Not correct, see the link I provided above. Well, regarding murder rates that is. Interesting that blame is placed elsewhere...except where it belongs.

What link?

To be clear, I blame the criminals and the online platforms that enable them to organize their crimes and sell their stolen goods. I don't blame the police. I saw some video of one of the recent thefts and the police were stopping cars at gunpoint and beating the shit out of the thieves. It is clear they are taking this seriously.

The experts in this kind of crime also blame the online platforms. A bill introduced in the House this fall would require e-commerce marketplaces, such as Amazon and eBay, to verify the identities of third-party merchants that sell more than $5,000 worth of goods a year. The FBI is also collaborating with retailers to curb large-scale thefts in stores.

“We can’t arrest or prosecute our way out of this,” said Barbara Staib, a spokeswoman for the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention. “We need to change our approach.”

You lost the argument. Dunno claimed that homicide rates are skyrocketing. He provided data that showed they have drastically increased. The fact that they are lower than they were decades ago does not change the current spike.

Start the discussion over with whatever point you were trying to make.

You too have not read the thread. The post that started this diversion was mine, I wrote

Quote:

"The crime rate in America has been dropping steadily for decades"

Dunno responded to my post about the long term, historical, drop in crime by claiming it was a result of a police conspiracy and that homicide rates have "skyrocketed".

The facts are clear that even with the recent spike in homicides crime rates are still significantly lower than they have been historically.

Regarding the topic of the thread, organized retail crime. I doubt police budgets have anything to do with it. As posted earlier Oakland increased their police budget. San Francisco's budget was flat but that was due to a decrease in need for police at the airport it will increase again next year. Other cities with Organized retail crime issues are increasing the police budget

Over the last decade more than 30 states have increased their theft thresholds. I expect that this, and overworked police departments, played a role but the primary drivers of this decade long, country wide, surge in organized retail theft are the online platforms that enable thieves to organize and sell their stolen goods. Note, this is not just my opinion. I have posted on this thread, and the other one, multiple experts who agree that it is the online platforms that are driving this.

"Not correct, see the link I provided above. Well, regarding murder rates that is. Interesting that blame is placed elsewhere...except where it belongs."

Here's the thing, where is that exactly? The murder rate started jumping in early 2020. Before the riots got rolling, before Biden took office, no police had been defunded, no one was advocating for it very much, several years after Trump took office, decades after video games came out, a half century after Rock and Roll corrupted the youth, long after the US became obsessed with guns, in cities across the country, red, blue purple, and green, ...

Overall crime rates have been dropping by large numbers for a very long time. Then murder, and specifically gun murders took a sharp jump. And everyone wants to play gotcha games with it like they have the magic answer as to what is causing it, and unremarkably it is always the "other side", whoever that may be.


My neighbor is a Westerville, OH cop. He's a good guy, and a sincere guy. Last Summer as he was over picking my blueberries I asked him what he thought was behind it. He told me that after the Columbus Police shot Ma'Khia Bryant On April 20, 2021 the Columbus City Council didn't support the police so "they stopped doing preemptive stops" and that was behind it. 3 problems with that. First, the police can't just do preemptive stops, they have never been shown to actually reduce crime (especially murder), and the murder rate in Columbus (and elsewhere) had been rising for a full year before that incident. So even though he was very convinced that was the answer, that ain't it.


So the question remains, where does the blame belong?

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Excellent points. I agree 100% with what Nutella stated above....the blame needs to be on the criminals. Here is an excerpt from the article I linked, maybe this will give us some more answers to your question? possibly?

Despite Philadelphia blowing past the prior record of 500 murders set in 1990, the city's progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner, a champion of bail and police reform, insists that there is no crime wave.
'We don't have a crisis of lawlessness, we don't have a crisis of crime, we don't have a crisis of violence,' Krasner said in a testy exchange with reporters on Monday, noting that violent crimes committed without guns are down.
'There is not a big spike in crime — that is not true. There is also not a big spike in violent crime, either,' Krasner insisted.
Krasner has said that the true crisis is 'gun violence' and argued that better education and healthcare services would reduce violent crime.
He also blamed the police for a low clearance rate, noting last month that just 27 percent of gun homicides and 15 percent of non-fatal shootings have resulted in arrest.

I've seen quotes from people denying any increase. It just isn't true. The first step is recognizing you have a problem. But things like what you linked that wants to blame Democratic run cities ignores the obvious fact that this is happening everywhere, not just cities and not just places run by Democrats. Of course when you look at just cities you see a lot of places run by Democrats, they run a lot of the cities. But if you want me to believe it is the Democrats' fault you need to show me how it isn't happening in Republican run cities, and you can't do that.

But we need to stop trying to blame bail and bail reform or defunding the police.. The only purposes of bail is to ensure that the accused shows up for trial and all hearings. It isn't punishment and it isn't to be used to warehouse people you think may commit crime in the future. This isn't Minority Report Land. The increase is happening in places with bail reform. That is true. It is also happening in places that do not have bail reform. And very few if any places have changed police funding and the increase is everywhere, including places that have done nothing with police funding.

This country has always been shit at finding the reasons for crime. We always use one tool, more police. And we just continue to refuse to actually think about it because sound bites are more fun. Actually working on it is much harder.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

jpo, keeping it real, as usual.

We're still trying to figure out why crime went on a decades-long descent starting around the 90's.

Economics, political trends, policing techniques, incarceration trends, crack cocaine going out of style.

Success had a million fathers. Now with a spike, we suddenly have an orphan again.

I tend to think unemployment has a lot to do with it. Lots of unemployed young people is almost always bad juju. Hopefully that'll means one of the causes may be short-lived, as unemployment has been headed down. Also our national love affair with drugs of all kinds.

Way back in days of yore when I was in law school my criminal law professor let me do a couple semesters of independent study with him. At the time, before I decided that hanging out with criminals all day every day would be a drag, I had plans to work in criminal defense. What I was interested in at the time and put some time into studying was the causes of crime and how to prevent it. 30 years later I still don't have the correct answer. Just lots of things I can tell you aren't the right answer. :)

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

 Interesting update to this topic

'Maybe we cried too much' over shoplifting, Walgreens executive says | CNN Business

But at the time it fit the narrative for a few posters here.

Never mind that shoplifting IMO likely occurs in EVERY store probably EVERY day the store is open, and even when it is closed by the employees themselves.

From San Fran to some rural deep red town in Idaho............someone is shoplifting something in a store all the time unless 100% of items have the security tags on them or 100% of items are behind lock and key.

I'm not so sure stores file a police report every time there's something shoplifted. The ones I've seen in person, the store personnel all just rolled their eyes and went back to working. It's possible at end-of-shift or something someone tallies up all the possible shoplifts. But I'm not sure about that. The corporate ROI is probably low. It might take 5 minutes per report or something and the expected return on that report is probably something near $0.

They might only report particularly violent or egregious events.

Edit: Wait, my statement isn't true! I did see an awesome one where a beefy 7-11 clerk came tearing out of the store and tackled a guy stealing a case of soda. It almost turned into a full-up brawl, but the thief thought better of it, and ran off. That 7-11 dude was having NONE of it that day.

Today's shoplifting posture is very different than when I was a high schooler in the 80's, working in a grocery store. Our charge was, call the police, try to stop the shoplifter but do not give chase beyond the parking lot.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

A guy I went to high school with claim to fame was chasing down and tackling a guy trying to steal a sub from the quicky mart he was working at.

Indeed. As I posted earlier in this thread this new phase of organize retail theft started in the south, Georgia and Texas. The primary driver is the ease of reselling stolen goods on Amazon, EBay, etc. In the last year the large retailers have been very vocal and pushed Congress to act......the action they want to crack down on Amazon.