If you feel like the City of Rochester has been a more
violent place this year, you’re right. Though still down from historical highs,
homicides and especially shootings have taken an aggressive upswing in 2012.
Rochester
Police Chief James Sheppard held a press conference this morning to review
third -quarter crime statistics. The news isn’t good. Homicides are up 38
percent from this time last year, from 21 in 2011 to 29 in 2012. And shootings
are up 79 percent, from 95 in 2011 to 170 in 2012. That exceeds the 10-year
average by 14 percent, and is the highest shooting rate in five years.
“So far
this year, we’ve had a very tough time with violent incidents,” Sheppard said.
“For me, this is painful and frustrating.”
As he
has said several times before, Sheppard blamed most of the shootings on feuds
between individuals and groups. Sheppard and Deputy Chief Mike Wood said most
of these people are known to the police department and that officers are
targeting them in a number of ways. For example, Wood said, if police don’t
have the evidence to arrest someone on a shooting, they may have enough
evidence to arrest him on a drug charge.
Wood
said that in addition to neutralizing the threat, the selective targeting sends
a message to other violent groups that they’re under scrutiny.
The RPD
initiated Operation Cool Down over the summer in response to the surge in
shootings and to get guns off the street. Sheppard said the initiative was
successful because the city had fewer homicides in the third quarter than it
did in the second quarter. There were 20 homicides during the second quarter,
and 95 shootings.
Operation
Cool Down is over, Sheppard says, but some of the program’s tactics are still
being used. Cool Down and other police initiatives have drawn scrutiny over
whether “proactive policing” — a term Sheppard uses often — is really code for
racial profiling.
More
statistics from today’s press conference: Rapes are up from this time last
year, from 60 incidents to 66; robberies increased from 521 to 571; aggravated
assaults are up from 857 to 875; burglaries dropped from 2,449 to 2,212 — the
RPD has made burglaries a priority, Sheppard said — and motor vehicle thefts
dropped from 544 to 464, the lowest level in a decade.
The RPD
has recovered 887 guns so far in 2012; 385 of them were used in the commission
of crimes.
This article appears in Best of Rochester 2012.
“So far this year, we’ve had a very tough time with violent incidents,” Sheppard said. “For me, this is painful and frustrating.”
You’re in over your head Chief ! If you had any real compassion for the victims you’d accept that you are now part of the problem and resign !
Let’s tell the story this way:
We have a country where money is king. Making money is considered “better” than not making money (e.g. a “successful artist” is one who sells jeir work; a “professional blogger” earns money for blogging) and the more money you make, the “better” you are.
The way you make money is by selling something for more than it costs to make. One way to do that is to make things people need — things that add value to lives by providing more utility than they cost so not only do you make money, but the people buying the product benefit as well. But once people are content with their lives, that stops working, so you need to create artificial need (marketing and advertising), create artificial scarcity to drive the price up (own natural resources like water), or to cut labor costs (which are regulated by a minimum wage and protected by unions).
So the only thing left is to create a slave class. One way to do that is to go to a country with inadequate labor laws (e.g. China) and exploit workers there. Another way is to try and eliminate unions and minimum wages (which, by the way, already fit one definition of slavery: “to force someone to work at a wage that is not adequate to live on”).
To get people to fight against their best interest, you need a desperate workforce willing to work for less than even minimum wage. To do that you need to eliminate self-esteem. To do that, you create a system of prisons. At the first level, you keep a group barely alive in an area of the city, never support any development (social or economic) and provide high barriers to individual improvement (make it difficult to get permits and loans to start businesses). Give the area a name like “the Crime Crescent” to ensure there is no chance of that area improving. This will also help ensure the area’s housing is the cheapest, and that it is prohibitively expensive to move to another area that is as cheap.
A few of the people in this first prison will commit crimes against people and property — assaults and thefts — for which they go to second-tier prison. A few others will attempt to circumvent the limitations in place and start businesses. Some will sell dangerous drugs and others will only sell marijuana (which is safe and non-addicting, only harmful in that it helps people forget their problems rather than solve them). Target both groups as if they are equal with seemingly insane punishments and put them in the second-tier prison. For anyone making money not selling drugs, it will be easy to put them in prison: usually for an obvious violation like failing to file for a permit of some sort. If a business has a legitimate permit, it will be easy to frame them for selling drugs or tax evasion. In all cases, be sure to imprison the entrepreneurs.
What’s left will be a desperate, uneducated group. When they turn to violence, it will help reinforce their own demonization. You can even have the police chief come out and say how it’s “painful and frustrating” that they behave so poorly toward one another.
To finally use this group for profit, all you need to do is to provide food and shelter in exchange for work. It’ll look like a charity — like you’re “helping the helpless” by giving them a leg-up on a tough life.
And best of all, you never need to raise a whip!
Telling a story is what you’ve done… You seem to have started with the idea that a malicious force in society is intentionally creating a “slave class” for monetary gain. Do you think there is some collaborative effort to create false demand with advertising, imprison entreprenuers and permit violators (…what?) and then corral people into negatively labelled neighborhoods? And all of this is being done knowingly by what or whom? People are not smart enough to pull off this sort of social engineering you describe intenionally. Lets leave some blame for the miscreants actually doing the violence.
“qq”, I’m sorry if I didn’t convey my central point well enough. My intention was not to imply a conspiracy, or a “malicious force”, or even that there are people who devised this plan to profit from it. It seems to me that our collective beliefs define our behavior in the world and as such define our behavior as a group. One belief that permeates American culture is that making money is good and by extension, having a job is good. We don’t, however, specify whether some jobs or money-making techniques are better or worse, only that some are illegal. With all legal money-making techniques being considered equal in value, and having any job being more valuable than not. We have a collective belief that making more money is better, and by extension, people who make more money are better than those who don’t — why else would it seem so natural that rich business leaders meet the President and set public policy while people with median incomes do not?
Through these beliefs, we can explain how we behave. And that’s where I started.
Starting from your theory of violent miscreants, how many do you think there are? Why do they grow up to behave like that? I’d love to hear your opinions.