I didn’t know this, but violent crime rates are going up in parts of the Midwest. Tim Jones wrote in the Sunday Chicago Tribune:
Since 2004, aggravated assaults are up a whopping 86 percent in Milwaukee and 42 percent in Minneapolis. Homicides are up 41 percent in Cincinnati, 26 percent in Kansas City, Mo., and 38 percent in Cleveland. Detroit’s robberies have leapt by 40 percent since 2004. And the incidence of aggravated assault with a firearm in St. Louis jumped 45 percent, according to a recent study by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington law-enforcement think tank.
I noted in the “Safety First” post that some people (Michelle Malkin among them) have determined that black people cause crime. I hadn’t heard significant numbers of black people were moving to Milwaukee. Oh, wait …
The decline of the manufacturing economy is a common factor linking many of these communities. Most of the breweries that defined Milwaukee are gone, as are the automobile parts factories, and that has dealt an economic body blow to tens of thousands of unskilled workers in the city.
But what about George Bush’s roaring economy?
At a gathering of law-enforcement officials in Chicago last week, Barrett complained that Washington has cut federal funding to local police agencies and turned a deaf ear to the crime problems of American cities. Washington, Barrett said, is more concerned about “homeland security than hometown security.”
“Many pro-gun advocates talk about themselves being freedom fighters. But I think the people in this room,” Barrett told the police chiefs, “are the real freedom fighters, because we are the ones that are fighting to allow the grandma to sit on her front porch and not have to worry about a drive-by shooting.”
Bushies are pretty much all talk, no walk on homeland security also, in my opinion. Anyway, I got this from a link on the Gun Guys site. The Gun Guys add,
The NRA talks a blue streak about freedom and rights. They complain all day long about how their gun guys should have the right to own any kind of weapon they want, and how it’s just tough for us that we have to deal with all the gun violence. They claim that the Second Amendment gives them a shield against any kind of regulation. They just want us to suffer through the tragedies, to just deal with the gun deaths, while they continue to erode any power our authorities have against firearms.
Meanwhile, in New York City — home of all those rampaging black men that Michelle Malkin says it’s OK to shoot — violent crime continues to decline. Cara Buckley reported in the New York Times (March 28, 2007):
The recent fatal shootings of two auxiliary police officers and a restaurant worker in Greenwich Village hark back to a time when New York City’s streets were far more deadly. But the city’s year-to-date homicide rate is at its lowest point since before the Police Department started tracking crime using current record-keeping techniques in 1962.
According to the department figures, 84 homicides were reported citywide from Jan. 1 through Sunday, an average of exactly one killing a day. That was down 28 percent from 117 during the same period last year.
The first-quarter numbers continue what has been a downward trend in overall serious crime in the city.
Although the number of homicides in the city increased last year to 596 from 540 in 2005, total figures for all the major crimes the department tracks — including murder, rape, robbery and assault — dropped 4.7 percent in 2006.
By early indications, the decrease in violent crime in New York City continues to defy nationwide trends. After falling for several years, homicide, gun assault and robbery rates across the country rose by double-digit percentages in 2005 and 2006, according to a recent report by the Police Executive Research Forum.
”There isn’t any other big city that continues to show these remarkable results for such a long time,” said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. ”The national crime decline is over.”
And did I ever mention that New York City has about the strictest gun control laws in the U.S.? I believe I have.
Anyway, I just want to say to all of you in the Midwest who are being terrorized by cowboys and farmers (that was a joke; see the “Safety First” post) should come to New York City and be safe. These days it’s a lot safer in Central Park than in downtown Milwaukee.