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They're Angry, Not Stupid! Why Trump Is Likely To Win Again
@msf - excellent article: “People living in poorly rated neighborhoods would have had trouble obtaining mortgages for homes there, [due to redlining] regardless of their individual creditworthiness. Other consequences most likely piled up from there.
“The availability of credit has really significant impacts on every dimension of neighborhood life, in terms of the quality of real estate, the willingness of investors to come in, the prices of property, the emergence of predatory practices,” said Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University. “These are all direct consequences of the lack of affordable loans and affordable mortgages.”
Blacks who did not have access to conventional home loans had to turn to schemes like contract sales that entailed steep interest rates (the practice is returning today in many of these same communities). Because those homes could be frequently repossessed by predatory lenders, these neighborhoods would experience more population instability.”
Slumlords, too, would move in, squeezing value from subdivided rental homes that otherwise might have been owned by families. Commercial investors, meanwhile, would have stayed away. Blacks discriminated against in the housing market elsewhere would have had limited options to move away. And any existing homeowners would have struggled to obtain credit for maintenance and repairs, leading to the further deterioration of properties.
This process can be invisible to people who might look at these communities, Mr. Sugrue said, and place blame for their disrepair on residents who don’t value their homes.”
With these constraints the ability to accumulate wealth for present and subsequent generations is horribly handicapped. In my opinion, this is in part, what is meant by “systemic and institutionalized racism.”
@Level5 For most of the Republican Party, Chicago and New York are really just code for the N word. This has been true well before the current black lives matter protests since the Southern Strategy began. Yet without those two cities and California, which is code for the Latino offensive term to them, this country would be a second world nation. Chicago’s metro area produces more GDP by itself than about 20 Southern and Midwestern red states. Guys attacking New York and Chicago on this board for the most part were racists before the BLM movement and they’ll be racist afterwards. The riots just give them a nice talking point to get their white supremacist in chief re-elected. It’s as if the shootings by the police of unarmed black men in the back never occurred to them. It’s as if their toxic blue lives matter rhetoric never poisoned the mind of a 17-year old kid to open fire on protesters killing two of them in the past week. No the protests apparently just materialized out of thin air.
I have live in NYC, worked in NYC and visit frequently. If anyone says there has not been an increase in violence and decay over the past several months than we just have to disagree. Just google NYC and looting. As I said, you can fairly argue causation but not what one sees on the ground: boarded up windows, people sleeping on the street in greater numbers, etc. And I guess that because I did not witness bricks thrown at cops it never happened. OK, keep going with that and we'll see what November brings.
You appear to have dropped the idea that violent crime is worse now in NYC than it was under Rudy. That's good, because violent crime dropped so much nationwide in the past two decades that even the worst mayors now are likely to have better numbers than the best majors had back then. The improvement in a given city, out of context, doesn't speak to the relative skills of the mayors of different "eras".
Now you've introduced a new element, "decay", and seem to be presenting "boarded up windows" as evidence of that decay. Decay is not something that happens overnight, unlike the boarding of storefronts in the aftermath of a few nights of vandalism. (Newsmax: "Urban decay, in simpler terms, is the gradual falling apart of a previously functional city or town.")
In many cities, including New York, the vandalism was primarily a matter of several nights many weeks ago. On Aug 17th, the WSJ wrote: "Weeks after the marches died down, officers were still working to solve crimes committed around the protests."
As to the boarded storefronts, the WSJ wrote this past Friday (August 28th):
Some storefronts remain boarded up in cities across the country, even in places that haven’t seen significant civil unrest since late May and early June after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Business and building owners say delays in glass shipments, flagging sales because of the coronavirus pandemic and, in some cases, concern over future unrest are all contributing to the slow removal of the plywood protections.
"Slow removal of the plywood protections". That's improvement, not decay. The paper goes on to discuss NYC specifically:
With property damage stretching from New York City to Seattle, some business owners report long waits for replacement glass for windows that must meet custom specifications, either because of their size or the need to meet requirements for historic preservation. ... In New York City’s SoHo shopping district, which was hit hard by looting, a handful of retail storefronts on Broadway remain boarded up, down from about 100 in June, and shoppers are slowly but steadily returning to the neighborhood, particularly on the weekends, said Mark Dicus, executive director of the SoHo Broadway Initiative.
I'll give @wxman123 (weatherman?) a lot of credit for this- he's open to a reasonable discussion of an issue, without name-calling and derisive labels. That's pretty rare these days, unfortunately.
I moved out and sold the family home in 01108 Spfld. I was a crime victim (not VIOLENT crime) 3 times in 3 years. People are people--- all of us are individuals. The guilty are not innocent and the innocent are not guilty. And yet, 99% of reported crime is done by people of color there. So I removed myself from that environment. It's a lot easier for me to vote for Joe from here. Yes, there's crime here, but almost all of it happens in and around HNL, here on Oahu. And I'm not there. There is an Asian plurality in Hawaii. (Just for the record.) And I do think the crime problem connects more to parents not doing the job of parenting, than to the color of anyone's skin. Kids need guidance and discipline. It's not enough to play your video games and just watch the little ones grow older, between fast-food "meals."
Springfield definitely has crime problems. Springfield is 37% white/63% people of color. Taking this into account, if 99% of crimes there are committed by people of color, that would mean that people of color commit crimes at a rate 58x as high as whites do. (Calculation at bottom of post.)
Let's assume that each race's incarceration rate is fair (i.e. Blacks are not disproportionately incarcerated relative to the number of crimes they commit). Then even though statewide, people of color are committing crimes at a rate 6x (or less) as great as whites, in Springfield this disparity is tenfold as great (58x).
Could you tell us something about Springfield that would lead to figures so disparate? Its crime rate is "just" 3x the state average; that doesn't come close to the magnitude needed as explanation.
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58x rate, based on 99% committed by nonwhites, and 37% white population:
If you've got 1000 people, 370 white, 630 people of color, and 1 white commits a crime, then the white crime rate is 1/370. A nonwhite crime rate that's 58x as high means 58/370 crimes per person of color. Thus people of color commit 58/370 x 630 = 99 crimes. There's the 99%.
I live near Fiesta Mall in Mesa, AZ. It's one of the largest ghost towns malls in the country. The mall I grew up with in St. Louis County was bull-dozed a while ago. Plans to redevelop the space had stalled the last time I checked.
Maybe NYC had been immune to the economic forces at work in other parts of the country until George Floyd was murdered. But I doubt it.
@msf I was referencing that 99% of crimes reported by news outlets were done by people of color. I still check-in with the local (NBC) channel 22 website. Nothing's changed on that score. Of course, many of them are repeat offenders. LOTS of gun violence, stabbings, murders and drugs. A white guy in nearby Holyoke was just arrested and bailed out, and he failed to show up in court for his arraignment. Why? Because he is a major drug lord with 8 specialty cars belonging to him, and possessed millions of dollars, drugs and guns, when his address was searched by authorities. But when he was arrested, it was for a minor marijuana violation. Did NO ONE check his prior rap sheet? Apparently not. So, he's on the loose. Jayzuz Holy Crap. ...
Here in Hawaii, the courts are a cluster-flop, even when it comes to minor traffic offenses. ...Covid doesn't help, granted. But when someone (personally known to me) manages to collect 4 traffic violations in a year, he was given a court date. He went. He was never called to appear before the judge. ... He went back twice more, and was never called forward. He (all who were present, but not called) were told that if the same thing happened again, charges would be dismissed..... He proceeded to MISS that next court date. Any consequences connected to that? Nope. Zero. ... He was told to wait a few days to see if a warrant came in the mail. But then he was told to come to court, the next morning. The latest news, as of lunchtime? Case dismissed.
I'm learning that gov't here, and its agencies, are beyond merely inept. They are oblivious, clueless.
@Crash - thanks for the clarification. I've been looking at too many crime statistics. The police figures give "reported crimes", as differentiated, I suppose, from solved crimes. In that context, reported crimes is reasonably representative of actual crimes.
It sounds like you're saying that what shows up on TV in Springfield are crimes involving people of color, and that's not necessarily representative.
Traffic courts surely work in mysterious ways. The only time I've gone, it was for a parking ticket I got on a block where the "no parking at these times" sign was missing. I had checked the traffic code, and a sign should have been posted within some number of feet from the corner. I wanted a dismissal based on the city error, and that the sign would be fixed. Instead my charge was dismissed because I just showed up in court rather than "pay the two dollars" by mail.
"...It sounds like you're saying that what shows up on TV in Springfield are crimes involving people of color, and that's not necessarily representative..."
No, I'm actually saying this: my own experience as a repeat crime victim, and the fact that all of those crimes reported on tv, night after night after night after night, so effing always--- involved people of color, became enough for me to take myself out of that environment. Having been a crime victim three times already, the probability that the perpetrators were people of color was extremely high. I didn't need for it to happen a 4th time. Changing my location to a different LOCAL address would not change the picture and put the numbers in my favor. So we moved to the 50th State. The demographics are very different here. I've been here for 10 months. No problems... yet.
I might add that those crimes by which I was victimized all happened relatively recently. It was all between 2016-2019. That family home was ours since 1959. It is a very different city, now.
So for clarification, you are not certain of the race of the people who committed the three crimes where you were a victim. Rather, "the probability that the perpetrators were people of color was extremely high." What I'm trying to understand is the basis of that probability appraisal.
You write that "all of those[?] crimes reported on tv, night after night after night after night ... involved people of color."
It sounds like there are some unstated assumptions: - the reporting was representative of the crimes committed (with thousands of crimes per year, not all of them could have been reported) - the reporting was representative specifically of nonviolent crimes (they are less frequently reported than violent crimes), - the police never arrested any white criminals (else they'd have shown up on tv assuming the reporting was representative).
It was all between 2016-2019. That family home was ours since 1959. It is a very different city, now.
NeighborhoodScout reports crime rates for Springfield, admittedly for all its zip codes. However, since you wrote that moving locally wouldn't have made a difference, looking at this citywide data for ballpark figures is fair.
Its current Springfield crime page gives a property crime rate (as opposed to a violent crime rate) per thousand people of 26.98, and the odds of becoming a victim of property crime at 1 in 37. (That's using 2018 crime data, the most recent available.)
In contrast, the same page from 11 years ago (August 3, 2009), says that the property crime rate was 66.63, and the odds of becoming a victim was 1 in 15.
Perception is not reality. Undoubtedly Springfield is not the same city it was when your family bought the home, or when Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates. But as compared with a decade ago, notwithstanding your personal bad fortune, crime is down by more than half.
In 2009, when the crime rate was much higher in Springfield than now, the Boston Fed wrote:
Perceptions of crime are an issue for Springfield. The ULI report, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s analysis of poverty, and a report by the UMass Donahue Institute all stressed the importance of improving public safety in Springfield, although both the ULI and the Boston Fed reports observed that perceptions of criminal activity may be worse than the reality. One explanation is that the distress in Springfield is very visible, being concentrated in and near the downtown and along major roadways.
As a latchkey kid, our house was burglarized. A sibling had the bad luck to be the first one home and discover this. Freaked them out. Freaked out my parents as well, who proceeded immediately to put double locks and bolts on doors, locks on windows (with the ability to lock them open 1 inch for air), wired all portals and connected them to ADT. An understandable reaction at the time.
The crime statistics are both a truth and a lie. They're not truly understandable without asking why. Instead of offering education, opportunity and let's be honest, therapy--after 400 years of oppression since 1619--many parts of the country offer only prison for minorities and dog whistles for white voters who, I should say by the way, are also oppressed in those parts of the country. The strategy is to divide and conquer. Chicago, New York and now Kenosha are the latest dog whistles. Worth watching:
Can I prove who committed the crimes back in Spfld, in terms of their race? No. Can I prove the race of those who stole everything out of my house years ago in Stockton, CA, and then came back to tie up the loose ends? Only one was caught. Hispanic.
So... the tv reports are "not representative?" They don't need to be representative (in terms of the race of those involved) for me to get the picture. The preponderance of arrests involved people of color. 99% of the arrests reported on the media. And the crimes committed today by whomever have precisely zilch to do with oppression and slavery dating back to 1619. Zero. What you're not saying is that I'm a racist. Fine. I won't change your mind. Call me another participant in "white flight"--- though way too late for my own good.
The past is never dead. It's not even past. 1619 wasn’t when the oppression ended but when it began. I don’t think it’s racist to leave an unsafe environment. I do think it’s a mistake to not try to understand on a deeper level why it might be unsafe and what might improve the situation.
In my highlighting of underlying assumptions, I was not saying the assumptions were right or wrong. Merely that without those assumptions, one could not draw any conclusion about the actual racial breakdown of criminals in Springfield. Basic rules of logic.
You wrote that the information (tv reports) don't "need to be representative ... for [you] to get the picture". That's like saying that because all one sees on local news is crime ("if it bleeds it leads"), then regardless of how representative that content is, one's town must be very dangerous.
Some towns are, some aren't. Though most tend to have local news stations carrying blood and guts stories. One gets the picture, but it isn't always accurate.
Ultimately, the basic question is why any of this matters. Crime? Sure. One doesn't want to live in a high crime area. Which brings us back to your writing:
"The guilty are not innocent and the innocent are not guilty. And yet, 99% of reported crime is done by people of color there. So I removed myself from that environment."
Perhaps you interjected race as a side note, an oddity about the televised reports. Perhaps you were making some other point that I've missed. What were you trying to communicate?
Yeah, Krugman's right, the media is probably making the whole thing up. I bet he didn't stroll into parts of Brooklyn or the Bronx where people are also imagining getting shot in and around their homes. https://gothamist.com/news/11-killed-and-least-40-shot-around-nyc-thursday Sure, I would agree that NYC is still mostly fine and you can get an awesome crumpet and latte in a corner cafe, just like Paul. That doesn't change what's happening under an awful leadership.
Now you're presenting general shooting patterns, something unrelated to vandalism. The Gothamist article you linked to says this is a nationwide trend: "Murders have been rising across various major U.S. cities this summer."
Yes, a spike in murders is a problem, one that is not yet understood, but more to your point, one that is not specific to New York City or to cities with Democratic mayors.
Here's what a business reporter at the formerly named Capitalist Tool® says about this trend (bulleting in original):
President Donald Trump has blamed increased violence in many U.S. cities on Democratic lawmakers (on Friday, he singled out his New York City and, what he called, its "radical left" mayor).
However, according to WSJ's analysis, "the rise in killings is a bipartisan problem," with homicides rising at a double-digit rate in most of the big cities run by Republicans, including Miami, San Diego, Omaha, Tulsa, and Jacksonville.
Murders are a problem, period. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter who is running the locality. They are increasing, and it's both inaccurate and harmful to frame this as something caused by one's political affiliation.
On the bright side, and what I've said before, violent crimes as a whole are still down on the year. BBC, data through Aug 23: "in many major US cities, including Chicago and New York, violent crime overall is down compared with the same time last year."
Perhaps not in Jacksonville (violent crime was up YTD through mid year); all the more reason to stop looking at political affiliations and start addressing the numbers.
Honestly, MSF, I respect your deep dive into the data and I won't attempt to rebut it. I simply don't think that what's going on in the nations big cities, Chicago, Portland, NYC etc is being invented by the media and those who peddle that narrative are paving the way for the Donald V2. And while I'm very sure these same problems are occurring in republican strongholds the overall impression (which I subscribe to, perhaps without good data) is that the problem is most pronounced in democratic run cities. I also can't say that the same problems would not exist in those cities if run by the R's. My impression informed by what I see and read (and I try and read a lot, not just Fox news) is that mayors like de Blasio are soft on crime and unsupportive of law enforcement (at least compared to say a Guilliani). The cops sure seem to think that's the case, and they should know best.
Moreover, I should add not to you in particular that it's a shady but predictable pivot to fixate on crime in the RNC, by POTUS and on this board during the worst pandemic in a hundred years that has killed far more people than violence has while the numbers lost to the disease could have been dramatically reduced if we'd had proper--heck, any--leadership from the top. The fixation on crime and riots over the disease itself is an obvious racist dog whistle meant to distract the Republican base from what the larger problem is.
Yeah, Krugman's right, the media is probably making the whole thing up. I bet he didn't stroll into parts of Brooklyn or the Bronx where people are also imagining getting shot in and around their homes. https://gothamist.com/news/11-killed-and-least-40-shot-around-nyc-thursday Sure, I would agree that NYC is still mostly fine and you can get an awesome crumpet and latte in a corner cafe, just like Paul. That doesn't change what's happening under an awful leadership.
Why do you post as you do when some things can be easily checked? I have not delved this to the extent that I can conclude much other than that totals seem roughly comparable for boroughs which are within maybe (roughly) 50% of one another in population. (Did not do it per capita in other words.) (Except for Staten.)
The page you gave with PK's stroll contains a link to rundowns of looting reports by community board districts: "Manhattan certainly saw the most violence."
However, PK lives on Riverside Drive on the UWS (a matter of public record) while looters largely bypassed Upper Manhattan. They tended to focus on upscale shopping areas like SoHo (downtown) and 5th Ave (midtown). That's a good part of the reason I cited a WSJ article describing SoHo as mostly unboarded. By inference, most neighborhoods are up and running now.
In Board 7 (Manhattan Valley, Upper West Side, Lincoln Square), Mark Diller, the chairman, told City Limits there had been relatively little damage. “One store had a window broken but it’s unclear if it was because of protestors. I understand that Best Buy on Broadway in Lincoln Square area was looted or at least broken into. Other than that, it’s been peaceful protests. On Tuesday night, during full board meeting we did over Zoom, we could hear the protestors marching Amsterdam Avenue.”
Outside of Chinese language newspapers, the linked page is rare in describing the looting in Chinatown. Which goes to show that news reports can leave one with distorted impressions.
Some, probably a large part, of the increase in crime this summer is due to COVID and people being confined and unemployed. Why do we have such a covid problem... oh wait... if we had a unified plan from the top from the beginning there would be less covid, less deaths, less continued unemployment, less crime etc... So by denying covid they are just extending the problem.... IMHO less covid/better leadership == less crime this summer.
Yeah, Krugman's right, the media is probably making the whole thing up. I bet he didn't stroll into parts of Brooklyn or the Bronx where people are also imagining getting shot in and around their homes. https://gothamist.com/news/11-killed-and-least-40-shot-around-nyc-thursday Sure, I would agree that NYC is still mostly fine and you can get an awesome crumpet and latte in a corner cafe, just like Paul. That doesn't change what's happening under an awful leadership.
Why do you post as you do when some things can be easily checked? I have not delved this to the extent that I can conclude much other than that totals seem roughly comparable for boroughs which are within maybe (roughly) 50% of one another in population. (Did not do it per capita in other words.) (Except for Staten.)
Possibly it proves your point, so do the math if you are willing.
I'm not trying to prove any point regardless of whether I could do so with more effort. I was commenting on the subject matter of the thread. "They're Angry, Not Stupid! Why Trump Is Likely To Win Again." Perception is reality no matter how talking heads might try to portray something else. The perception is that Chicago is a crime nightmare; San Fran is becoming a cesspool and now even normally quiet spots like Portland are becoming like third-world countries. I'm sure there are many nice spots in all of these cities and that overall the cities are mainly peaceful. The media is not interested in showing peaceful enclaves on the 6pm news. I'm also not sure anyone cares about the crime rates in Alaska or Alabama (except the folks that live there). Maybe they should. Back to my point: I can't travel the world but I read and view news as much as I can, and can comment on my sampling of NYC. I think the crimes/violence/riots issues are becoming more pronounced (causation is a fair point to discuss). The biggest shift I've seen in sentiment is that die-in-the wool liberals are now starting to acknowledge that it SEEMS these issues are real and it SEEMS that the problems are occurring in democratic strongholds and that all of this is going to help Trump in November. I agree with that.
>> The perception is that Chicago is a crime nightmare; San Fran is becoming a cesspool and now even normally quiet spots like Portland are becoming like third-world countries.
I know! and the stock market is no different from Vegas! A total crapshoot. Only suckers play it.
Comments
“People living in poorly rated neighborhoods would have had trouble obtaining mortgages for homes there, [due to redlining] regardless of their individual creditworthiness. Other consequences most likely piled up from there.
“The availability of credit has really significant impacts on every dimension of neighborhood life, in terms of the quality of real estate, the willingness of investors to come in, the prices of property, the emergence of predatory practices,” said Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University. “These are all direct consequences of the lack of affordable loans and affordable mortgages.”
Blacks who did not have access to conventional home loans had to turn to schemes like contract sales that entailed steep interest rates (the practice is returning today in many of these same communities). Because those homes could be frequently repossessed by predatory lenders, these neighborhoods would experience more population instability.”
Slumlords, too, would move in, squeezing value from subdivided rental homes that otherwise might have been owned by families. Commercial investors, meanwhile, would have stayed away. Blacks discriminated against in the housing market elsewhere would have had limited options to move away. And any existing homeowners would have struggled to obtain credit for maintenance and repairs, leading to the further deterioration of properties.
This process can be invisible to people who might look at these communities, Mr. Sugrue said, and place blame for their disrepair on residents who don’t value their homes.”
With these constraints the ability to accumulate wealth for present and subsequent generations is horribly handicapped. In my opinion, this is in part, what is meant by “systemic and institutionalized racism.”
Now you've introduced a new element, "decay", and seem to be presenting "boarded up windows" as evidence of that decay. Decay is not something that happens overnight, unlike the boarding of storefronts in the aftermath of a few nights of vandalism. (Newsmax: "Urban decay, in simpler terms, is the gradual falling apart of a previously functional city or town.")
In many cities, including New York, the vandalism was primarily a matter of several nights many weeks ago. On Aug 17th, the WSJ wrote: "Weeks after the marches died down, officers were still working to solve crimes committed around the protests."
As to the boarded storefronts, the WSJ wrote this past Friday (August 28th): "Slow removal of the plywood protections". That's improvement, not decay. The paper goes on to discuss NYC specifically: https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-unrest-small-businesses-wrestle-with-plywood-storefronts-11598607000
Statewide, in 2010, the rate of incarceration (people incarcerated per 100,000 in the group) for Blacks was 6x as high as for whites. Hispanics were inbetween.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/2010rates/MA.html
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/MA.html
Let's assume that each race's incarceration rate is fair (i.e. Blacks are not disproportionately incarcerated relative to the number of crimes they commit). Then even though statewide, people of color are committing crimes at a rate 6x (or less) as great as whites, in Springfield this disparity is tenfold as great (58x).
Could you tell us something about Springfield that would lead to figures so disparate? Its crime rate is "just" 3x the state average; that doesn't come close to the magnitude needed as explanation.
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58x rate, based on 99% committed by nonwhites, and 37% white population:
If you've got 1000 people, 370 white, 630 people of color, and 1 white commits a crime, then the white crime rate is 1/370. A nonwhite crime rate that's 58x as high means 58/370 crimes per person of color. Thus people of color commit 58/370 x 630 = 99 crimes. There's the 99%.
The mall I grew up with in St. Louis County was bull-dozed a while ago. Plans to redevelop the space had stalled the last time I checked.
Maybe NYC had been immune to the economic forces at work in other parts of the country until George Floyd was murdered. But I doubt it.
Here in Hawaii, the courts are a cluster-flop, even when it comes to minor traffic offenses. ...Covid doesn't help, granted. But when someone (personally known to me) manages to collect 4 traffic violations in a year, he was given a court date. He went. He was never called to appear before the judge. ... He went back twice more, and was never called forward. He (all who were present, but not called) were told that if the same thing happened again, charges would be dismissed..... He proceeded to MISS that next court date. Any consequences connected to that? Nope. Zero. ... He was told to wait a few days to see if a warrant came in the mail. But then he was told to come to court, the next morning. The latest news, as of lunchtime? Case dismissed.
I'm learning that gov't here, and its agencies, are beyond merely inept. They are oblivious, clueless.
It sounds like you're saying that what shows up on TV in Springfield are crimes involving people of color, and that's not necessarily representative.
Traffic courts surely work in mysterious ways. The only time I've gone, it was for a parking ticket I got on a block where the "no parking at these times" sign was missing. I had checked the traffic code, and a sign should have been posted within some number of feet from the corner. I wanted a dismissal based on the city error, and that the sign would be fixed. Instead my charge was dismissed because I just showed up in court rather than "pay the two dollars" by mail.
No, I'm actually saying this: my own experience as a repeat crime victim, and the fact that all of those crimes reported on tv, night after night after night after night, so effing always--- involved people of color, became enough for me to take myself out of that environment. Having been a crime victim three times already, the probability that the perpetrators were people of color was extremely high. I didn't need for it to happen a 4th time. Changing my location to a different LOCAL address would not change the
picture and put the numbers in my favor. So we moved to the 50th State. The demographics are very different here. I've been here for 10 months. No problems... yet.
I might add that those crimes by which I was victimized all happened relatively recently. It was all between 2016-2019. That family home was ours since 1959. It is a very different city, now.
You write that "all of those[?] crimes reported on tv, night after night after night after night ... involved people of color."
It sounds like there are some unstated assumptions:
- the reporting was representative of the crimes committed (with thousands of crimes per year, not all of them could have been reported)
- the reporting was representative specifically of nonviolent crimes (they are less frequently reported than violent crimes),
- the police never arrested any white criminals (else they'd have shown up on tv assuming the reporting was representative).
It was all between 2016-2019. That family home was ours since 1959. It is a very different city, now.
NeighborhoodScout reports crime rates for Springfield, admittedly for all its zip codes. However, since you wrote that moving locally wouldn't have made a difference, looking at this citywide data for ballpark figures is fair.
Its current Springfield crime page gives a property crime rate (as opposed to a violent crime rate) per thousand people of 26.98, and the odds of becoming a victim of property crime at 1 in 37. (That's using 2018 crime data, the most recent available.)
In contrast, the same page from 11 years ago (August 3, 2009), says that the property crime rate was 66.63, and the odds of becoming a victim was 1 in 15.
Perception is not reality. Undoubtedly Springfield is not the same city it was when your family bought the home, or when Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates. But as compared with a decade ago, notwithstanding your personal bad fortune, crime is down by more than half.
In 2009, when the crime rate was much higher in Springfield than now, the Boston Fed wrote: As a latchkey kid, our house was burglarized. A sibling had the bad luck to be the first one home and discover this. Freaked them out. Freaked out my parents as well, who proceeded immediately to put double locks and bolts on doors, locks on windows (with the ability to lock them open 1 inch for air), wired all portals and connected them to ADT. An understandable reaction at the time.
https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=116&emc=edit_pk_20200901&instance_id=21805&nl=paul-krugman&productCode=PK&regi_id=22268089&segment_id=37278&te=1&uri=nyt://newsletter/10e3a567-6795-5aa9-ab80-dcdf0d41cb6d&user_id=83d45440ead1d14c2a89a1e7221337d1
So... the tv reports are "not representative?" They don't need to be representative (in terms of the race of those involved) for me to get the picture. The preponderance of arrests involved people of color. 99% of the arrests reported on the media. And the crimes committed today by whomever have precisely zilch to do with oppression and slavery dating back to 1619. Zero. What you're not saying is that I'm a racist. Fine. I won't change your mind. Call me another participant in "white flight"--- though way too late for my own good.
You wrote that the information (tv reports) don't "need to be representative ... for [you] to get the picture". That's like saying that because all one sees on local news is crime ("if it bleeds it leads"), then regardless of how representative that content is, one's town must be very dangerous.
Some towns are, some aren't. Though most tend to have local news stations carrying blood and guts stories. One gets the picture, but it isn't always accurate.
Ultimately, the basic question is why any of this matters. Crime? Sure. One doesn't want to live in a high crime area. Which brings us back to your writing:
"The guilty are not innocent and the innocent are not guilty. And yet, 99% of reported crime is done by people of color there. So I removed myself from that environment."
Perhaps you interjected race as a side note, an oddity about the televised reports. Perhaps you were making some other point that I've missed. What were you trying to communicate?
Yes, a spike in murders is a problem, one that is not yet understood, but more to your point, one that is not specific to New York City or to cities with Democratic mayors.
Here's what a business reporter at the formerly named Capitalist Tool® says about this trend (bulleting in original): https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/08/02/shootings-and-gun-deaths-continue-to-rise-at-alarming-rate-in-large-us-cities/#220c2c2a6f0f
Speaking of Jacksonville, "56 shootings in 23 days: Jacksonville sets record for shootings in single month; City on pace to see most homicides in 20 years"
https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/07/24/55-shootings-in-23-days-jacksonville-sets-record-for-shootings-in-single-month/
That's on top of 2019. "2019 was Jacksonville’s deadliest year in decades"
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/2019-was-jacksonvilles-deadliest-year-in-decades/77-afab285a-a50c-4efc-a754-95be93dddb91
Murders are a problem, period. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter who is running the locality. They are increasing, and it's both inaccurate and harmful to frame this as something caused by one's political affiliation.
On the bright side, and what I've said before, violent crimes as a whole are still down on the year. BBC, data through Aug 23: "in many major US cities, including Chicago and New York, violent crime overall is down compared with the same time last year."
Perhaps not in Jacksonville (violent crime was up YTD through mid year); all the more reason to stop looking at political affiliations and start addressing the numbers.
Whether that changes as a result of Covid remains to be seen once data for the year arrives. But the idea that Democrat run government produces more crime is a falsehood.
Moreover, I should add not to you in particular that it's a shady but predictable pivot to fixate on crime in the RNC, by POTUS and on this board during the worst pandemic in a hundred years that has killed far more people than violence has while the numbers lost to the disease could have been dramatically reduced if we'd had proper--heck, any--leadership from the top. The fixation on crime and riots over the disease itself is an obvious racist dog whistle meant to distract the Republican base from what the larger problem is.
However, PK lives on Riverside Drive on the UWS (a matter of public record) while looters largely bypassed Upper Manhattan. They tended to focus on upscale shopping areas like SoHo (downtown) and 5th Ave (midtown). That's a good part of the reason I cited a WSJ article describing SoHo as mostly unboarded. By inference, most neighborhoods are up and running now. Regarding crime statistics by borough, the NYPD partitions most boroughs into North and South parts, so one needs to aggregate pairs of reports to get statistics for some of the boroughs.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/crime-statistics/borough-and-precinct-crime-stats.page
A couple of side notes:
Outside of Chinese language newspapers, the linked page is rare in describing the looting in Chinatown. Which goes to show that news reports can leave one with distorted impressions.
Kings County, aka the Borough of Brooklyn, has a population nearly 60% more than that of Manhattan and over 80% more than that of the Bronx.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewyork,bronxcountybronxboroughnewyork,kingscountybrooklynboroughnewyork,newyorkcountymanhattanboroughnewyork,queenscountyqueensboroughnewyork,richmondcountystatenislandboroughnewyork/PST045219
https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21409364/trump-approval-rating-2020-election-voters-coronavirus-convention-polls
I know! and the stock market is no different from Vegas! A total crapshoot. Only suckers play it.