Crime Rates Rise And Fall. The Police Mostly Have Nothing To Do With It.

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Aya Gruber
@ayagruber
Essay: "Policing manages people & communities to serve powerful interests. Police forces did not originate to fight crime, they did not expand in response to crime spikes, and it remains contested whether they fight crime at all" @davidminpdx @equalityAlec

Crime Rates Rise And Fall. The Police Mostly Have Nothing To Do With It. - The Garrison Project
Policing expansions don't do much to reduce crime. Instead, they manage people and communities to serve the interests of the powerful.
thegarrisonproject.org
8:06 AM · Oct 26, 2021

https://thegarrisonproject.org/purpose-of-policing/

Policing expansions don’t do much to reduce crime. Instead, they manage people and communities to serve the interests of the powerful.

Murder rates go down; people exalt policing. Murder rates go up; people exalt policing. The defund movement advocates reducing and reallocating police funds; police budgets remain high. The backlash comes; police budgets get higher. The public becomes aware that policing is violent, racially biased, and counterproductive in marginalized neighborhoods; police get more resources to “improve.”

Policing has an amazing ability to fail up.

Last week, sexual assault victims told New York City Council’s Women and Gender Equity and Public Safety committees about the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Division’s dreadful handling of their cases. One woman said that despite providing investigators with a “comprehensive 13-page document detailing the incident,” the detective didn’t interview witnesses and her case was closed twice without her knowledge. Another woman told the council that a sergeant dismissed her sexual assault claim because she was sleeping when it happened, explaining “he has sex with his wife while she’s asleep and she’s not reporting him for rape.” Despite such testimony revealing the NYPD’s profound misogyny and a deeply rooted disinterest in solving sexual assault cases, the problem is routinely framed as an issue of resources, staffing, and training.

While such scandals and high-profile cases of police brutality cause people to recognize the harms of policing, the public still views them as remediable failures of an institution designed to “serve and protect.” Perhaps it is time to view them not as failures of the system but as part of the system itself.

*snip*

[Walleye]

1. I think the crime rate usually goes up when the economy is bad

Rudy Giuliani took credit for reducing crime in NYC, when crime rates were falling all around the country due to the good economy in the Clinton era

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. We know what causes crime. If we gave a shit about it, we'd throw money at those causes instead

of cops. K&R.

[bamagal62]

3. Yep. No opportunities,

Poverty, hopelessness…you get crime.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

4. Like making substances that people want to imbibe ... illegal to possess? (nt)