Trump Trainwreck - Ongoing diary of betrayal and evil

[Warren Dew]

(01-26-2017, 07:56 AM)Odin Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:39 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:12 PM)Odin Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:10 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-25-2017, 05:08 PM)Odin Wrote: He's tweeting about shit he sees on cable news. One of his tweets, IIRC, was him agreeing with Bill O'Reilly (a conservative pundit on Fox News) that he might need to "send in the Feds" into Chicago because of it's supposed "crime problem" (a small uptick in the violent crime rate in the last 2 years).

God help us all.

A small uptick in what was already a prodigious violent crime rate there in the South Side.  I mean, keep it in perspective, but keep it ALL in perspective.

Still much lower than 30 years ago.

And still way outside developed country norms.  Chicago had 468 murders in 2015, and 762 in 2016 (this link says 480 in 2015).  It accounted for nearly half the increase in murders in the US in 2016.  Japan by contrast had 933 in 2015, despite having 50 times more people than Chicago.  If you don't think Japan is a fair comparison, let's look at at, say, the Netherlands by murder rate.

The Netherlands - 0.9 murders per 100,000
Amsterdam - 2.3 m/100,000

Chicago in 2015, 15.6 murder per 100,000.

Even NYC is down to 2.8 or so.  Maybe something is amiss there in Chi-Town, after all?  I don't think that claiming that it still isn't QUITE as bad as the early 90s makes much sense, do you?

The answer is to end the drug war, not to turn an American city into an occupied territory. And given the polarization of society "sending in the Feds" is more likely to blow up into an outright revolt than it is to solve the problem.

"Send in the Feds" sounds dramatic, but would probably just involve FBI  help to solve murder cases and address underlying issues.

Incidentally, Chicago's murder rate last year was not that far below its peak, which was in 1992:



The Chicago murder rate was up 24% year over year in the first 20 days of 2017, so if that continued to be true for the rest of the year, it would result in an all time high murder rate for the city.

That's what Trump was talking about.  There are all a manner of reasons why the increase might not be sustained for all of 2017, but if Trump "sends in the Feds", he can claim credit if it is not.