see it on the news, hear about broken car windows, etc., still the majority of people are not direct victims of crime. So the impetus to actually vote for those despicable repubs isn’t enough. It’s more comfortable to just continue with the status quo.
The primary purpose of democratic government is to protect the citizens who pay taxes to enable to government to do just that.
Iti’s outrageous that these leftists will not do their jobs and enforce law and order.
That black crime is a problem can be laid directly at the feet of the mayors of major Democrat cities where they have failed to ensure that inner city schools are actually educating the black children.
They also have failed to make their cities safe to do business in. Walgreens and Walmart are closing stores in crime ridden inner cities. Law and order is a human issue as well as an economic issue.
Democrat voters just don’t seem to make the connection between the miserable conditions of their surroundings and the people they keep voting for.
PA Cat, I’ve been a coffee drinker for decades, I’m white, and I’ve never, even once, heard that coffee “joke,” no matter who’s in the room.
There are big differences in racial crime rates. Asians have the lowest rates, then whites, and then Hispanics. Blacks commit an inordinate amount of crime. Just go here.
https://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/
In a Republic/democracy, ultimately accountability rests upon the shoulders of the voters whose votes enable the enactment of the policies that enable such criminality .
At what point do those who vote for and thus enable those who enable rampant criminality, become complicit in that criminality?
I wouldn’t dismiss the old idea of “glamour” – ie., the casting of a spell to make what is ordinary appear enticing and beautiful – as a factor in the mass hallucination known as Woke. There is something that can be glamorous about Woke ideology – like communism, it promises a heaven on earth free of all bigotry, and that’s heady stuff, which as we’ve seen in the 20th, 21st centuries can seduce a lot of people. When one is Woke glamorized, one does not see the flaws, only the beautiful shimmering mirage. Like falling in love, only longer lasting.
Might be noted that communism and fascism began to catch hold in the collective mind around the time that that other purveyor of glamour, film, movies, really began to take hold. Of course these days social media has been added to the glamour-generating mix.
It seems obvious to me that every subject in our sequence of national hysterias is modeled on the 1960s civil-rights model, with its moralistic browbeating and organized screeching.
And how did that arise? My one-word answer has long been “slavery”: Most of the miasma in the U.S. — and indeed across Western societies more generally — ultimately originates in the (unfounded) guilt trip over slavery. Recently, Roger Kimball wrote masterfully about this fundamental point, concluding what I had. For those who missed it, here are his three key paragraphs:
“If chattel slavery hadn’t existed in the United States, the Left would have had to invent it. What we mean is that the idea of slavery has become so dear to the disciples of identity politics that without its moral sanction they would be lost. Absent the original sin of slavery, the entire racialist racket that holds our society hostage would sputter to an inglorious halt. The race hustlers promoting ‘affirmative action’ (i.e., race- or sex-based discrimination) would be out of business, as would the real-estate magnates and firebugs of Black Lives Matter. Ditto the angry historical fantasists behind The 1619 Project. Forget that most societies practiced slavery throughout history. Is anyone asking for ‘reparations’ because their ancestors may have been enslaved by the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, or the Romans? Forget that slavery ended in the United States more than one hundred and fifty years ago because Abraham Lincoln prosecuted a brutal civil war to keep the country together and end the ‘peculiar institution,’ which was not peculiar at all. (When, by the way, will slavery end in Islamic society, or India, or China?) The world has had numerous long-distance trades in slaves of different phenotypes. Most of the West African slaves who made their way to America were sold into servitude by black African slavers.
“Those impolitic facts are what the Bolsheviks of old called ‘counterrevolutionary.’ That is, they are politically “false” even if empirically true. The wardens of wokeness tell us that they hate slavery and its legacy. Doubtless in one sense they do. But they are divided in their minds. They also cherish the historical fact of slavery. For one thing, they understand that it is their irrevocable meal ticket. They also perceive that it is an imperishable source of emotional power. Because it is a wound that can never heal, it is also a sin that white society can never expiate—which is why they tell the world that the legacy of slavery is ubiquitous and ineradicable. But if that were true, why should anyone have ever bothered to campaign against it? It would be like campaigning against the onset of night.
“We understand that to ask such questions is to be guilty of ‘racism,’ the cardinal tort of our age whose almost aphrodisiac power is ultimately guaranteed by the inexhaustible well of victimhood that slavery, or the exploitation of the idea of slavery, has dug. Martin Luther King Jr. famously dreamed that people would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. That is now regarded as a reactionary, indeed a racist sentiment. After all, to judge people by their character, by what they actually do, would upset the entire racialist concession. From now on, race is everything, character a dispensable epiphenomenon. And the ultimate power source, the inexhaustible kernel of animus that fuels the racialist requisition, is the historical accident of chattel slavery in the United States.”
Whole thing here: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2023/1/the-mob-comes-for-madison
Kate, perhaps it depends on what sort of coffee one drinks. What if it were to turn out that that strange joke has a measurable appearance rate among, say, habitual drinkers of double espresso, and particularly those who add in a bit of orange zest, for example? Whereas drinkers of more pedestrian Sumatran roast might be completely insulated from this phenomenon? And maybe those who prefer Turkish coffee with a bit of cardamom are somewhere in between.
I admit I’d never heard (or even heard of) such a joke, either. But some of the things that some of the race-hustling commentators come out with are really quite astounding. PA+Cat, is it possible that that article you mentioned was tongue-in-cheek at all? I find it hard to tell sometimes with some of these writers.
Okay, one thing I don’t get about blaming Prop 47 increasing the felony theft threshold to $950 for the explosion in thefts:
The felony theft threshold in Texas is $2,500, more than 2.5x that of California. It was at that level when I went through the police academy in 2016, but I’m not sure when it was last changed. (TPC 31.03(e))
So why doesn’t Texas have the same rampant theft problem as California? (Although, I think Austin/Travis County are trying hard to catch up.)
(As an aside, Theft from a Person is a separate crime, which is a felony no matter the value of the item stolen (as some schmuck who stole a $10 MAGA hat off a man’s head discovered)
Philip Sells, it appears to be a real website, operated by a person who’s lost her mind. — I am still reeling from your idea of a double espresso with orange zest. 🙂
Dave L., perhaps in Texas the police respond to misdemeanor theft cases and arrest the perpetrators. In California, because the prosecutors simply release thieves, police have stopped bothering to arrest them.
M. Williams,
If you live in a big city you are a direct victim of crime. Often. It’s ubiquitous. The large majority of it goes unreported. If you leave something marginally valuable unattended and out of the line of sight for more than a few minutes it will go missing. If you leave something valuable unattended in a secure location that can be somewhat easily breached it will be taken.
Park your car on the street overnight with an expensive pair of sunglasses (or, heaven forbid, a briefcase or purse) visible on the front seat. The window will be smashed and your property gone when you go to start your car the next morning. Your kid leaves his bicycle on the sidewalk to run inside for lunch. It will be gone when he returns, 30 minutes later.
Here’s an example. One day I was having an animated conversation with a friend after football practice. We continued all the way to his house, then I walked home. As I was eating dinner with my family I remembered I had ridden my bike to practice. I was so deep in conversation with my friend that I had forgotten it at school, chained to a bike rack, in a very public location next to the football field. I knew it was likely already stolen, but I told my dad and he drove me to the location as soon as we finished eating. The chain was cut and it was gone. Maybe 3 hours, all in daylight, in a public place with constant foot and auto traffic.
That is life every hour of every day in a big city. Anything of value that can be taken will be taken.
The police cause crime in the same way that doctors cause disease.
If you look at data on homicide victims, you will see that blacks are a majority of such victims despite being only 13% of the population. Also, blacks kill more whites than whites kill blacks, and this is also true with respect to Hispanics and Asians.
So the implication is a very high black murder rate when you consider this together. The data on victims is pretty much unassailable, and the crossover homicide data is strong.
This strongly supports the other data showing a high black crime rate in general.
I think a college professor at Univ. Central Florida got into hot water pointing out some of these realities–same with Professor Roland Fryer at Harvard. Can’t go against the dogma!
“Of course, there’s also the possibility that those in charge want crime and chaos to increase.”
Possibility? Certainty!
The felony theft threshold in Texas is $2,500, more than 2.5x that of California. It was at that level when I went through the police academy in 2016, but I’m not sure when it was last changed. (TPC 31.03(e)) So why doesn’t Texas have the same rampant theft problem as California? (Although, I think Austin/Travis County are trying hard to catch up.)
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Maybe it’s rather more common for prosecutors in Texas to actually process misdmeanor cases and more common for municipal court judges to prescribe actual punishment.
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(IMO, the standard sentence for larceny should be set by a formula for which the nominal amount stolen and the nominal personal income per capita in the state are arguments. The nominal personal income per capita would be taken from census data, so the arguments would change automatically each year. The standard sentence is then adjusted according to a set of fudge factors computed by formulae. One factor is derived from the defendant’s accumulated priors, one from the defendant’s age at the time of the offense, and one from whether the case was disposed of via a guilty plea, a negotiated guilty plea, or a trial).