Give me stats, don’t give me anecdotes. How much exactly have all types of crime gone up in the county and how much have they gone up on comparison to surrounding jurisdictions. How many of those crimes were committed by people from outside of the county on other people from outside the county but they just happened to be in the county. How many of the the victims of those crimes were innocent people and how many were targeted crimes based on drug deals that went bad or something similar. You need to present the full story and not just say have you see how many crimes are reported lately.

Of course every death or shooting is a tragedy, but the way Kittleman and his right wing followers are using crime as a political talking point is disgusting. We hear residents of rural western Howard county decrying the increase in crime based primarily on anecdotes about events in eastern Howard County. We hear people decrying shootings, many of which are targeted and are not random events putting innocent lives at risk. We have commercials complaining that SROs are not in school to protect kids against school shootings without any explanation as to how a single police officer with a pistol is supposed to stop a lunatic with an AR-15 shooting into crowds of panicked students. The crime argument is nothing but fear mongering aimed at appealing to a certain crowd that spends more time worrying about some “thug” mugging them than thinking logically.