Baltimore’s Experiment in Policing

From City Journal:

A decade ago, Baltimoreans became lab rats in a fateful experiment: their elected officials decided to treat the city’s long-running crime problem with many fewer cops. In effect, Baltimore began to defund its police and engage in de-policing long before those terms gained popular currency.

This experiment has been an abject failure. Since 2011, nearly 3,000 Baltimoreans have been murdered—one of every 200 city residents over that period. The annual homicide rate has climbed from 31 per 100,000 residents to 56—ten times the national rate. And 93 percent of the homicide victims of known race over this period were black.

Remarkably, Baltimore is reinforcing its de-policing strategy. State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby no longer intends to prosecute various “low-level” crimes. Newly elected mayor Brandon Scott promises a five-year plan to cut the police budget. Both justify their policies by asserting that the bloodbath on city streets proves that policing itself “hasn’t worked”; they sell their acceleration of de-policing as a “fresh approach” and “re-imagining” of law enforcement.

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Democrats’ Love Affair With Spy Agencies

Once upon a time, Democrats mistrusted spies.

[Added May 11, 2021]

From a 2019 article: "Resistance" liberals love the FBI and CIA. History says they don't love you back."

This situation evolved over the past 10 years or less. Here is a 2019 Slate article commenting on this change: "Hayden, the former director of both the National Security Agency and the CIA, has become a favorite critic of Trump’s irresponsible and reckless foreign policy posturing. It is almost as if liberals, including MSNBC superstars Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, have forgotten or chosen to overlook that Hayden oversaw the creation of a massive surveillance program in the NSA, argued that law enforcement officials do not require “probable cause” to search the person and property of terrorist suspects, and defended the use of torture as a means of extracting information from “enemy combatants. There is an understandable impulse among many or most liberals to avoid crawling around on all fours in the conspiracy-theory sewers with Donald Trump and his assembly of “Deep State,” “fake news” weirdos. But to embrace the FBI, the CIA and their most enthusiastic apologists, however, comes close to vandalizing the entire democratic project.

In all likelihood, American liberals will soon come to regret lionizing the military-intelligence industrial complex: For instance, the next time a president — whether it's Donald Trump or a successor — pushes the country into a bloody and destructive overseas war for nebulous reasons, based on redacted intelligence reports, false premises and flat-out lies.

That was from 2019. Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald have often pointed out that things have continued to worsen. Taibbi published this article today: "Reporters Once Challenged the Spy State. Now, They're Agents of It. News companies are pioneering a new brand of vigilante reporting, partnering with the spy agencies they once oversaw." First line of Taibbi's article: "What a difference a decade makes."

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Number One Crime in my Neighborhood: Theft of Catalytic Converters

Numerous catalytic converters are being stolen in my neighborhood in the City of St. Louis. This note is from a recent meeting of my neighborhood association: "The number one crime continues to be the stealing of catalytic converters from people’s cars. These types of crimes are hard to investigate since they happen very quickly." The attached surveillance video below that it only takes 1 minute to steal a catalytic converter.

One of my neighbors was very upset to find hers stolen a couple weeks ago. To replace the converter on her Honda Element would have been in excess of $3,000, and this was more than the value of her car. How much do the thieves get for damaging or destroying your car? "Although the amount of metal in a single catcon is relatively small, a thief could expect to get from $50 to $100 out of a single poaching."  This can ruin a car for many people and this is happening during the pandemic, when many people are already severely stressed.

There are various devices you can buy or create to make it a lot harder to steal your catalytic converter. I'm looking into buying and installing one of these devices now.

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Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Violence Continues

Violence on the street every night in Portland, Oregon, despite the departure of federal law enforcement two weeks ago. The senseless destruction and violence is described in detail by the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt:

The weeks of destruction and intense clashes with police following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May have spurred angry backlash from Portland officials and some residents. Tensions have risen in recent weeks following a period of relative calm after federal law enforcement left Portland last month. . . . Tuesday night’s fire damaged important county resources that have nothing to do with policing, officials said, including the county’s Office of Community Involvement, which aims to engage historically marginalized communities in local political decisions about social services and the distribution of public resources.

“The lobby where the first same-sex marriage in Oregon took place, and where millions of pieces of personal protective equipment are being distributed to help our community battle covid-19, was damaged,” Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said in a statement.

Total silence from the New York Times for two weeks. Nothing from NPR for the past 10 days. It's like Portland doesn't exist . . . or perhaps these stories don't fit the official narrative.

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Sam Harris Explores the Global Epidemic of Child Sexual Abuse

In his introduction to "The Worst Epidemic," Sam Harris warns that the subject matter might be difficult for listeners. The topic is the global epidemic of child sexual abuse involving children as young as one year old. Sam is joined by Gabriel Dance, a NYT reporter who has thoroughly investigated this issue. Until I forced myself to listen, I had assumed that this predatory behavior was relatively rare, but I was shocked to learn that sexual predators have exploited every corner of the Internet. To illustrate, Dance mentions that law enforcement experts estimate that of the 9 million citizens of New Jersey, 400,000 have been exposed to these highly illegal images and videos, some of this exposure being inadvertent, but much of it being intentional. It makes you wonder who we are, as a nation, that so many among us are willing to torture children. The tragedy is widespread, making the technical challenges and law enforcement needs overwhelming.

As a public service, Sam has put this episode in front of his paywall. The topic spirals in many directions, including the misleading concept of “child pornography,” the failure of governments and tech companies to grapple with the problem, the tradeoff between online privacy and protecting children, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, photo DNA, the roles played by specific tech companies, the ethics of encryption, “sextortion,” and the culture of pedophiles.

I am proud to say that I have been a paid subscriber of Making Sense for years. Sam Harris does a great job of exploring complex and oftentimes thorny issues unflinchingly, week after week.  From Sam's About Page:

His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

If you are unfamiliar with the work of Sam Harris, I invite you to listen to this Episode, or any Episodes of Making Sense.

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