Ain't That America

Here's an example of how actions have consequences. In 2003 the President phased out the COPS program that Bill Clinton used to put 100,000 more law enforcement officials on the streets and reduce crime to historic lows. Two years later, in 2005, violent crime shoots up, with murders up 4.8%.

You would think the first article, about the dropping of the COPS program, would get mentioned in the second. You would be wrong. There's a brief mention of "crime reduction efforts" in the 1990s, but not what they were, and certainly not that they were eliminated. The writer had no interest in contextualizing the news, just reporting it. You also would be wrong if you assumed that the increasing disparity in incomes, and the rise in poverty, which is a major factor in violent crimes, would get a mention.

Nope, just the numbers, and a couple flacks pooh-poohing the trend, saying "things fluctuate, like the stock market."

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, said that after the sharp decreases during the 1990's, the crime rate over all from 2000 to 2004 was "essentially flat." (Yes, and what happened after that? -ed.)

"We squeezed all the air out of the balloon after having seven good years of crime decline," Mr. Fox said. "That ended when the 1990's ended. Now the challenge isn't so much to make the crime rate go down more, because that's not necessarily realistic, but the challenge is to make sure that the small blip doesn't become a big one."

Apparently criminals start fresh at the beginning of every decade, according to this guy.

Rumsfeld certainly started a trend among these kind of folks with his "stuff happens" comment, didn't he?