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Like so many big American cities, New York is experiencing an enormous increase in violent crime. Last year, the city’s murder rate rose by 47 percent, to a total of 468 people killed. So far this year, it has risen by 17 percent.
What happened last year that might have caused the spike in murders and other violent crimes? One thing that happened was anti-police activism on a large scale, with a resulting decline in proactive policing. Another thing that happened was the pandemic.
In theory, either of these phenomena (or both) might be responsible for the violent crime wave. However, it seems at least as likely that, with people off the street during a pandemic, the murder rate would drop rather than rise.
On the left, Josh Marshall supports the pandemic explanation. “My own sense,” he writes without providing evidence, “is that [the wave of violence] is overwhelmingly the result of the vast dislocations caused by the pandemic.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio concurs. He notes that “our entire lives were turned upside down [by a global pandemic], a perfect storm.” Murder, though, isn’t a necessary byproduct of having one’s life turned upside down.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, de Blasio’s fellow Marxist, subscribes to an economic theory of the murder wave. “Do you think this has to do with the fact that there is record unemployment, right now?” she asks.
The question is rhetorical, but deserves to be answered. One way to address it is to examine what has happened in other parts of the world where the pandemic has also hit hard, both in health and economic terms, to see whether they too have endured exceptionally high rates of murder and other violent crime. If they haven’t, then the supposed link between the pandemic and violent crime spree doesn’t hold.
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Nicole Gelinas undertakes this analysis in a column for the New York Post. She points first to London:
In London, the global city that most closely resembles Gotham, the murder rate plummeted last year. It fell to 126 from 150, down 16 percent.
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They’re Trying to Shut Us Down
Over the last several months, I’ve lost count of how many times the powers-that-be have tried to shut us down. They’ve sent hackers at us, forcing us to take extreme measures on web security. They sent attorneys after us, but thankfully we’re not easily intimidated by baseless accusations or threats. They’ve even gone so far as to make physical threats. Those can actually be a bit worrisome but Remington has me covered.
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JD Rucker