"Crime is surging" is propaganda, and here's how you can respond:

[Nevilledog]

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https://threader.app/thread/1422949466986921991

UPDATED THREAD. You're going to hear a lot about how cops need more resources because "crime is surging" in the next few months. It's propaganda, and here's how you can respond:First, what constitutes a "crime" is determined by people in power who have a lot of money.

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Second, cops manipulate crime stats for political reasons. Cops don't even count the *violent and sexual crimes that cops commit,* which would entirely reverse the crime stats in every city and state.

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Third, police ignore most "crime." They only look for *some* crimes committed by *some* people in *some* places. A school fight in a poor neighborhood is recorded as a “crime,” but a fight in a wealthy private school is not. Read hundreds of examples here:  https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-punishment-bureaucracy …

Fourth, police have incentives to focus on some “crimes” and not others. They make billions of $ in overtime for low-level arrests. This is one reason cops have ignored 100,000s of untested rape kits while making record drug arrests for decades.  https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-99-issue-3/how-to-lie-with-rape-statistics-americas-hidden-rape-crisis/ …

Fifth, police corruption in search of extra cash and weapons affects all of what cops do and what they tell us about what they do. For example, police take more property through civil forfeiture than all “property crimes” combined.

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Sixth, only 4% of all cop time goes to what they call "violent crime." And cops are terrible at solving "violent crime." Overwhelming evidence establishes that cops and prisons actually increase future “crime.” So, cops are terrible at preventing harm.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/upshot/unrest-police-time-violent-crime.html …

Seventh, what cops call “crime” is different from what causes harm. E.g., tobacco kills 480,000 people every year in the U.S, including 41,000 from second-hand smoke. These preventable deaths dwarf police-reported data on deaths from the drugs cops call “crime.”

Eighth, the same is true of water/air pollution and fraudulent home foreclosures, all of which cause huge death rates that kill far more people than what cops call homicides.  https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html …

Ninth, wage theft by employers isn't in crime stats b/c it is almost never investigated by cops, but it costs low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion/year, dwarfing the cost of all cop-reported robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and car thefts combined.

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Tenth, did you know that rich banks make about as much in fraudulent “overdraft” fees as all of what police call “property crime” combined in the U.S.? Did you know that none of this makes it into police “property crime” statistics?  https://prospect.org/economy/big-banks-charged-billions-in-overdraft-fees-during-pandemic/ …

Eleventh, these are millions of yearly white-collar “crimes” by big corporations and the wealthy people who own them but police don’t put them in their crime stats. Read more here about why cops distort the concepts of "crime" and actual harm.  https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-crime-isnt-the-question-and-police-arent-the-answer …

Twelfth, people will say: but even if "crime" is politicized and even if "violent crime" is actually down in 2021, "shootings" are up. Well, gun sales are up 40% and we’re in a global pandemic mental health crisis. Murder is a problem but not one related to more cops!

Thirteenth, the initial 2021 trend of more shootings is especially accelerated in places that increased police funding, and almost no city decreased police funding significantly. See a few examples:

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Fourteenth, almost all reporting about a “crime surge” uses low base rates so that percentage changes can appear high. An increase of 10 shootings to 12 shootings is reported as a 20% increase!

Fifteenth, media often focuses on month to month or year to year numbers, emphasizing different crimes at different times if one goes up, obscuring larger trends like this: we have among lowest murders in last 50 years, and other countries with fewer cops have way fewer murders.

Sixteenth, cops/media thus cherry-pick data. The result of this manipulation is one of the big scandals of our time: for decades the public has hugely overestimated crime rates:  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-americans-are-convinced-crime-is-rising-in-the-u-s-theyre-wrong/ …

Seventeenth, there is no evidence that cops/prisons reduce any "crime," especially that they reduce crime *relative to other alternatives.* Think about what could have been done to help people with the trillions of dollars spent on the War on Drugs:

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Eighteenth, people telling you to give more cash to cops b/c of “crime” don’t count the *costs*: millions of arrests; millions of separated kids; millions of lost jobs, homes, medical appointments; tens of millions of police assaults; hundreds of millions of criminal records.

Nineteenth, those calling for more cash for cops don't tell you that the trillions of dollars spent on police/prisons has been used by cops for total surveillance and to infiltrate and crush every single movement for social justice in the past 100 years.

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Twentieth, the idea of “soaring” crime after a few dozen more shootings w/o reporting how many people died from unstable housing, lack of access to healthcare, pollution, or malnutrition is how elites keep us focused on solutions of control and profit and not liberation.

Finally, not all human tragedy is preventable, but quite a lot of it is, and accepting copaganda on “crime” and police data about that concept as a proxy for holistic public safety is the original sin of most writing in this topic.

Read more @interruptcrim and fight back against propaganda that wealthy interests and cop unions are feeding to us.  https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com/cops-dont-stop-violence … (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1422949466986921991)

[Devil Child]

1. Crime is surging.

I see no benefit of an exhaustive reading exercise to deny this reality.

[Nevilledog]

2. Propaganda works

[Miguelito Loveless]

9. So, you are skipping a point-by-point

explanation as to why crime is not "surging" because...? Truthiness?

[lapucelle]

3. Crime has been up where I live and work as well, although it might be abating.

"Crime is a construct" is of little comfort to victims.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-07-30/new-york-s-crime-wave-is-showing-signs-of-breaking

[Amishman]

4. Sorry, crime - particularly violent crime - really is rising

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1018996709/rising-violent-crime-is-likely-to-present-a-political-challenge-for-democrats-in
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/10/if-progressives-dont-start-taking-rising-crime-seriously-they-risk-getting-mugged-by-reality/

Time to face it and address it.

The proper response isn't to deny or hide; it is to redirect to the root causes of rising crime. Poverty, inequality, lack of opportunity, lack of education.

[mvd]

14. Agreed on the causes

I would add availability of guns, the pandemic, and a not so good relationship with police (no wonder!)

[nitpicker]

5. More people going out at nightmore opportunities for violence

I remember HOW deserted the roads were around midnight in February driving back home from the hospital.

Contrast that to the local "restaurant row" being packed out for BREAKFAST last week.

I'm sure it's even more crowded at night.

The local news featured that somebody, a few nights ago, managed to disrupt a robbery in progress.

[Vogon_Glory]

6. The crime rate may be going up BUT

compared to the seventies and the eighties, this is almost nothing.

[Tomconroy]

7. One Willie Horton ad will blow every one

Of those points out of the water.

[Nevilledog]

8. Propaganda works

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Alex K is an outstanding resource.

[Tomconroy]

11. If he ran for dog catcher his platform

Would be: Dogs don't exist. Cats are the real problem.

[nycbos]

12. Violent crime is up.

Shootings are up though it's not like it was in the 70s and 80s. That is a fact.

While we should push back against the hysteria if we ignore the fact that crime in certain areas is rising we will lose the next election period.

Though no serious Dem actually talked about defunding the police it hurt us because we did push back hard enough against the BS.

[maxsolomon]

13. Cops do jack to PREVENT crimes that are "surging"

They don't stop Catalytic Converter thefts, they take reports on them.

They don't stop young men from shooting each other and innocent bystanders, they clean up the mess and arrest the perps.

Crime goes down when there is less motivation for it. That can be something as simple as "it isn't Summer any more".