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Clutch_Floyd t1_ix7nt77 wrote

I'm just glad that Baltimores politicians are going to get a lifetime pension for only 8 years of tremendous service. Y'all have no idea how much that is gonna cost.the tax payers. Compound that with paying squeegee men not to harrrass and shoot residents and you got a recipe for some fabulous rate hikes. Good luck y'all.

10

Maxcactus OP t1_ix7oohx wrote

The people killing their rivals, family members, girlfriends, robbery victims, innocent bystanders… never take politician compensation into consideration when they point that gun. People that kill are not deterred by police budgets or how many cops there are. When someone kills they think that they will get away with it or it all happens so quickly that no thinking occurs at all. Rich people and poor people kill.

What we know is that most people that kill are young men with guns. That is where to start.

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JKnott1 t1_ix7ur11 wrote

Nothing will ever change without a massive shift in leadership. Forget politics and party affiliation. There needs to be a group of like-minded individuals that want one thing, for the city to heal. They all need to run for whatever electable offices are available at every election, and the city's population needs to get out and vote for them. Pipe dream, I know. The alternative is those that can leave should leave, taking possible tax dollars with them. How would Baltimore function with a population under 100k?

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Maxcactus OP t1_ix7wozq wrote

When a teenager with a gun wants to kill another teenager with a gun what would the mayor do? They got their guns because of federal laws and a huge gun industry. If the community, church, parents or schools haven’t developed that 16 year old what would the mayor tell him that he hasn’t heard before? Let’s say more money is needed for education and mental health programs the mayor of a poor city doesn’t have a printing press.

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[deleted] t1_ix8078y wrote

Kind of hard to stop the guns when you sit right on the iron pipeline.

0

YesIDoBlowCops t1_ix80g3s wrote

I have been hearing about how the 600 million from the fed is being used. There are many questionable charities out there that are politically favored and receiving large amounts of cash. Of course we are paying for it with increased prices via inflation...

5

sit_down_man t1_ix856tf wrote

That’s nice and all, but I take issue with the idea that (1) we haven’t had elected officials that want the city to heal and (2) that wanting the city to heal means anything as far as policy change.

Unless the city/state implement widespread poverty alleviation measures and transformative transit/housing/jobs programs, then we will keep having lots of murders and shootings in the poorest parts of the city.

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rockybalBOHa t1_ix85icv wrote

Population is increasing in gentrified areas and falling rapidly in crimeridden poor areas. The best hope for Baltimore is to keep gentrifying and pushing the boundaries of redevelopment into poorer areas while the 100% gentrified areas become pricier. That's how other US cities have cut crime. That's really the only formula that has shown to be effective. This is of course politically unpopular, though it is happening.

In any case, median income in the city has increased much more than the national median since 2000. This is a major sign of gentrification - weathier, more educated people are moving to Baltimore.

Also, even though overall population has fallen, the number of households has increased a lot in recent years. We still have a relatively high persons per household number. It will likely continue to fall until we are on par with wealthier cities.

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z3mcs t1_ix87uwo wrote

Its not nearly that simple of an equation. Thats akin to saying “more sunlight is good for your mood, good for plants and animals, so stay in the sunlight all day every day with no sunscreen on.” And especially with the history and even current status of the bpd, this is just a gross oversimplification of a statement.

1

yes______hornberger t1_ix87zpr wrote

Always appreciate the more optimistic takes on this sub! Agree on all fronts, especially after watching the gentrification controversy play out in the last city I lived in.

Anecdotal, of course, but since the WFH shift started in 2020, for every person I know who’s been chased up to the county by “crime and/or taxes”, I’ve met 2-3 new folks doing the “DC salary paying Baltimore bills” migration.

13

z3mcs t1_ix884od wrote

> The solvable problem is to raise boys so they do not feel like killing other people is the way to resolve their problem.

Super tough for a bunch of reasons, and definitely the societal message being the opposite is a main one. When we feel like we have a problem with someone, we send our boys to kill their boys, and they do the same.

4

Bonzi777 t1_ix8a7bg wrote

I agree. This is a great example of how we need to focus less on how to get to 290 murders in 2023, and more on how to get to 150 murders by 2033. (Those are arbitrary numbers, but you get the idea). Smarter people than me are going to have to come up with ideas here, but I think it starts with keeping kids in school and getting them educated. The children that are at risk of committing murders when they’re 16 and 17 need to be engaged when they’re 6 and 7.

One thing that’s frustrating to me is that nearly everyone would agree with the statement that Baltimore City is actively failing large portions of its youth, but when the inevitable consequences of that flare up in a major way, we’re like “they’re 17! They should know better.”

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JKnott1 t1_ix8b824 wrote

Your considering the current and former mayors, not a new mayor with a fresh perspective. We've never had that, at least not in my lifetime.

−21

interprime t1_ix8bhb3 wrote

It’ll never happen. Hell, Dixon nearly won the last Democrat primary in the city. Thousands of people actively thought it would be a good idea to vote for someone who actively stole from the city, and was found out.

0

ScootyHoofdorp t1_ix8d53l wrote

Baltimore has created a culture where there is no reason not to commit crimes and solve problems with guns, because there is so little chance of being held accountable for it. We need to convince people that they will be worse off if they pull the trigger, and we have not yet done that. An actual perceivable threat of jail time is one way to do that. Studies have shown that creating a perception of the swiftness and certainty of prison time reduces crime. Lengthy prison sentences are not required, but there needs to be consequences. Programs like the Group Violence Reduction Strategy also aims to convince people that pulling the trigger is not their best option and has shown promise so far. It's all about incentives. With an ineffective police force and criminal justice system, all the incentives are in place for murder to flourish. Of course, we also need to be addressing poverty, blight, bad schools, food insecurity, etc. But, if we're not pursuing approaches to reduce crime in the near to mid term, we're not actually serious about saving lives.

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OldBayOnEverything t1_ix8dqh0 wrote

Even if we had the greatest collection of politicians the world has ever seen, the underlying problems would be the same. No jobs, bad schools, bad housing situation. People in poverty will always be drawn to crime, anywhere. Combine that with the war on drugs that has created power struggles with gangs competing to control the trade, and here we are.

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Bun_Bunz t1_ix8dv4b wrote

I'm sorry but where the hell do you expect the poor, displaced people to go when you kick them out of their neighborhoods???? They don't magically make more money and can afford these newly built gentrified areas.

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Bun_Bunz t1_ix8en48 wrote

Yeah no, Baltimore robbed most of these people of an education and a way forward. Your whole premise is that these people have anything to live for to care about to begin with. A lot of them are homeless or close to, or have absent parents, no community. Hard to give a fuck without those things. You don't just join a gang cuz it's fun!

0

DeliMcPickles t1_ix8gwwd wrote

Ironically, we're back to 299 after two cases got reclassified.

11

Velghast t1_ix8hb2x wrote

It's not just a city issue it's a STATE issue. Nothing is ever going to change if Annapolis keeps shitting on funding for Baltimore.

The streets suck, the schools suck, the only areas that get attention are the "nice" areas.

Landlords and investors need to be held to a standard as well. Hard to care about your community when it looks like garbage and is falling apart.

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Anarcho-Crab t1_ix8hi0i wrote

This take is disgusting. Just push poor people out of sight and out of mind so you don't have to think of the human toll our economic system has created??? Ignore any continued crime caused by poverty in whatever neighborhoods you've exiled us to? Remove the generational Baltimoreans who actually built this town and take advantage of our work? Fuck that.

And reminder, you want gentrification but who make your stupid ass coffee or artisanal pizza or stock the shelves at anthropology? Oh right, under paid folks. I'm not about to let my city turn into some bubble of wealthy people where we lose our city's culture. Kick rocks.

−14

Velghast t1_ix8hnqq wrote

Getting kids off the street is a good start. The youth around here glorify the street. When kids dont think they are worth shit they aspire to be "king" of the streets and running their block. Why? No idea.

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mattrbj t1_ix8i1jp wrote

I thought Carcetti was going to fix this

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Xhosa1725 t1_ix8lr5r wrote

Given the massive food deserts in the poorest parts of our city, the argument can be made that residents would be better off leaving. And I say that as Price Rite just announced they're closing the SoWebo location in a few weeks, leaving thousands of people without access to decent food.

5

Anarcho-Crab t1_ix8ngr0 wrote

I'd really rather spend the rest of my days fighting to get affordable grocery stores and community gardens in our communities as well as jobs then leave. My moms family have been Baltimoreans since the start of the 1800s, we arent leaving no matter how hard this shit gets.

2

ScootyHoofdorp t1_ix8pt3a wrote

It's not super complicated. Most people generally want to control their own destiny, which most often means controlling whatever resources are available to them. In rich neighborhoods, that means money...so going to school, getting a job, and/or starting a business are the ways to control that resource. In poor neighborhoods, there is little money, so one of the few resources available to control is territory. So, some people will inevitably assert claim to it and fight over it.

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ScootyHoofdorp t1_ix8r5fy wrote

I agree with you that most of these people are lucky to have even a sliver of an opportunity for a productive and healthy future. But, if everyone in the city who had little to live for was willing to kill, our murder rate would be much much higher. If poverty was inextricably tied to crime across the board, homeless people would be killing each other all the time, but that's obviously not the case. Let's not strip impoverished people of their agency and ability to make choices. The vast majority of poor people don't choose violence. The conclusion that some people are simply willing to inflict harm on others while others are not is unavoidable.

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codyvir t1_ix8uy67 wrote

Hot take: Gentrification creates jobs and opportunity. In areas that are gentrifying or redeveloping there are increased opportunities for low and moderate-skill workers in the service industry and trades, and opportunities for entrepreneurship. An increased tax-base means additional municipal employment opportunities. Besides, population pressure isn't the problem in Baltimore - there's plenty of space for everyone who lives here, plus quite a few more. The problem is an opportunity and employment deficit.

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Appropriate-Lab-5015 t1_ix9423k wrote

300+ murders a year is the defining characteristic of the Scott admin. They've normalized it. At least when it happened under SRB, she didn't run for reelection and left politics. And Young / Pugh considered the 300+ homicides job #1 (though they failed at it). With Brandon Scott it's just seemingly accepted.

1

Cheomesh t1_ix96cyd wrote

>one more police officer leads to 0.1 less homicides

So 10 cops to one less body. While I definitely think less bodies tend to be a good thing, that sounds incredibly expensive at scale.

1

MontisQ t1_ix97a9f wrote

>Baltimore has created a culture where there is no reason not to commit crimes and solve problems with guns

It's not just Baltimore culture, it's American culture. It seems that the first step in a disagreement is to pull a gun. That goes for white, black, urban, rural, etc.

−5

Xhosa1725 t1_ix99ap9 wrote

Yes, of course. You're exactly right. I guess from my perspective I just want to see people be able to live comfortably with affordable access to quality food. In some cases, that isn't possible without leaving though. I don't want to see your mother's family leave either but I also don't want to see them struggle just for the sake of staying, if there are better alternatives out there.

4

Sivla-Alegna t1_ix9astd wrote

As someone that use to commit a fair amount of petty crimes, I never once thought about the consequences before or during the acts. In the rare instance that I didn't think about the consequences, it was afterwards, which isn't super helpful in preventing crime. And humans have an uncanny ability to justify things that they have done, even subconsciously. "Those people have so much, they won't really miss it." "It's a coproation with billions in profits, they don't need all that anyway." "They have insurance that will cover everything." "My life sucks, this isn't going to make it any worse." "Atleast I'd get 3 meals a day and a warm bed in jail." "It's not like I have other options." "If I don't do it, someone else will. I might as well be the one benefiting from it." .......

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throws_rocks_at_cars t1_ix9l6i3 wrote

100% of the discourse surrounding gentrification is completely unproductive and like it was shown in DC, Denver, Detroit, New York, Atlanta, and almost every other city in the US, “gentrifying” areas is a genuine net positive because it’s a made up word that, in reality, represents accessible housing, safe neighborhoods, public parks and public services, robust public transit, thriving small businesses, wealth generation, and collaborative business that raises GDP.

Gentrification is NIMBY code. The transformations that have happened in DC’s Navy Yard/SE, Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, and others, representing double-digit BILLIONS of dollars worth of investment, touches every part of the city and is an immense net positive.

People complaining about gentrification would prefer those places remain weed-filled cracked parking lots and piles of wind-strewn trash caught up against abandoned and condemned buildings in what is literally a wasteland.

Don’t let NIMBYs fool YOU.

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throws_rocks_at_cars t1_ix9lf32 wrote

>they don’t magically make more money

Firstly, they often do, because new industry and tax base raises wages.

>can’t afford newly built gentrified areas

Sometimes. Sometimes they can. Sometimes the cycle persists where the “victim” is able to benefit from the positive change in wages and housing availability that was never present before.

Gentrification is code for NIMBY.

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throws_rocks_at_cars t1_ix9lp1v wrote

Exactly. I was on the Amtrak yesterday and every time I see entire neighborhoods of Baltimore, literally tens of square miles, of abandoned row homes and single family homes collapsing into themselves. There is NO population pressure, so “gentrification”, which is a bad word, in reality, is all the things you said, and more. Revitalization of an area improves opportunities for all and expands tax base.

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FolkYouHardly t1_ix9qi7h wrote

>moment in my life no matter how bad things were that I thought that someone’s death would help my situation. I had poorly educated parents, bad neighborhoods, public education, and the rest. I have to think that my socialization was different in some key ways from the ones th

The Wire properly shows how an innocent elementary school kids turn into gangbanger.

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rockybalBOHa t1_ix9y3xt wrote

A lot of people living in the city would have a much better quality of life living somewhere else. Hence the decline in population in poor neighborhoods. It's unfortunate, but part of the cycle many cities experience.

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Laxwarrior1120 t1_ixa140i wrote

Which... ya know... is completely justified when those they arrest never get prosecuted.

What's the point of putting yourself in a potentially dangerous and/ or life threatening situation if the best possible outcome (an arrest of the criminal) leads to literally nothing happening because they get released the next day to just never get prosecuted? I don't see one.

3

diopsideINcalcite t1_ixa4p9r wrote

I saw this happen as Remington gentrified. I lived there for a number of years and there were a lot families that couldn’t afford the rising property taxes as their home values increased. Often times they had to sell houses they didn’t want to sell and leave a neighborhood they didn’t want to leave. It was even worse if you were a longtime renter. Landlords sold a lot of the homes for development or redevelopment.

You can’t argue with the result though, as Remington did a 180. Whether or not it was worth it probably depends on whether you lost your house or benefited from the new development. Definitely pros and cons for each side of it.

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2020steve t1_ixaijkq wrote

An overall increase in wealth for whom, exactly?

The people who get priced out of neighborhoods have to go somewhere and the problems that devalued their homes don't really get solved. If one of the residents is a convicted felon in that neighborhood, he's a convicted felon somewhere else too. If they were on Suboxone in Reservoir Hill, they're on Suboxone in Landsdowne.

Not only that but just because you think a neighborhood is terrible and the people don't really want you there doesn't mean it's not someone's home. It's functional for them. Maybe they won't be able to function as well elsewhere. Maybe they won't be so welcome.

The other longer term problem is that it's investors, often out-of-towners, who buy these properties and rent them out. The people who live there tend to live where it's trendy and will move onto the next big thing in a few leases. You really don't want investors owning chunks of a city. That's how Baltimore got into this mess in the first place.

−2

DfcukinLite t1_ixb8cn7 wrote

The headline literally says 8 years. Scott hasn’t been mayor for 8 years. And the murder rate was the same in the 80’s and 90’s.. it dropped in the early 00 but it’s right back to normal again now. Y’all just say any stupid shit that comes to mind huh

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todareistobmore t1_ixbd40p wrote

> 100% of the discourse surrounding gentrification is completely unproductive and

obviously self-contradictorily, you're sallying into a thread about the homicide rate to ally with the cryptoconservative who introduced the diversion.

the best option re: housing in terms of mitigating any socioeconomic precursors to crime should be centered around mitigating those disparities. A fun game to play when people talk about gentrification as a means to trickle-down equitization is to ask them if they support landlords being required to accept voucher tenants bc, well, you know the answer.

0

cologne_peddler t1_ixbi9nk wrote

>An actual perceivable threat of jail time is one way to do that.

Yea bruh I'm sure most criminals are making detailed decision flowcharts about which crimes to commit and how much punishment they can expect from committing those crimes 🙄

Lmao where the hell are you getting the idea that there's no "perceivable threat of jail time?" People committing crimes associated with poverty generally consider death or jail to be inevitable. So that kinda pokes a huge hole in your little theory.

−2

JustTheWehrst t1_ixbqjgb wrote

Ultimately, money. Crime is a direct consequence of poverty, the quality of your education is a direct result of how valuable your homes are, people beating the good old "harsher sentences" drums fail to recognize that most people committing crimes either don't think they'll be caught or don't care.

Higher wages, making it easier for people to get jobs when they leave prison, better affordable housing option, more funding to local schools and community centers, etc. The more we build up the foundation the fewer problems we'll see

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Cunninghams_right t1_ixbv9sv wrote

certainly most people who grow up in bad situations don't turn into killers. it takes less than 1 in 1,000 to create problems for a city. I'm not sure how you find the bad apples and separate them without doing unjust things. I suppose you can arrest more folks for lower level crimes before they become killers and try to reform when with more time in jail/prison/rehab/mental hospital, but arresting more and jailing more isn't a popular idea right now.

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Cunninghams_right t1_ixbvngg wrote

>No jobs, bad schools, bad housing situation.

the problem is that the voters won't support any politician actually solving the problems.

you want jobs? make the city more tourist friendly, which means getting rid of squeegee workers, dirtbikers, and heavily policing the tourist areas.

we can't even get our politicians to stop building massive low-income housing blocks that have been proven to be a bad approach for the better part of a century because think housing supply is a problem when the reality is that poor public safety causes our current housing stock to fall into abandonment and disrepair. if you want to fix affordable housing, make people feel safe and it will solve itself. but new strategies for policing are constantly pushed back on by voters.

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Impossible-Isopod-71 t1_ixbxzzw wrote

Those answers seem great to the problem but the thing is that most youth nowadays don’t have a good work ethic. Plus whatever monney the make from committing crimes will be higher than doing a regular job so why wouldn’t they go back to doing the same crimes after being released

0

ScootyHoofdorp t1_ixcnc0q wrote

Yeah, that all makes sense. Real world data on a bigger scale disagrees with your conclusions, though. The perception of punishment comes from largely from policing and the presence of police. We even have a local example that demonstrates that quite well. The aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots proves that when there's less policing, there's more crime.

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YoYoMoMa t1_ixcpwnt wrote

They have actually shown that living in a place with opportunities is the most important part of this equation. Parenting and schooling can help, but if people see no legal path to a better life, they will feel no particular draw to it.

The key will be to make giant investments in underserved communities the way we did in the suburbs.

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YoYoMoMa t1_ixcq02i wrote

>most youth nowadays don’t have a good work ethic

JFC. Is it because of their long hair and their rock music? You would think people would be self aware enough to finally not be the generation that labelled the next one lazy, but here we are.

https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544?lang=en

Twitter thread with examples of this brain dead idiocy from every ten years or so going back a century plus.

2

JustTheWehrst t1_ixcys20 wrote

Why bother having a good work ethic when the only jobs available to the average person without a degree are slaving away at Uber or grubhub and entry level service jobs that pay $12 an hour where every customer treats you like you're subhuman, maybe if people had decent pay and better working conditions that wouldn't be the case

2

cologne_peddler t1_ixd5jfo wrote

It's not that theory either lmao. We're talking about murders here bruh, not purse snatching or fights. A study on general crime deterrence doesn't prove that more police activity is going to have an impact on murder rates specifically.

People have already tried to find a correlation between adding cops and crime reduction. The best they could come up with is mixed results; and in the case of murder rates, a number of cities that increased police presence, arrests, etc saw increases or no impact in murders committed.

Look, you're not the first person to grasp at straws in an attempt to prove that there's some viable short term criminal justice solution to murder rates. People have been failing to make this argument for decades just like you have.

0

bmorealpha t1_ixd5qc0 wrote

His point is that everyone gave solutions but no one mentioned the best solution. The solution is strong families. Strong families make stronger communities. The politicians need to promote laws that will give incentives to create strong families. The politicians are busy promoting laws like legalizing drugs that definitely don't promote strong families. I dont know what those laws are but there is a reason that foreigners are highly successful in America and it starts with families.

2

YoYoMoMa t1_ixd6fax wrote

>The politicians need to promote laws that will give incentives to create strong families

Such as?

And I would argue that split families are a symptom, not the cause. Same thing that happened to Korean families living in Japan during the occupation. When you redline and over police and restrict opportunities to a community the families often fall apart.

And they have shown that a "broken" black familyin the US growing up in a place with good opportunities and outcomes have the same success rate as kids of white families with similar situations.

So focusing on the family is usually just a way of ignoring underinvestment and lack of opportunity and demonizing black people.

1

cologne_peddler t1_ixd7fzt wrote

4.1 bil? Nice. That would do wonders for me, that's for sure...but what's the mean for a city? I mean, it's more than twice that here in DC and we don't have gold-paved streets.

And assuming that's viable for a city the size of Baltimore, what's that mean in a historical context? Like, if I've been living in poverty for 20 years, and I make a living wage next year, my situation is still going to be fucked on Dec 31 2023.

1

cologne_peddler t1_ixdew98 wrote

Lmao bruh that's one of the very attempts I'm referring to. Holy shit, I didn't expect you to go finding sources that support my point.

>The economists also find troubling evidence that suggests cities with the largest populations of Black people — like many of those in the South and Midwest — don't see the same policing benefits as the average cities in their study. Adding additional police officers in these cities doesn't seem to lower the homicide rate.

0

bmorealpha t1_ixdf7ri wrote

My comment stated i dont have the incentive laws but i imagine some sort of tax break or homeownership program for married families only. U mention ignoring and demonizing or underinvesting in black people but i never said anything related to it. In fact the incentives would help to invest in the black community. The problem is a family and cultural problem that promotes self destructive behavior. Split families are a symptom of destructive culture and actions promoted by governments and corps. But this is a local solution for local govt so i wont address that.

0

MontisQ t1_ixdggyq wrote

Yea, I guess people think I’m saying that Baltimore doesn’t have this culture or problem. But if people think they are going to go to a different city to escape gun violence, I’ve got bad news for them…

2

ScootyHoofdorp t1_ixdrx0w wrote

The overall trend still holds. Obviously, there are other problems in Baltimore that would prevent just throwing a bunch of extra cops into the streets from being an effective solution. You can try all you want to make it seem like I'm advocating for blind reliance on policing to solve all of our problems with crime, but I don't believe that and I never said that. In my initial comment, I said that creating the perception of swift and certain punishment was ONE WAY to reduce crime, and it can work here too. BPD needs to restore trust with our communities in order to be effective, and they clearly have a long way to go. But it's not as if Baltimore is so unlike any other city that policing could never be a viable option for crime deterrence. European countries have much larger police forces per capita than we do here, and their crime rates are significantly lower. There's a reason there aren't any large cities without police: Policing works, no matter how politically inconvenient that may be for you. Focused deterrence, violence interruption, and any other number of strategies can work here too and I'm glad they're being deployed. And, to reiterate what I said before, all of this should be in addition to materially improving peoples lives and outcomes. But, to cast policing aside as a way to deter crime is to spit in the face of the people who actually live in the communities torn apart by violent crime who are asking for more police.

0

Cunninghams_right t1_ixdxkui wrote

yeah, I think also reforming the way schools are run would be important, but that's a very hard thing to do well. maybe some gradual shift to charter schools but being careful to avoid the problems that some private schools run into due to inequalities in who gets in

1

YouAreADadJoke t1_ixenejb wrote

> And they have shown that a "broken" black familyin the US growing up in a place with good opportunities and outcomes have the same success rate as kids of white families with similar situations.

Can you provide citations for this?

>So focusing on the family is usually just a way of ignoring underinvestment and lack of opportunity and demonizing black people.

There are black groups that do very well(Nigerians). The problem is with the culture in certain neighborhoods that have an extreme single mother household problem and government dependency problem.

0

YouAreADadJoke t1_ixf4biz wrote

>And they have shown that a "broken" black familyin the US growing up in a place with good opportunities and outcomes have the same success rate as kids of white families with similar situations.

Can you provide citations for this?

1

rockybalBOHa t1_ixfz150 wrote

I guess I'm the "cryptoconservative"? Nice word you made up there.

I don't consider myself a conservative. I'm more of a pragmatist. I see what has worked in other cities and think that's what needs to happen here because no one has done it any other way. Sure, it would be great if people could make any neighborhood safe and prosperous without population turnover, but that hasn't been the reality in America, and I doubt Baltimore is going to be the first city to figure it out.

1

cologne_peddler t1_ixgjcya wrote

>The overall trend still holds.

No. The "overall trend" does not hold lol. That's exactly what those words I quoted from your source detected. That it doesn't.

>Obviously, there are other problems in Baltimore that would prevent just throwing a bunch of extra cops into the streets from being an effective solution.

Mhm. That's very observant of you. It would invalidate this paragraph-breakless epistle of yours, and yet you forged ahead anyway.

>You can try all you want to make it seem like I'm advocating for blind reliance on policing to solve all of our problems with crime, but I don't believe that and I never said that.

You're making unfounded assertions about the efficacy of a destructive institution. If that's not advocating for blind reliance, I don't know what is.

>In my initial comment, I said that creating the perception of swift and certain punishment was ONE WAY to reduce crime, and it can work here too. BPD needs to restore trust with our communities in order to be effective, and they clearly have a long way to go. But it's not as if Baltimore is so unlike any other city that policing could never be a viable option for crime deterrence.

It's an unproven way to reduce crime you mean. Anyhow, in your initial comment, you painted this as a near term solution to homicides in Baltimore. Now you're saying BPD has "a long way to go" to restore trust in order to be effective. So it's not a near-term solution at all. Not only is your reasoning faulty, you're also inconsistent.

>But it's not as if Baltimore is so unlike any other city that policing could never be a viable option for crime deterrence. European countries have much larger police forces per capita than we do here, and their crime rates are significantly lower.

"European countries?" Putting aside that you're comparing a non-uniform assortment of nations, you're just presuming that their lower crime rates are due to the size of their police forces. Typical causation/correlation fuckup. And I'm being generous by taking your word on the correlation.

>There's a reason there aren't any large cities without police: Policing works, no matter how politically inconvenient that may be for you.

Policing works because large cities have police? This is such puerile reasoning lol.

Endowing cops results in people of color being brutalized at the hands of the government. That's not "politically inconvenient" for me, privileged white guy, its a threat to my existence.

>And, to reiterate what I said before, all of this should be in addition to materially improving peoples lives and outcomes.

Yea, let's empower a violently racist institution to pursue a course of action of unproven benefit. Experimental state violence is OK as long as we run it alongside materially improving lives 🙄. That's such an easy call to make from one's perch in Federal Hill.

How about this - just improve material circumstances. That has a closer correlation to crime rates than turning cops loose in the streets with nebulous mandates. Your crime and punishment fetish can wait.

>But, to cast policing aside as a way to deter crime is to spit in the face of the people who actually live in the communities torn apart by violent crime who are asking for more police

Lmao white guy engages in selective hearing of Black people, uses cherrypicked points of view to support his sophistry. This scam is as old as racism in America itself.

I'm sure you don't actually know anyone in a disadvantaged community of color, but the feeling that cops are a net negative is fairly common one. The idea that there's a universal desire for more boots on the ground is fucking laughable. But tell me more about spitting in faces...

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ScootyHoofdorp t1_ixhty39 wrote

The sum total of your rebuttal to my claims is: "nuh-uh." You provide no data to support your positions, you flippantly disregard any actual evidence I point to, and you twist my words every chance you get. "Cops are bad" is an easy position to take, but there's a lot more nuance to this than it seems you're able to acknowledge.

I'm careening towards that cliché definition of insanity by trying again with some actual evidence and data, but here we go:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/police-reform-polls-white-black-crime.html

I don't know if 81% of black Americans saying they want police to spend the same amount or more time in their neighborhoods can be considered "near-universal", but this is America, so 81% agreement on anything is pretty damn conclusive. I've tried to find any polling that says a majority of black Americans want less police and less police funding. I can't find anything that says that because the opposite is true. Pew research found 76% of black Americans want more or the same police funding. Explain to me exactly how this is cherry picked.

Also, if policing can do absolutely nothing to reduce homicides, how do you explain the fact that BPD pulled back in 2015 and murders skyrocketed? Baltimore is neither the first nor the last city to experience very similar trends. Also, how do explain the fact that homicides plummeted in NYC in the 90s and inequality arguably just got worse? The evidence is clear that solving poverty is not as clean of a solution to crime as you think it is.

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Xanny t1_ixibnd7 wrote

Its a generational thing. This whole narrative traces back hundreds of years, but the recent threads have been - poor blacks working labor jobs, the industry died, the whites fled, the city ripped out their streetcars and means of getting around, and they were still here. So they turned to what was left - drugs and crime. The violence was less prominent in the start of the decline because the transition was slow. Jobs gradually lost, people gradually left. The ones who stayed were the ones who participated, enabled, or profited from the emerging culture of violence. It consumes everything else until its all that is left. Kids today are born 5+ generations into this shit.

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cologne_peddler t1_ixivj5f wrote

>The sum total of your rebuttal to my claims is: "nuh-uh."

Well yea, Professor...my entire point is that you you don't have evidence to prove these weak ass arguments lmao. I'm essentially poking holes in your unfounded assertions. Duh.

>You provide no data to support your positions, you flippantly disregard any actual evidence I point to, and you twist my words every chance you get. "

All I'm doing is pointing out how your sources don't support what you're saying. That's my "data" lol.

>I'm careening towards that cliché definition of insanity by trying again with some actual evidence and data, but here we go:

Lmao it's always funny watching disconnected white folk use polls to explain Black people's feelings. Lol this shit is basically sketch comedy. Why do so many of yall do this without appreciating the absurdity?

>I don't know if 81% of black Americans saying they want police to spend the same amount or more time in their neighborhoods can be considered "near-universal", but this is America, so 81% agreement on anything is pretty damn conclusive.

Your little poll also says

>Fewer than one in five Black Americans feel very confident that the police in their area would treat them with courtesy and respect.
>
>However, 59% of the relatively small group of Black Americans who are "not at all confident" that the police would treat them with courtesy and respect want the police to spend less time in their neighborhood.
>
>When factoring in those who are at least somewhat confident that the police would treat them well, a majority of Black Americans (61%) are generally confident, but this is still below the 85% seen nationally, including 91% of White Americans.

I get that you don't actually talk to any Black people, but the conflicting sentiments in your own source should give you pause. Somewhere between "80% of Black people don't want fewer cops in their neighborhoods" and "75% of Black people don't have confidence in being treated fairly by cops" is a group of people who are probably sympathetic to the idea that maybe that entire institution is ineffective. I've had those conversations. Even the people who ultimately disagree aren't as intransigent as some coddled Federal Hill brat who's never been been mistreated or brutalized by cops.

>https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/police-reform-polls-white-black-crime.html

And prior to Civil Rights passing, 60% to 70% of Black people polled thought mass demonstrations hurt efforts for racial equality.

The idea of defunding cops is relatively new in mainstream discourse, and in the little time it's been here, it's been oversimplified, misinterpreted or demonized without nuance. So it's entirely unremarkable that 90% of people polled aren't on board after sitting with it for a couple years. If this were 1963, you'd be holding a newspaper and shrieking at protestors too lol.

>Also, if policing can do absolutely nothing to reduce homicides, how do you explain the fact that BPD pulled back in 2015 and murders skyrocketed?

Where the fuck are you getting this from, the FOP website? The whole "cops pulled back and things got worse" bullshit is dumb ass police union propaganda. Fucking do better.

>Also, how do explain the fact that homicides plummeted in NYC in the 90s and inequality arguably just got worse? The evidence is clear that solving poverty is not as clean of a solution to crime as you think it is.

Right...you mean the decade the poverty rate fell precipitously? When unemployment fell to under 5% for the first time in decades? Yea, I'm sure that refutes the correlation between poverty and crime somehow.

You can lead a fool to data but you can't make him understand it.

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ScootyHoofdorp t1_ixp08lw wrote

It seems that you're the one who is proving my point. The fact that black people don't think that cops will treat them fairly but STILL want them in their neighborhoods clearly shows that they believe cops can prevent and address crime. That's the only logical way to reconcile the 81% figure and the 75% figure. I don't buy that that large of majority of black people have no idea what they're talking about, and that's what you want me to believe.

I think we've gone back and forth about policing enough. We're not going to change each other's minds. But, I do genuinely want to know if you have any ideas for addressing the murder rate in the near to mid term. To put some rough numbers on that, how do we get under 200 murders in 5 years' time? Do you even think that's possible?

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cologne_peddler t1_ixpyvsm wrote

Your ✌️point✌️ is that one part of an opinion poll reflects the unmovable sentiment of a group of people you never interact with. I told you why this point was flawed:

-The conflicting sentiment in the poll itself

-Polling around new ideas move. A lot. Again, if this were 1960, you'd be using a poll to explain that Black people really want everyone to stop demonstrating. And that would have been an idiotic thing to propose.

The idea that American policing is a failure took seed and germinated in Black communities..places where those failures are most plainly manifest. So to be all "sEe ThEy wAnT cOpS bEcAuSe tHiS pOlL sEz So" is oblivious white guy shit. You're like a caricature of a privileged gentrifier lol. If this were 1990 you'd be the "some of my friends are Black" guy.

Anyway, there's no quick policing solution to elevated crime rates. There's only ineffective, reactionary bullshit that further victimizes marginalized people. Relying on cops to address society's structural deficiencies is dead. I feel like more privileged white people need to get slaughtered by cops before yall fucking get it. I mean, it took an opioid epidemic tearing through the burbs for you all to rethink our punitive approach to drug addiction.

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