This is a difficult topic for me. I have very strong, well-researched views and unfortunately that research flies directly in the face of many of my closest friends; who happen to be law enforcement officers. Let me be clear. When it comes to the individual police officer; I respect most of the ones I’ve met and I respect the sentiment that led them individually to that profession. It’s not unlike my views toward myself as a Veteran and Veterans in general and my position of pacifism and anti-war. I am a Marine; always will be. I respect the Vets but take issue with the system that guides their actions. Same holds true with law enforcement in 2015. I respect the individual officers, but take issue with the system that guides their actions. Needed to say that for my own peace of mind.
Violence has become a perpetual and growing topic. Anymore though, it’s really little more than rhetoric and agenda pushing. Unfortunately almost nobody sees that however and act upon that rhetoric and position themselves in dogmatic fervor that not even data can assuage.
Riots in the streets. Ferguson. Baltimore. Black Lives Matter. It goes on and on and on…..
There exists an issue with law enforcement.
There it is. I said it. There is unquestionably an issue.
This is NOT a police vs. African American issue. Of course black lives matter. All lives matter. (you know many, many officers are, after all, black right?)
This is NOT a police vs. the poor issue.
This, my friends, is a STATE vs. the People issue. This is an issue of control vs the controlled. This is an issue of Liberty. This is an issue of Economics. This is an issue of maligned incentives.
Let’s first create a foundation for ourselves within the same reality. Or at least make an effort to do that. We hear every day of the all the crime across the country. All the murders everywhere. How dangerous it is to be a Police Officer these days. These men and women risk their lives to provide you with protection, you must give them the benefit of the doubt. They just want to make it home to their families each night. I’ve seen so many quotes from police officers holding automatic weapons talking about the Zoo in which they operate which is why they need that automatic weapon, battering ram, helicopter, Bearcat, tank, armored personnel carrier…….etc. etc.
Damn.
Hey if that were true; I’d agree with them. I really would. But do you believe that? Intuitively? Without seeing any data?
Do you drive down the streets of your hometown constantly being shot at, threatened or assaulted? Or is this violent crime spree always talking place somewhere else? But we better take these precautions to prevent them from infecting our community.
The data suggests the latter. That it’s always taking place somewhere else. I can even tell you precisely where it’s taking place. Data is cool that way.
You ready? What do you think? St. Louis? No…..Chicago right? DC!!? Wait, Detroit, it HAS to be Detroit.
All wrong.
Want to know where all this violence is taking place……
1992
That’s where it’s all taking place. And ’91. ’93 and ’94 weren’t terrific either. 1991 had the highest per capita violent crime rate in our country’s history. 758.2 violent crimes per 100K citizens. 1992 was basically equal. 757.7 violent crimes per 100K. This is right when I was getting out of high school and for the first time in my life enjoying levels of autonomy, freedom and decision making that I had never experienced. NOT ONCE did my Mother warn me that I was pushing out in to the most violent culture in our nation’s history. Not once.
Did she not love me? Did she not want to protect me? Not even warn me?
24,703 Murders in 1991. 24,526 in 1993. And keep in mind, these are only those murders and violent crimes that were reported to the federal government to allow them to aggregate statistics. The real number is…….who knows…..some amount greater than that written above.
For the record, my Mom loved me. Still does. I had an awesome childhood. The reality is she never perceived the threat. The national rhetoric and news wasn’t out there. And in reality, even with this rampant crime wave, the threat was really nonexistent in suburban America. Just as it is today.
So there it is. 1992 +/- a few years. So what about today? With all the news and all we hear about the constant violence and pressure that police are under, surely the crime rate in the United States is similar to 1992. One would think. OK, perhaps there’s been some improvement because of brilliant policing, but the threat is still HUGE.
Let’s see.
Violent Crime Rate per Capita:
1991: 758.2
2008: 458.6 (whoah)
2009: 431.9
2010: 404.5
2011: 387.1
2012: 386.9
Yup. Low. 2012 is the most recent year aggregated through the UCI. 2013 data has been released but not yet published in the UCI database. I have seen glimpses of the 2013 data however and guess what……..it seems to be following the trend outlined above. Downward.
How downward is this? The UCI only publishes data back to 1960. That’s disappointing for a numbers geek like me. But naturally the further back you go the more unreliable the data gets, so perhaps 1960 is the right cutoff? But I wonder; what is the lowest crime rate year from 1960 to present day? 158.1 in 1961. OK, so we still have work to do for sure. But I’m fairly confident that police looked and behaved much, much differently in 1961 than they do today. Same is true even for 1991, which was a bit of a war zone in some areas of the country, data suggests. I’m also willing to posture that the data collected to create that figure of 158.1 in ’61 was not as complete as the data we have for present day. Just a guess. But I feel good about that guess.
OK. So this is all violent crime. So now maybe you’re thinking, fine, fine violent crime is way down. But MURDER. I hear about murders nonstop. I’m pretty sure that one of these days somebody might just murder me. Well, let’s see.
Highest per capita murder rate was actually 1980 (nice to meet you cocaine) at 10.2 for every 100K citizens. Then during that crime spree of the early 90’s it hovered in the high 9’s every year, close to 10 per. So let’s compare the murder rate the same as we did the violent crime rate:
1991: 9.8
2008: 5.4
2009: 5.0
2010: 4.8
2011: 4.7
2012: 4.7
2013: 3.9 (calculated on my own with a safe population estimate)
Lowest per capita murder rate since 1960? 2013.
How about that. Even though that number is not yet official. The murder data is solid and the population data has not changed much. But even if you want to throw that number out then the lowest murder rate since 1960 belongs to ’62 and ’63 at 4.6. Which is basically where we were in ’11 and ’12.
OK. So now crime is way down. Murder is the lowest it’s ever been. Well….since 1960 anyway. So maybe it’s 2015!!!! It’s all just happening these last few months and the country is spinning out of control! I hear quite a bit even here locally in Cincinnati. Just today in fact our Chief of Police might be losing his job. Pity. New Chief is not going to change crime rates.
So, I could go do this in every city around the country, but man, I have a life. So let’s look at what’s taking place in Cincinnati. I hear about the spike in gun violence and murder EVERY single morning on the radio. I’m serious. EVERY morning. So what is it? How far up is crime and murder in the city in 2015 that is leading to our Chief getting a vote of no confidence?
Today is September 3rd, 2015.
YTD Violent Crime, city of Cincinnati:
1511 Incidents.
Ok. So 2014 had to have been much, much lower. Let’s see.
1462 Incidents.
Lower, to be sure. 3% lower to be exact. So the huge spike in crime is based on a 3% increase in crime? Maybe this has been rising for a while in the city and the citizens are just getting tired of it?
3 year average, Cincinnati violent crime:
1644 Incidents.
What??? So 2015 is 8% improved on the 3 year average.
Ok. Maybe it’s murder specifically. Guns a blazin in the streets. Bodies everywhere.
Murder. YTD. 2015
47
Tragic. No doubt about that. 2014 on the 3rd of September?
47
No change. NO change from 2014 to 2015. And looking historically Cincinnati appears to be heading toward a number that is directly aligned with their history of murders. No crime wave, no spike in crime, no murder spree.
So there it is. I wanted to have that foundation in data so that everyone can understand that there is NO violent crime spree running rampant within our country right now. Police Officers have no increased reason to fear for their lives. Hell they have far fewer reasons to fear for their lives than your average citizen. They are carrying automatic weapons and sometimes riding in tanks and helicopters.
But maybe that’s it. Maybe the violence is implicitly directed at COPS. Perhaps they are under attack by thugs and their lives really are in danger. I’ve heard that storyline a few times the last several months. And that has been true in a couple of incidents. Sadly.
Personally I mourn the loss of all life. Cop. Veteran. Civilian. Child. Adult. All of it is tragic. All of it. I will say that I do not rank the value of one life over the other. It does annoy me when I read articles that display a true show of force when a cop killer is on the loose and you read of MASSIVE man hunts involving 1000s of officers. Guys, damn, if you put that type of vigor in to every murder……..just saying. The reality is the national clear rate on murder (that’s what it’s called when the police solve a crime and close a case successfully) is 64%. Ouch.
Back on track.
Officers tragically killed in the line of duty. Powerful topic today.
I found data for the past decade. I have no doubt that I can go and find older figures, but in the interest of time, let’s just look at the past decade.
By the way, this is inclusive of ALL officer deaths. I’ll break out the number shot and killed, because that is more relevant to the topic we’re discussing. The other deaths, just as tragic, are car accidents, boating accidents, heart attacks, etc, etc.
YEAR TOTAL SHOT
2005 163 60
2006 157 54
2007 192 70
2008 148 41
2009 125 50
2010 159 60
2011 170 73
2012 125 50
2013 107 33
2014 117 48
2015 83 24 (YTD, September 3, 2015)
OK. So there you have it. What do we see here? Over the past decade I wouldn’t say there is a steady decrease, however, since 2012 the numbers do appear lower, but I think we’ll need more years to confirm that. But what do we DEFINITELY NOT see?
We definitely do not see an acute or even a small or steady rise in violence toward police. We don’t. It just isn’t there.
So what about violence BY police TOWARD the public? Admittedly this is tough for me to stomach. Over the past several years there HAS been an acute rise in the amount of video footage taken of officers who are abusive of their power and assumed authority and as a result, serious bodily harm and at times, death being the result. Note what I said. I did not say the level of violence is increasing, I said the amount of video chronicling such violence is increasing. This is a natural result of a culture where everyone has a camcorder in their hand. So one would have to assume that the violence is the same as it’s always been and is just now being recorded, OR, the violence is potentially decreasing BECAUSE they are being recorded. OR….perhaps it’s increasing because they are being recorded……so many potential outcomes…..
Sadly local police departments ARE NOT required to report these statistics to the federal government, so tracking this data is not possible. I’ll repeat. It IS NOT possible. There are many editorials who will make this claim or that, based on this data subset and that. But NO data is anywhere close to complete or accurate. We have NO idea. There is a movement however to begin gaining a better insight in to these occurrences. There is a website now that is sourcing and pulling every national news article that mentions an officer involved fatality. If a fatality of a civilian is mentioned anywhere in the article, as a result of police intervention, they link the article and tally the death.
This includes everyone. Thugs who are threatening officers as well as innocent Grandmother’s and toddlers who were blown away by SWAT team raids at mistaken addresses. (not making that up)
And that, my friends, is the closest thing you will find to accurate data pertaining to officer involved fatalities. That’s pretty sad.
So what are those numbers? Just raw data.
Website started in 2013. Killed by police interaction:
2013: 768 (website started in May)
2014: 1106
2015: 800 (YTD September 3, 2015)
That’s a lot of deaths. On both sides I might add.
But one needs to ask. What is the role of Police Officers? It is certainly, not in the public’s mind anyway, to terrorize or scare the public in to behaving. Is it? Do they feel that’s their responsibility? Is that their approach to crime prevention? Show of force? Not to mention use of force.
So what then? Is it to provide public safety? Is it to enforce laws? That is their common reference right? Law Enforcement.
So how well do they do this role of enforcing the laws? Our only reference is to look at collected data on clearance statistics. Let’s see how they do. This is in aggregate mind you, for the entire nation.
Let’s start with violent crimes, because I intuitively believe that scares most people more than property crime, although property crime is FAR more common and what more people stand a chance of experiencing in their lifetime.
Murder. The worst one. This is the one, I think, that most would want to see perfected even though it, by far, happens least commonly of all.
64.1%
That number, elicits very low confidence for me. So a potential murderer to be, could, should they choose to do so, research this data and understand that they have a nearly 36% chance of getting away with it. And since everyone believes themselves to be a genius in one way or another, that number of 64% is not going to prevent anyone from committing murder. In other words, I doubt many people are looking at our great police work as a deterrent to killing someone. Likely the VAST majority of people in the world feel as I do. They DON’T WANT to take other people’s lives, they value other’s lives. Making it legal or illegal has no bearing on their decision making. Regardless, 64% is bad.
Rape: 40.6%
Robbery: 29.4%
Assualt: 57.7%
Property crimes. Something most of us will likely see or experience, at least vicariously through someone we know, at some point in our lives. I know I have.
Larceny – theft: 22.4%
Motor Vehicle theft: 14.2%
Burglary: 13.1%
Take a close look at these numbers. These are the results we currently get in return for our investment in to law enforcement. I haven’t even yet researched what that investment is, nationally, but I promise you it’s HUGE. I giant hole of tax dollars spent on salaries, equipment and weapons. And the return on investment are the numbers above?
So. Police. By and large. DO NOT solve crimes. I don’t feel that’s a subjective statement any longer. According to the data. Police solve very few crimes.
So, what DO they do? This is where things get muddy and where the heart of all these issues stem. How do they choose their activities and what do these departments get in return for the time they choose to invest?
First. You need start with one basic question. What do Police Departments want? I bet you’ve never asked that before have you? Ask it. What do they want? We know what we want of them. Protection. Collaboration. But what do they want? Not what do they want of us. Surely they want everyone to behave and obey the law to some degree. But when Chiefs and Captains sit down and speak strategically, what is it that they seek? What are their goals?
Now look. I’m not a cop. I’ve never been a cop. So much of what I’m going to type here will be intuitive, subjective and at times anecdotal. Forgive me. I’m not going to go undercover and find my way in to Police Department Board Meetings.
But here’s my guess. And I’m willing to bet I’m right. To oversimplify things, as is my style; here’s what they want.
Police Departments want to improve.
Now I know what you’re saying. Well NO SHIT Scott. But wait. Let’s dissect that statement a bit. “improve”.
That word will mean something different at every police department you visit and will mean something different at the same department year over year. Generally speaking, however, improvement will align itself with the words below:
Growth – I have not once in my life heard of a police department petitioning their constituency for a reduction in force. Not once. It even seems kind of silly to mention it. More police on the streets intuitively means a safer community. Right? Is that an accurate statement? People generally believe that without even thinking it through or researching data. What is the correct number though? It has to finite. Otherwise you would just turn every citizen in the entire country in to a law enforcement officer at the point of adulthood and everyone would be police. So there is a number. But how does one obtain that number? Every department seeks growth, and every department rests on the assurance of public safety to obtain that growth, even though as outlined by the figures above, they do very little to ensure the safety of the public they represent. So if people are going to commit crimes with or without police, and police are going to solve a very small percentage of those crimes anyway. Is police force growth really the right path forward?
Strengthen – this might mean the same thing as growth. However it might also mean procurement of more advanced weaponry, vehicles, training and capability, etc. Then one really has to start asking critical questions. If the police force has not historically solved many crimes to begin with, do we really want them running around with even deadlier weapons? Is that going to have a negative impact on crime within a community? I’m going to suggest it does not. The rise in the use of SWAT tactics is terrifying in this country. We might address this later in the article or I might write a separate article just for SWAT raids. It’s that big of a deal. Has this use of force led to a higher percentage of solved crimes and a safer community? It has not. Objectively speaking. It has not.
Protection – This I see as more internally focused, as in, protection of the police force and officers themselves, as opposed to protection of citizens or the community. Not that it’s a bad thing to want to and try to protect your officers, that’s a good thing. My only point is that, objectively speaking, I don’t see data to suggest that they are in much danger. Again, I understand the rhetoric and it does make sense, but the data just simply does not support such rhetoric.
So. How does Economics come in to play in this discussion? I’m an Economist. So I see economics in every topic. Literally. All of them. Economics, at its core, is a study of Human Action, and everything in life that impacts the human race deals with Human Action and specifically human interaction. So everything is Economics.
I want you to think about a word for a moment.
Prices.
With the exception of those brilliant snow days as kids where we got to watch Bob Barker, you probably have not put much thought in to what prices are and specifically what they aren’t, have you?
What is a price? A price is a subjective number that is ruled by objective data. In America we rarely negotiate. Sure, for your home a little bit, perhaps for a used car. But otherwise you walk in to a store, there is a number posted on a product, you accept that as an inevitability, pay or don’t, then leave. But you do recognize that prices fluctuate correct? The price of gas, clearance items, coupons, sales, price of produce that changes weekly.
These prices are changing without you as a consumer doing anything right? Wrong. Your actions as a consumer are impacting real prices daily. You are impacting those prices through your choices and actions. What you buy, how much of it and specifically what you DO NOT buy has a direct impact on fluctuating prices in the open market. All the way through the supply chain from raw materials to finished products.
How do companies arrive at prices of products? This is a complex question that has a different answer daily in every business and industry. In the end, business managers and entrepreneurs are hedging risks and tweaking their products to make an effort to ask for the highest prices possible from the consuming market. Prices guide most of business manager’s behavior.
A tax funded department, like a police force, cannot be run like a business for the simple fact that it has NO price inputs. The market they represent cannot respond through the choice of consumption that ultimately impact pricing inputs for business decisions. A tax funded department ultimately falls victim to the Washington Monument Syndrome.
What is that?
That is the reality that when a business is faltering or not as profitable as it would like to be how do managers respond? They naturally look at every way possible of cutting costs or increasing value that their product delivers to the free will of consumers. They will look at each expense and rank those costs in order of how much they directly impact the value of their good or service and begin by cutting the expenses that pose the least amount of risk in deteriorating the value of their product.
In a publicly funded institution; the exact opposite thing happens. If a program or department runs the risk of being defunded or not being grown to the level that it would prefer, leaders of that department will look at what activities their department performs that the public desires the most and will cut those activities first, so as to display the impact and importance of their department to show the voting public that they couldn’t survive without them and should never consider defunding them again. It’s kinda sad.
So if a police department cannot review and respond to prices from their community to guide their decisions and which actions they will ultimately take. What does guide these decisions? Make no mistake. It’s money. Like everywhere else. Because it’s with money that they can work to achieve the things they want. Growth. Strength. Protection.
So where do they get money to accomplish their goals?
Sure. The community they represent. Likely they use those tax funds to pay for direct costs such as salaries and perhaps very basic equipment like patrol cars and service pistols. This is just a guess, so not going to get in to the weeds on this one. But where do the real funds come from? Federal grants and programs of course.
And what do they have to do to receive those federal grants and programs? The bidding of federal government. And what does the federal government require in order to provide such assistance and support?
Fight the Drug War.
Why do you think most police forces spend the vast majority of their time, energy and resources in to chasing narcotics?
Because they get to keep the vast majority of seized assets and properties they can show to be linked to drug crime. It’s how they grow their departments. It’s what guides their behaviors.
Coming soon: an entire article on the Drug War and its abject futility.
Coming soon: an entire article on the militarization of domestic police forces and its impact on citizens and their psyche.
Coming soon: an entire article on the profitable and privatized industry of incarceration and understand who is incarcerated and why.
Coming soon: an entire article on what riots are and why they happen. There is no ownership within these communities, those residents do not take stock in their surroundings or feel as if they have the freedom to impact their own home towns. IF they did, I doubt they would burn them down.
Coming soon: an article on SWAT raids tied to the drug war and inexcusable amount of violence being performed in the name of protection and law enforcement.
Coming soon: an article, perhaps an entire book, on the myth of Authority, all the way back to the dawn of Civilization. Authority, and more specifically, the belief in it, has caused more death and destruction than any other myth.
There are issues with law enforcement today. It just doesn’t appear that anyone is recognizing them.
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm
http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/crime-statistics/city-wide-stars-report/
https://www.odmp.org/search/year
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/causes.html
http://www.killedbypolice.net/
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/clearances/13clearance.gif
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/shedding-light-on-the-use-of-swat-teams/
Violence has become a perpetual and growing topic. Anymore though, it’s really little more than rhetoric and agenda pushing. Unfortunately almost nobody sees that however and act upon that rhetoric and position themselves in dogmatic fervor that not even data can assuage.
Riots in the streets. Ferguson. Baltimore. Black Lives Matter. It goes on and on and on…..
There exists an issue with law enforcement.
There it is. I said it. There is unquestionably an issue.
This is NOT a police vs. African American issue. Of course black lives matter. All lives matter. (you know many, many officers are, after all, black right?)
This is NOT a police vs. the poor issue.
This, my friends, is a STATE vs. the People issue. This is an issue of control vs the controlled. This is an issue of Liberty. This is an issue of Economics. This is an issue of maligned incentives.
Let’s first create a foundation for ourselves within the same reality. Or at least make an effort to do that. We hear every day of the all the crime across the country. All the murders everywhere. How dangerous it is to be a Police Officer these days. These men and women risk their lives to provide you with protection, you must give them the benefit of the doubt. They just want to make it home to their families each night. I’ve seen so many quotes from police officers holding automatic weapons talking about the Zoo in which they operate which is why they need that automatic weapon, battering ram, helicopter, Bearcat, tank, armored personnel carrier…….etc. etc.
Damn.
Hey if that were true; I’d agree with them. I really would. But do you believe that? Intuitively? Without seeing any data?
Do you drive down the streets of your hometown constantly being shot at, threatened or assaulted? Or is this violent crime spree always talking place somewhere else? But we better take these precautions to prevent them from infecting our community.
The data suggests the latter. That it’s always taking place somewhere else. I can even tell you precisely where it’s taking place. Data is cool that way.
You ready? What do you think? St. Louis? No…..Chicago right? DC!!? Wait, Detroit, it HAS to be Detroit.
All wrong.
Want to know where all this violence is taking place……
1992
That’s where it’s all taking place. And ’91. ’93 and ’94 weren’t terrific either. 1991 had the highest per capita violent crime rate in our country’s history. 758.2 violent crimes per 100K citizens. 1992 was basically equal. 757.7 violent crimes per 100K. This is right when I was getting out of high school and for the first time in my life enjoying levels of autonomy, freedom and decision making that I had never experienced. NOT ONCE did my Mother warn me that I was pushing out in to the most violent culture in our nation’s history. Not once.
Did she not love me? Did she not want to protect me? Not even warn me?
24,703 Murders in 1991. 24,526 in 1993. And keep in mind, these are only those murders and violent crimes that were reported to the federal government to allow them to aggregate statistics. The real number is…….who knows…..some amount greater than that written above.
For the record, my Mom loved me. Still does. I had an awesome childhood. The reality is she never perceived the threat. The national rhetoric and news wasn’t out there. And in reality, even with this rampant crime wave, the threat was really nonexistent in suburban America. Just as it is today.
So there it is. 1992 +/- a few years. So what about today? With all the news and all we hear about the constant violence and pressure that police are under, surely the crime rate in the United States is similar to 1992. One would think. OK, perhaps there’s been some improvement because of brilliant policing, but the threat is still HUGE.
Let’s see.
Violent Crime Rate per Capita:
1991: 758.2
2008: 458.6 (whoah)
2009: 431.9
2010: 404.5
2011: 387.1
2012: 386.9
Yup. Low. 2012 is the most recent year aggregated through the UCI. 2013 data has been released but not yet published in the UCI database. I have seen glimpses of the 2013 data however and guess what……..it seems to be following the trend outlined above. Downward.
How downward is this? The UCI only publishes data back to 1960. That’s disappointing for a numbers geek like me. But naturally the further back you go the more unreliable the data gets, so perhaps 1960 is the right cutoff? But I wonder; what is the lowest crime rate year from 1960 to present day? 158.1 in 1961. OK, so we still have work to do for sure. But I’m fairly confident that police looked and behaved much, much differently in 1961 than they do today. Same is true even for 1991, which was a bit of a war zone in some areas of the country, data suggests. I’m also willing to posture that the data collected to create that figure of 158.1 in ’61 was not as complete as the data we have for present day. Just a guess. But I feel good about that guess.
OK. So this is all violent crime. So now maybe you’re thinking, fine, fine violent crime is way down. But MURDER. I hear about murders nonstop. I’m pretty sure that one of these days somebody might just murder me. Well, let’s see.
Highest per capita murder rate was actually 1980 (nice to meet you cocaine) at 10.2 for every 100K citizens. Then during that crime spree of the early 90’s it hovered in the high 9’s every year, close to 10 per. So let’s compare the murder rate the same as we did the violent crime rate:
1991: 9.8
2008: 5.4
2009: 5.0
2010: 4.8
2011: 4.7
2012: 4.7
2013: 3.9 (calculated on my own with a safe population estimate)
Lowest per capita murder rate since 1960? 2013.
How about that. Even though that number is not yet official. The murder data is solid and the population data has not changed much. But even if you want to throw that number out then the lowest murder rate since 1960 belongs to ’62 and ’63 at 4.6. Which is basically where we were in ’11 and ’12.
OK. So now crime is way down. Murder is the lowest it’s ever been. Well….since 1960 anyway. So maybe it’s 2015!!!! It’s all just happening these last few months and the country is spinning out of control! I hear quite a bit even here locally in Cincinnati. Just today in fact our Chief of Police might be losing his job. Pity. New Chief is not going to change crime rates.
So, I could go do this in every city around the country, but man, I have a life. So let’s look at what’s taking place in Cincinnati. I hear about the spike in gun violence and murder EVERY single morning on the radio. I’m serious. EVERY morning. So what is it? How far up is crime and murder in the city in 2015 that is leading to our Chief getting a vote of no confidence?
Today is September 3rd, 2015.
YTD Violent Crime, city of Cincinnati:
1511 Incidents.
Ok. So 2014 had to have been much, much lower. Let’s see.
1462 Incidents.
Lower, to be sure. 3% lower to be exact. So the huge spike in crime is based on a 3% increase in crime? Maybe this has been rising for a while in the city and the citizens are just getting tired of it?
3 year average, Cincinnati violent crime:
1644 Incidents.
What??? So 2015 is 8% improved on the 3 year average.
Ok. Maybe it’s murder specifically. Guns a blazin in the streets. Bodies everywhere.
Murder. YTD. 2015
47
Tragic. No doubt about that. 2014 on the 3rd of September?
47
No change. NO change from 2014 to 2015. And looking historically Cincinnati appears to be heading toward a number that is directly aligned with their history of murders. No crime wave, no spike in crime, no murder spree.
So there it is. I wanted to have that foundation in data so that everyone can understand that there is NO violent crime spree running rampant within our country right now. Police Officers have no increased reason to fear for their lives. Hell they have far fewer reasons to fear for their lives than your average citizen. They are carrying automatic weapons and sometimes riding in tanks and helicopters.
But maybe that’s it. Maybe the violence is implicitly directed at COPS. Perhaps they are under attack by thugs and their lives really are in danger. I’ve heard that storyline a few times the last several months. And that has been true in a couple of incidents. Sadly.
Personally I mourn the loss of all life. Cop. Veteran. Civilian. Child. Adult. All of it is tragic. All of it. I will say that I do not rank the value of one life over the other. It does annoy me when I read articles that display a true show of force when a cop killer is on the loose and you read of MASSIVE man hunts involving 1000s of officers. Guys, damn, if you put that type of vigor in to every murder……..just saying. The reality is the national clear rate on murder (that’s what it’s called when the police solve a crime and close a case successfully) is 64%. Ouch.
Back on track.
Officers tragically killed in the line of duty. Powerful topic today.
I found data for the past decade. I have no doubt that I can go and find older figures, but in the interest of time, let’s just look at the past decade.
By the way, this is inclusive of ALL officer deaths. I’ll break out the number shot and killed, because that is more relevant to the topic we’re discussing. The other deaths, just as tragic, are car accidents, boating accidents, heart attacks, etc, etc.
YEAR TOTAL SHOT
2005 163 60
2006 157 54
2007 192 70
2008 148 41
2009 125 50
2010 159 60
2011 170 73
2012 125 50
2013 107 33
2014 117 48
2015 83 24 (YTD, September 3, 2015)
OK. So there you have it. What do we see here? Over the past decade I wouldn’t say there is a steady decrease, however, since 2012 the numbers do appear lower, but I think we’ll need more years to confirm that. But what do we DEFINITELY NOT see?
We definitely do not see an acute or even a small or steady rise in violence toward police. We don’t. It just isn’t there.
So what about violence BY police TOWARD the public? Admittedly this is tough for me to stomach. Over the past several years there HAS been an acute rise in the amount of video footage taken of officers who are abusive of their power and assumed authority and as a result, serious bodily harm and at times, death being the result. Note what I said. I did not say the level of violence is increasing, I said the amount of video chronicling such violence is increasing. This is a natural result of a culture where everyone has a camcorder in their hand. So one would have to assume that the violence is the same as it’s always been and is just now being recorded, OR, the violence is potentially decreasing BECAUSE they are being recorded. OR….perhaps it’s increasing because they are being recorded……so many potential outcomes…..
Sadly local police departments ARE NOT required to report these statistics to the federal government, so tracking this data is not possible. I’ll repeat. It IS NOT possible. There are many editorials who will make this claim or that, based on this data subset and that. But NO data is anywhere close to complete or accurate. We have NO idea. There is a movement however to begin gaining a better insight in to these occurrences. There is a website now that is sourcing and pulling every national news article that mentions an officer involved fatality. If a fatality of a civilian is mentioned anywhere in the article, as a result of police intervention, they link the article and tally the death.
This includes everyone. Thugs who are threatening officers as well as innocent Grandmother’s and toddlers who were blown away by SWAT team raids at mistaken addresses. (not making that up)
And that, my friends, is the closest thing you will find to accurate data pertaining to officer involved fatalities. That’s pretty sad.
So what are those numbers? Just raw data.
Website started in 2013. Killed by police interaction:
2013: 768 (website started in May)
2014: 1106
2015: 800 (YTD September 3, 2015)
That’s a lot of deaths. On both sides I might add.
But one needs to ask. What is the role of Police Officers? It is certainly, not in the public’s mind anyway, to terrorize or scare the public in to behaving. Is it? Do they feel that’s their responsibility? Is that their approach to crime prevention? Show of force? Not to mention use of force.
So what then? Is it to provide public safety? Is it to enforce laws? That is their common reference right? Law Enforcement.
So how well do they do this role of enforcing the laws? Our only reference is to look at collected data on clearance statistics. Let’s see how they do. This is in aggregate mind you, for the entire nation.
Let’s start with violent crimes, because I intuitively believe that scares most people more than property crime, although property crime is FAR more common and what more people stand a chance of experiencing in their lifetime.
Murder. The worst one. This is the one, I think, that most would want to see perfected even though it, by far, happens least commonly of all.
64.1%
That number, elicits very low confidence for me. So a potential murderer to be, could, should they choose to do so, research this data and understand that they have a nearly 36% chance of getting away with it. And since everyone believes themselves to be a genius in one way or another, that number of 64% is not going to prevent anyone from committing murder. In other words, I doubt many people are looking at our great police work as a deterrent to killing someone. Likely the VAST majority of people in the world feel as I do. They DON’T WANT to take other people’s lives, they value other’s lives. Making it legal or illegal has no bearing on their decision making. Regardless, 64% is bad.
Rape: 40.6%
Robbery: 29.4%
Assualt: 57.7%
Property crimes. Something most of us will likely see or experience, at least vicariously through someone we know, at some point in our lives. I know I have.
Larceny – theft: 22.4%
Motor Vehicle theft: 14.2%
Burglary: 13.1%
Take a close look at these numbers. These are the results we currently get in return for our investment in to law enforcement. I haven’t even yet researched what that investment is, nationally, but I promise you it’s HUGE. I giant hole of tax dollars spent on salaries, equipment and weapons. And the return on investment are the numbers above?
So. Police. By and large. DO NOT solve crimes. I don’t feel that’s a subjective statement any longer. According to the data. Police solve very few crimes.
So, what DO they do? This is where things get muddy and where the heart of all these issues stem. How do they choose their activities and what do these departments get in return for the time they choose to invest?
First. You need start with one basic question. What do Police Departments want? I bet you’ve never asked that before have you? Ask it. What do they want? We know what we want of them. Protection. Collaboration. But what do they want? Not what do they want of us. Surely they want everyone to behave and obey the law to some degree. But when Chiefs and Captains sit down and speak strategically, what is it that they seek? What are their goals?
Now look. I’m not a cop. I’ve never been a cop. So much of what I’m going to type here will be intuitive, subjective and at times anecdotal. Forgive me. I’m not going to go undercover and find my way in to Police Department Board Meetings.
But here’s my guess. And I’m willing to bet I’m right. To oversimplify things, as is my style; here’s what they want.
Police Departments want to improve.
Now I know what you’re saying. Well NO SHIT Scott. But wait. Let’s dissect that statement a bit. “improve”.
That word will mean something different at every police department you visit and will mean something different at the same department year over year. Generally speaking, however, improvement will align itself with the words below:
Growth – I have not once in my life heard of a police department petitioning their constituency for a reduction in force. Not once. It even seems kind of silly to mention it. More police on the streets intuitively means a safer community. Right? Is that an accurate statement? People generally believe that without even thinking it through or researching data. What is the correct number though? It has to finite. Otherwise you would just turn every citizen in the entire country in to a law enforcement officer at the point of adulthood and everyone would be police. So there is a number. But how does one obtain that number? Every department seeks growth, and every department rests on the assurance of public safety to obtain that growth, even though as outlined by the figures above, they do very little to ensure the safety of the public they represent. So if people are going to commit crimes with or without police, and police are going to solve a very small percentage of those crimes anyway. Is police force growth really the right path forward?
Strengthen – this might mean the same thing as growth. However it might also mean procurement of more advanced weaponry, vehicles, training and capability, etc. Then one really has to start asking critical questions. If the police force has not historically solved many crimes to begin with, do we really want them running around with even deadlier weapons? Is that going to have a negative impact on crime within a community? I’m going to suggest it does not. The rise in the use of SWAT tactics is terrifying in this country. We might address this later in the article or I might write a separate article just for SWAT raids. It’s that big of a deal. Has this use of force led to a higher percentage of solved crimes and a safer community? It has not. Objectively speaking. It has not.
Protection – This I see as more internally focused, as in, protection of the police force and officers themselves, as opposed to protection of citizens or the community. Not that it’s a bad thing to want to and try to protect your officers, that’s a good thing. My only point is that, objectively speaking, I don’t see data to suggest that they are in much danger. Again, I understand the rhetoric and it does make sense, but the data just simply does not support such rhetoric.
So. How does Economics come in to play in this discussion? I’m an Economist. So I see economics in every topic. Literally. All of them. Economics, at its core, is a study of Human Action, and everything in life that impacts the human race deals with Human Action and specifically human interaction. So everything is Economics.
I want you to think about a word for a moment.
Prices.
With the exception of those brilliant snow days as kids where we got to watch Bob Barker, you probably have not put much thought in to what prices are and specifically what they aren’t, have you?
What is a price? A price is a subjective number that is ruled by objective data. In America we rarely negotiate. Sure, for your home a little bit, perhaps for a used car. But otherwise you walk in to a store, there is a number posted on a product, you accept that as an inevitability, pay or don’t, then leave. But you do recognize that prices fluctuate correct? The price of gas, clearance items, coupons, sales, price of produce that changes weekly.
These prices are changing without you as a consumer doing anything right? Wrong. Your actions as a consumer are impacting real prices daily. You are impacting those prices through your choices and actions. What you buy, how much of it and specifically what you DO NOT buy has a direct impact on fluctuating prices in the open market. All the way through the supply chain from raw materials to finished products.
How do companies arrive at prices of products? This is a complex question that has a different answer daily in every business and industry. In the end, business managers and entrepreneurs are hedging risks and tweaking their products to make an effort to ask for the highest prices possible from the consuming market. Prices guide most of business manager’s behavior.
A tax funded department, like a police force, cannot be run like a business for the simple fact that it has NO price inputs. The market they represent cannot respond through the choice of consumption that ultimately impact pricing inputs for business decisions. A tax funded department ultimately falls victim to the Washington Monument Syndrome.
What is that?
That is the reality that when a business is faltering or not as profitable as it would like to be how do managers respond? They naturally look at every way possible of cutting costs or increasing value that their product delivers to the free will of consumers. They will look at each expense and rank those costs in order of how much they directly impact the value of their good or service and begin by cutting the expenses that pose the least amount of risk in deteriorating the value of their product.
In a publicly funded institution; the exact opposite thing happens. If a program or department runs the risk of being defunded or not being grown to the level that it would prefer, leaders of that department will look at what activities their department performs that the public desires the most and will cut those activities first, so as to display the impact and importance of their department to show the voting public that they couldn’t survive without them and should never consider defunding them again. It’s kinda sad.
So if a police department cannot review and respond to prices from their community to guide their decisions and which actions they will ultimately take. What does guide these decisions? Make no mistake. It’s money. Like everywhere else. Because it’s with money that they can work to achieve the things they want. Growth. Strength. Protection.
So where do they get money to accomplish their goals?
Sure. The community they represent. Likely they use those tax funds to pay for direct costs such as salaries and perhaps very basic equipment like patrol cars and service pistols. This is just a guess, so not going to get in to the weeds on this one. But where do the real funds come from? Federal grants and programs of course.
And what do they have to do to receive those federal grants and programs? The bidding of federal government. And what does the federal government require in order to provide such assistance and support?
Fight the Drug War.
Why do you think most police forces spend the vast majority of their time, energy and resources in to chasing narcotics?
Because they get to keep the vast majority of seized assets and properties they can show to be linked to drug crime. It’s how they grow their departments. It’s what guides their behaviors.
Coming soon: an entire article on the Drug War and its abject futility.
Coming soon: an entire article on the militarization of domestic police forces and its impact on citizens and their psyche.
Coming soon: an entire article on the profitable and privatized industry of incarceration and understand who is incarcerated and why.
Coming soon: an entire article on what riots are and why they happen. There is no ownership within these communities, those residents do not take stock in their surroundings or feel as if they have the freedom to impact their own home towns. IF they did, I doubt they would burn them down.
Coming soon: an article on SWAT raids tied to the drug war and inexcusable amount of violence being performed in the name of protection and law enforcement.
Coming soon: an article, perhaps an entire book, on the myth of Authority, all the way back to the dawn of Civilization. Authority, and more specifically, the belief in it, has caused more death and destruction than any other myth.
There are issues with law enforcement today. It just doesn’t appear that anyone is recognizing them.
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm
http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/crime-statistics/city-wide-stars-report/
https://www.odmp.org/search/year
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/causes.html
http://www.killedbypolice.net/
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/clearances/13clearance.gif
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/shedding-light-on-the-use-of-swat-teams/