By Rich Lowry
Sunday, July 19, 2020
New York City needs more arrests. More arrests in the
subways. More arrests in housing projects. More drug arrests. More arrests of
gang members.
And it isn’t alone.
If there’s one lesson from the unrest and anti-police
agitation in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, it’s that poor minorities
living in distressed neighborhoods pay the highest price — in fear and in blood
— when the cops retreat and the worst elements feel emboldened.
The spikes in shootings in cities around the country
haven’t taken place in high-end neighborhoods, not in Billionaire’s Row in
Manhattan, not in Buckhead in Atlanta, not in Forest Glen in Chicago.
No, they blight the most marginal neighborhoods and make
everyday life a hazard for people who have no option but to live in a tough
place. The last couple of months should have made it obvious that what these
people have to fear most is not the cops or white supremacy but the violent,
vengeful, and heedless young men in their midst.
Stopping or discouraging the cops from disproportionately
policing these neighborhoods isn’t a blow for justice. It’s an obstacle for
upstanding, low-income citizens who are trying to lead decent lives and
shouldn’t have to routinely hear gunshots or worry every day about their kids
getting shot.
Consider New York City. The New York Times ran an
extensive piece the other day on the spike
in shootings in the city. Clearly, a driver of the violence is a marked
reduction in arrests:
Arrests have declined drastically
this summer, falling 62 percent across the board for the last four weeks
compared with the same period last year, police data show. Narcotics arrests
fell 85 percent. Detectives in the gang unit made 90 percent fewer arrests.
There were similarly steep drops in the number of arrests by officers that
patrol the subways and housing projects.
Gun arrests have dropped 67 percent
during the same four weeks compared with last year, even as shootings have
continued to spiral upward.
So what we’ve seen is a crude version of Black Lives
Matter policing — a “defund the police” approach, in which many fewer
African-American males are arrested. Has this made heavily African-American
communities better or safer? Emphatically not.
The story is the same in cities around the country. The
equation is simple: A less robust police presence equals more shootings.
According to the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, “Ninety-three people were shot in Atlanta during
the four-week period of May 31 to June 27, up drastically from 46 in the same
period last year, the latest complete data available. And fourteen people died
of homicide in that span, compared to six during the same time frame in 2019.”
Why? “‘There seems to be withdrawal by police,’ said
Russell Covey, Georgia State University criminal law professor. ‘The lack of a
police presence may create something of a vacuum of authority.’” The president
of the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers agreed
that there’s been a pullback. “Officers are afraid to do their job,” he said.
The Minneapolis
Star-Tribune reported late last month, “So far this year, ShotSpotter
activations and 911 calls about gunshots in Minneapolis have more than doubled
from a year ago, according to a Star Tribune analysis of police data.
Out of 3,218 such shots-fired calls this year, nearly half have been filed
since George Floyd was killed on May 25.”
Amazingly enough according to the paper, “Some council
members and activists see the focus on crime stats as a way to stoke public
fears and distract from the issue of police reform.” In other words, don’t let
the number of people getting shot distract you from the need to kneecap the
peace officers necessary to keep people from getting shot.
We don’t need to settle here the dispute over why there
is now a less robust police presence in urban neighborhoods. Is it a function
of the cops being overwhelmed by work related to the protests on top of their
ordinary duties? Are cops overly cautious because of the anti-cop hostility of
elected officials? Are they engaging in a deliberate work-slowdown? All of the
above?
What matters at the most basic level is that if there are
fewer cops arresting fewer dangerous people, shootings go up.
This dynamic should put paid to the lazy analysis that
says that disproportionate police interactions with minorities must be a result
of racist policing. It’s the opposite: Only people who have no regard for the
welfare of poor communities would want fewer, less active cops patrolling them.
An expression of this simplistic way of thinking, by the
way, was New York City’s decision to disband a plainclothes anti-crime unit
that was involved in controversial shootings. Maybe this was because the unit
was out of control. But maybe it was because it was engaged in the hard work of
keeping communities from being overrun by gangs and illegal guns.
Indeed, the unit was reportedly responsible
for 50 percent of gun arrests in 2019, and some community leaders are now calling
for its reinstatement.
(In response to the spate of violence, New York City has
launched a new initiative that, in part, puts more cops on the streets of
violence-plagued areas of Brooklyn.)
Of course, it’s true that bad cops should be held to
account, and the police should have the best relationship possible with the
communities they serve. This can and should happen without exposing vulnerable
people to the depredations of dangerous malefactors the way we’ve seen in
recent weeks.
People who live in the affected communities know this
and, to their credit, often say it. But their voices don’t get the megaphone of
anti-police agitators. The cultural gatekeepers in our country could elevate
them and highlight the rise in shootings as a direct threat to black lives.
The media could drive home their concerns, not simply in
straight news accounts, but with the sympathetic wall-to-wall coverage of the
protestors. Celebrities could take up their cause. Corporations could shower
little-known activists desperately trying to improve the lot of their
neighborhoods with resources.
But, no, this isn’t the narrative these gatekeepers are interested in — for them, black lives can only be put at risk by the cops, never made more secure and safe.
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