Pirate's Cove

Shootings, as well as all sorts of crime, are skyrocketing due to multiple reasons, including wanting to defund the police and the police saying “we’re going to take a light touch because you people suck and we get blamed for responding to your violence”, the BLM movement being hijacked by white, liberal Antifa nutters, and from BLM itself, and they don’t think cops will help

Record wave of deadly shootings hits US cities. More police aren’t the answer, activists say

The Rev. Carl Day knows he’s taking a risk every day he walks the streets of Philadelphia, where at least one person has died violently every day this year, mostly from guns.

Known as the “Pastor in the Hood,” Day, who leads the Culture Changing Christians church, talks to young drug dealers and gang members, asks them “why are you out here? Who will look after your kids if you die? What needs to change?”

And something needs to change: As of Aug. 14, Philadelphia has seen at least 262 homicides this year, 30% more than this time last year.

“People are scared. Legitimately. My wife is scared,” says Day, 35. “There’s a lot of wars going on in Philadelphia now. But we don’t allow those things to deter us. You have to either hide or try to engage. And we have to engage.”

All due respect, how’s that working, Rev? The engagement needs to begin when they are very young, to offset the engagement of turning inner city kids into thugs.

Philadelphia is just one of dozens of major U.S. cities plagued by a horrifying increase in gun violence this year, from New York and Milwaukee to Los Angeles and Denver. Experts say systemic reforms are needed to reduce the violence, not just more police officers on the streets.

The violence — from nine people shot at a family picnic in Denver last weekend to three fatal shootings Wednesday in Indianapolis — comes amid a backdrop of nightly protests against police brutality, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent economic devastation caused by widespread unemployment.

Blaming the gun for the actions of thugs.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly singled out many of those cities, criticizing their Democratic leadership, including Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, for failing to control their streets. In July, the president announced he was dispatching hundreds of federal agents and investigators into Chicago, Kansas City and Albuquerque, among other cities, to assist local police departments as part of Operation LeGend, named for a four-year-old boy who was shot and killed while sleeping at his Kansas City home in June.

“This rampage of violence shocks the conscience of our nation, and we will not stand by and watch it happen. Can’t do that,” Trump said last month.

But violence-prevention experts say the president’s comments reflect a simplistic approach to a historically complicated problem of violence within Black communities. They say a heavy-handed approach, while politically popular with the president’s largely white, suburban base, will likely exacerbate existing conditions as communities recoil against what could be seen as an occupying force.

Right, because stopping criminals is apparently bad. Yet, all we read throughout the story is that homicide is way up in Democratic Party run cities all over the country.

Many Black community advocates say sending more law enforcement officers to violence-plagued cities fails to address the underlying drivers of that violence: generations of institutional racism, systemic poverty and the unaddressed consequences of slavery. They argue those factors have created a cauldron of violence that can only be addressed by major, sustained campaigns aimed at changing the way people are educated and how they value the lives of those around them, while also providing alternatives through good jobs and stable housing.

How, exactly, do those conditions create violent people? Slavery ended 150 years ago. There’s not one person alive who was a slave in the U.S. during that time. As for institutional racism and systemic poverty, this is happening in Democratic Party run cities, ones run by Democrats for 50+ years. Of course, after giving these inner city blacks money, food, and housing, they want more. As for jobs, we’ve all seen the trope about those on welfare in government housing refusing to work. It may sound raaaaacist, but, you can’t argue with reality.

“There’s a perfect storm of economic, psychological and health crises in our country, and that’s impacting communities that have always borne the brunt of these disparities,” says Reggie Moore, the injury and violence prevention director for the Office of Violence Prevention in Milwaukee, where homicides have doubled to 106 as of Friday afternoon, compared to the same time last year. Non-fatal shootings in the same period have risen from 235 to 408 this year, Moore said, citing city statistics.

“There’s been generations of pain and trauma,” Moore says. “When you feel that either everybody in your community has been shot or is shooting, that normalizes violence.”

But, who’s shooting? It isn’t white people. This is what the FBI calls “black in origin crime”.

“There’s this hopelessness: if you think you’re going to die tomorrow, why does it matter what you do today?,” says Taifa, 65, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist, activist and author of the book “Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice.” “Many people don’t acknowledge the root causes of the crime that’s going on in these communities. When there is lack, and there is so much lack in Black communities, it’s predictable you will have crime.”

None of this explains why there is a big jump crime in black neighborhoods all of a sudden. And so many of these same people do not want police, so, they get no police. And all this is happening in Democratic Party run cities.

Read: As Shootings Skyrocket In Democrat Run Cities, They Say More Police Aren’t The Answer »