Murder Mystery Misdirection
Murder Mystery Misdirection
Liberal feint on violent crime rise
The attempted rewriting of history that the left so deftly employs in our culture has proven to be a handy cudgel in their arsenal. It sometimes assumes the shape of reimaging “ancient” history around how the racists in the south “switched parties” during the GOP’s mythical Southern Strategy. In those instances, a sufficient number of days have ticked off the calendar and enough people have become ignorant of the history, that the tales have a chance at becoming a new reality. Other times they are audacious enough to try and reinvent events before the seasons have had a chance to change. Such is the case in their attempt to pass the buck on the recent violent crime spike throughout US urban areas.
In order to appropriately analyze the audacity of their attempted memory-holing, let’s rewind the clock a few years.
First, let’s look at the historical homicide rate going back to 1987.
The homicide rate showed a remarkable 55% decrease between its peak in 1991 and its trough in 2014, dropping from 9.8 homicides to 4.4 per 100,000.
However, when we zoom into the more recent data, another question is begged.
What caused the precipitous, multi-decade trend to stop in 2014, and so sharply reverse itself to levels we had not seen since 1998? I imagine you can guess at least two of the reasons - Michael Brown in 2014 and George Floyd in 2020. However, much like what we saw during Covid, it wasn’t simply the event itself that caused the societal problems, but rather the government response to the events, and in all cases, specifically the response of liberal politicians.
I’ll do a quick refresher of the Brown incident since it was nearly 10 years ago, and memories grow stale.
In Ferguson, Missouri, a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot a black man, Michael Brown, when, after Brown robbed a convenience store, Wilson attempted to arrest him and Brown attacked him and tried to take the officer’s gun. Immediately after the event, those facts were in question, but rather than waiting for the truth to come out, many liberal politicians decided it was time for a racial reckoning in America and jumped to the conclusion that Brown was shot by a white police officer strictly because of his skin color. Some claimed that Wilson shot him in the back while Brown was running away, which is the genesis of the “hand-up, don’t shoot” mantra.
This stirring of the pot led to the Ferguson Riots, in which a dozen buildings burned to the ground and caused nearly $5 million dollars of damages, much of this to small local businesses. $5 million may not sound like much damage in light of later events, but it’s important to remember that the entire budget for the city of Ferguson was only $14 million.
As was frequently the case, the lead race-baiter was then President Obama, who, after the Grand Jury decided not to indict Wilson, said:
We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation. The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color…we need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation. The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country.”
None of that is relevant in this case. Rather than simply saying that Officer Wilson properly acted in self-defense, he had to make the story about the racism of police departments.
In the subsequent DOJ investigation, they found that the police in Ferguson had “a pattern of unconstitutional policing” and court “procedures that raise due process concerns. However, in the case which ignited the investigation, they said that the shots fired by Wilson “were in self-defense and thus were not objectively unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” [emphasis added].
Here is the more complete summary:
As detailed throughout this report, the evidence does not establish that the shots fired by Wilson were objectively unreasonable under federal law. The physical evidence establishes that Wilson shot Brown once in the hand, at close range, while Wilson sat in his police SUV, struggling with Brown for control of Wilson’s gun. Wilson then shot Brown several more times from a distance of at least two feet after Brown ran away from Wilson and then turned and faced him. There are no witness accounts that federal prosecutors, and likewise a jury, would credit to support the conclusion that Wilson fired at Brown from behind. With the exception of the two wounds to Brown’s right arm, which indicate neither bullet trajectory nor the direction in which Brown was moving when he was struck, the medical examiners’ reports are in agreement that the entry wounds from the latter gunshots were to the front of Brown’s body, establishing that Brown was facing Wilson when these shots were fired. This includes the fatal shot to the top of Brown’s head. The physical evidence also establishes that Brown moved forward toward Wilson after he turned around to face him.The physical evidence is corroborated by multiple eyewitnesses. [emphasis added]
Why did they need the additional commentary around events in the Ferguson Police Department, which had nothing to do with the case at hand? Simple…they wanted and needed the race-baiting to continue because it was good for business.
However, despite clear-cut evidence that the shooting was justified, Dems still can’t (or choose not to) deal with reality.
During the 2020 Presidential campaign, both Kamala Harris and Liz Warren portrayed Brown as being “murder[ed].”
Again, it’s good for their political business to continue to perpetuate this lie.
And, of course, we know what happened in the 2020 George Floyd “Summer of Love,” “mostly peaceful riots.” I won’t bother summarizing those events because, if you don’t know them, I assume you wouldn’t be reading Sub/Verses.
What I will remind you of, is many Democrat politicians, like now Vice-President Harris, promoted the fund to bail out arrested rioters, who set fire to large parts of Minneapolis.
Additionally, at least 13 Biden staff members announced that they made donations to the bailout fund.
When prominent politicians seek public donations to bail out violent rioters, this gives tacit approval of those reprehensible actions. It wasn’t their homes and business that were burned to the ground, after all, so why should they waste a valuable virtue signal?
The response to the race-baiting, rewriting of history, and now the nearly ubiquitous “Defund the Police” movement has led to substantial demoralization and destaffing of police departments nationwide.
According to the Police Executive Research Forum:
Offer staffing levels decreased by 3.48% between 2020 and 2021
Hiring was 3.9% lower in 2021 than in 2019.
Police forces showed a massive 40.4% increase in resignations between 2020-2021 after posting a mere 1.7% resignation rate from 2019-2020.
Now we have a perfect recipe for disaster. A political class justifying violence, especially against police, and a dispirited police force, understandably leaving because of it. This leaves short staffed and under-experienced departments to handle the fall out of opportunistic politicians, hell bent on reelection, no matter the costs.
And yet, not only does both the violence and liberal condoning of it continue, it is now a weapon with which liberals wield to threaten the country; if they don’t get their way, we will unleash our “protestors.” Here is Rep. Pramila Jayapal, just last week threatening “a huge backlash...in the streets” if the debt ceiling is not raised.
We can debate why Dems would do this (even though I think we all know), but it’s obvious that continued cowardice to speak plainly about what is right and wrong provides at least a wink-and-nod to violent protestors to keep up their violent protesting.
However, reality threatens to hit Democrats in the face faster than an Antifa-thrown brick. Recent public opinion polling shows that crime is now a top issue for a substantial part of the populace. According to a Pew Research poll from November 2022, Violent Crime is tied for the fifth highest-rated issue among the 18 issues polled and third for GOP voters, behind only the economy and immigration.
If we assume independents are somewhere between the Dem and GOP position on the topic, it is likely around a 60% issue for them…not good for Dems.
Did these facts cause the Dems to moderate their position on the issue? Of course not. Why reconsider your positions and policies when you can fall back on their trusted trick of historical gaslighting? Therefore the effort continues apace to regain the high ground on the issue by claiming that it is Republican responsibility for defunding the police and, in turn, they who are responsible for perpetuating the violent crime increase.
And they are trying to justify their position by highlighting the fact that violence is higher in Red states. According to an Axios story entitled Not an anomaly: 2020’s red states have higher murder rates.
The murder rates in Trump-voting states from 2020 have exceeded those in Biden-voting states every year since 2000, according to a new analysis by ThirdWay, a center-left think tank.
Why it matters: Republicans have built their party on being the crime-fighting candidates, even as murder rates in red states have outpaced blue states by an average of 23% over the past two decades.
When you examine the data, it becomes clear this framing could be called “accurate but not truthful.”
Let’s examine-
According to Forbes the top 10 most dangerous cities in the US are:
St. Louis, Missouri
Mobile, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Baltimore, Maryland
Memphis, Tennessee
Detroit, Michigan
Cleveland, Ohio
New Orleans, Louisiana
Shreveport, Louisiana
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
While it is true that today, most of these states have GOP governors, none of these cities do, and haven’t for quite a while.
I analyzed the party membership for the mayors of these cities going back 100 years, or as far back as I could find the data (aside from Mobile, which is run by a three-person commission). Note that for some of the mayors, I could not find their party affiliation, and in those instances, I disregarded their years in office.
What I found is that in all of the most dangerous cities in the US, not only are they currently run by Democrats, they have been for a loooooong time. The only city you could even consider in the realm of balance over the past century is Detroit which has had a Dem mayor 66% of the time, but even in that lopsided case, they haven’t had a Republican running the city since 1962.
When you aggregate the total years across all the cities by party affiliation, they have been run by Democrats 85% of the time.
But Gordon, you may say, maybe the issue is the entire state, and these cities are simply receiving the poop end of the stick from bad Republican Governors. I’m glad you asked.
Let’s dig into that based on the FBI crime statistics. Unfortunately, the most recent stats which broke out crime by state and city were from 2019, but that could be a benefit because the crime situation in the cities noted above has only gotten worse since then…so this is actually the worst-case scenario for my point.
What I’ve done for five of the cities (St. Louis, Kansas City, Baltimore, Memphis, and Detroit) is break out the percentage of the state’s population they represent along with their percentage of overall violent crime and murder.
One important note - the population statistics I include are not census data, but from the FBI reports themselves because I wanted to be sure to use the most consistent data available.
Let’s start with Missouri’s own, St. Louis and Kansas City-
What we see here is representative of all the cities on which I performed this analysis. These cities do not just fight above their weight class when it comes to the proportionality of violent crime to population compared to the rest of their states, they starkly outperform…in the worst way possible.
While St. Louis & Kansas City represent 27% of Missouri’s population, they account for 59% of the state’s violent crimes and 76% of its murders.
If the cities performed proportionally to the rest of the state, St. Louis and Kansas City would have approximately 3,100 violent crimes and 37 murders, and yet they outstrip those figures by 4.2 times and 9.3 times their expected rates, respectively.
Let’s look at Baltimore-
Same dynamic. Baltimore represents 46% of the state’s population, but 79% of their violent crime and 91% of their murders. At proportional rates, Baltimore should have around 2,000 violent crimes, rather than the 11,000+ they see, and most depressingly, the city should have 23 murders, but instead, has 15 times that figure.
We see the same situation play out in both Memphis and Detroit.
It is certainly fair to argue that comparing the murder and violent crime rates in sparsely populated rural areas to densely populated urban ones is unfair, however, is the level of disproportionality within a reasonable range? Based on historical crime trends, I find that quite hard to believe.
It will never cease to amaze me the gaul with which Dems so freely call former President Trump a liar. Was he a liar? Of course, he was. But he had nothing on the Democratic party in trying to reinvent history and pass the shit sandwich they made for themselves across the table to the other diner.
Until next time.
_Comstock