Is there only a thin blue line separating US cities from mayhem?
If we had fewer cops, more reticent cops, less well-armed cops, or cops more constrained by stricter rules of engagement, would violence and crime in U.S. cities skyrocket? If the police took a week off, would we become "Mad Max"?
Pat Buchanan seems to suggest this in his latest column. Here's the relevant passage:
[W]hat does it say about our country that, if the police took a week off, our cities would descend into mayhem. What does it say about the character of the people upon whom our democracy depends? Would the America of the Founding Fathers have descended into mayhem or anarchy if police were not a huge and visible presence? Would the America of the 1940s or 1950s?
Buchanan's premise, as I read it, is that our cities are on the verge of bedlam, with only the cops keeping us from falling off the cliff. I'm pretty unconvinced by that notion. When I asked one NYPD friend about this, he pointed me to Chicago, and this blog post, which cites too few cops as the No. 1 reason of Rahm Emanuel's murder problem. Also, the cops in Chicago have dumber tactics, according to this post. So, if Chicago's inferior police force is a leading reason for many more murders, then Buchanan's premise might be true.
But Buchanan's column has a very interesting quote from D.C.'s top cop:
In D.C. last week, an exasperated Police Chief Cathy Lanier said:
“All of these protests that are blocking traffic, it’s pulling police officers out of the neighborhoods that need the police the most. … So how do I prevent homicides and shootings and violent crimes and robberies and burglaries right before the holidays if all my cops are directing traffic around 30 guys that want to be out there at 11 o’clock at night laying in the middle of Chinatown?”
This gets at the heart of the Buchanan premise: when cops aren't able to be in the neighborhoods, everyone is more at danger of getting murdered. Except it didn't happen.
In the week of Dec. 13 through Dec. 20 — the week when most of these protests happened, dragging MPD away from the neighborhoods — no homicides were reported. Not a single one. Only one homicide happened in D.C. in the two weeks following the grand jury decision to not indict the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner with a chokehold — police say it happened on a Tuesday morning.
As a NYC cop pointed out to me, on Sept. 11, 2001, there was no upswing in crime. Nor immediately after Hurricane Sandy.
We obviously need police. But if anyone believes that our police, in their large numbers, their liberty to engage, and their military-style arsenals, are the only guards against bedlam, they might be misguided
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