John Cohen is ABC News’ pet anti-terrorism expert. I guess there wasn’t enough terrorism this week (yet) to occupy Mr. Cohen’s attention. Either that or all the usual Chicago “more gun control is the answer” commentators were enjoying the beautiful weather when ABC needed insight into the Windy City’s staggering shooting stats (August most violent month in Chicago in nearly 20 years) and a recent high-profile crime (Chicago Bulls Star Dwayne Wade’s Cousin Shot, Killed Pushing Stroller on South Side). Here’s Mr. Cohen’s take:
Cohen attributed the violence in Chicago and other cities to three trends: 1. An increased level of confrontational gang interactions; 2. more guns being carried; 3. and local police pulling back in proactive stops.
“It’s primarily being driven by gang-related activity, and the fact that criminals in these communities believe they are less likely to be stopped by police so they are choosing to carry guns,” Cohen said. “So when a confrontation occurs it’s more likely going to turn into a shooting.”
“People are scared of being involved in a confrontation where another person has a gun and they don’t. So people in these communities are carrying guns, because their perceiving the police being less proactive in trying to find people carrying guns, Cohen said. “It’s a whole different risk question for them. … They would rather take the risk of being caught with a gun illegally than not having a gun if they’re involved in a confrontation with another gang member.”
So gang bangers are doing risk analysis and concluding it’s better to carry illegally than not, in terms of staying alive. Makes sense. But why no mention of bad guys using guns to intimidate? Because Mr. Cohen wants his audience to know that PC policing is the root cause of the recent surge in Chicago’s firearms-related death and injury toll.
And “part of the reason they feel more emboldened to carry… they are seeing they are being stopped less frequently by police.” Cohen said. “Criminals ware much more willing to carry guns because they believe they can get away with carrying those guns, because they are also seeing a decrease in police going out in the communities to contact people and get guns off the street.”
Cohen said proactive stops by police “is the primary way you deal with this type of violence.” . . .
Cohen says decreasing gang-related crime is going to take police officers’ going into those communities and aggressively targeting repeat offenders, people on parole and probation, and gang members — “those individuals who we know are involved in violent activity.”
Targeting how, exactly? Stop and frisk! Roust the bad guys. (You might even torture them.) But most importantly, take away the guns. Et voila! Unarmed gang bangers vs. unarmed gang bangers. Much better!
As if. Common sense says the best way to “target” repeat offenders is to lock them up when they’re caught the first time. The second? Third?
Truth be told, Chicago is Chiraq because the city’s in cahoots with the gangs, enabling their growth and power with a revolving door justice system. More stringent sentencing would upset the apple cart. Meanwhile, Darwin roams the streets. As he always does.
Yeah… Look at what the three strikes system did for CA and their violent crime rate. Much as I despise all things in commiefornia, permanently locking up career criminals is effective.
I would vote to put them to work doing third world sweatshop labor, but that’s just me.
I would settle for putting them to work growing their own food. You don’t grow food, you don’t eat…
Exactly. Send them to an island and give them shovels, rakes, hoes, seeds, buckets, and initial rations to hold them over until the harvest.
Who knows, they might turn out to be good people in that environment. It sure would be nice to know if some country had tried this before to know whether or not it would work. Oh, wait … (Australia for those of you who do not know.)
I have always thought they should work at making gravel out of boulders with sledge hammers and picks.
I was thinking something actually productive and beneficial to the society they harmed. Put them in sweatshops and make them pay for their own incarceration.
All the crap we pay China for…
“Job Creation”
Agreed. Look at Dwane Wades cousin’s shooter. That guy was in prison on gun and drug related charges, and they released him! His sentince would have had him incarcerated through 2019. It’s amazing that the liberal response to felons who should be in jail but aren’t shooting people with illegal guns is 1.take self defense away from law abiding citizens 2.”Criminal justice reform” aka letting more felons out of prison and limited prosecution of repeat offenders. It truly boggles the mind.
Well, it used to work.
The Cowelled crusaders in Washington decided that our prison overcrowding was a violation of our prisoners constitutionally protected rights to be comfy, so they forced us to either kick um loose or build prisons. CA, despite what the libs want you to believe, is a complete mess financially, so they opt to kick um loose.
Phase 1) Kick the minor offenders (Robbery, simple assult, etc) down to the county jails.
Phase 2) As the County Jails were likewise totally at capacity, they then had to kick they’re “minor offenders”
Phase 3) The Revolving door is now up and running.
Make drugs legal and regulated, and 60% of the prison population would vanish overnight.
I think that Chiraq is actually a large, low-security prison run by high-security inmates with the assistance of the prison officials and guards.
The administration assures the inmates that they will remain free to conduct their business. The inmates reward the administration with votes and cash, and the guards with graft.
It’s a little like Mexico, but without those messy enchiladas.
Where’s Snake Plissken when you need him?
I heard he was dead.
I get that a lot.
Nope, but I get that a lot.
What’s missing? Any comment about catch and release or illegal carrying and no jail time. The ABC “analyst” does not apparently think that any Democrat “soft on violent criminal” sentencing policies have any effect upon the murder rate.
“…The ABC “analyst” does not apparently think…”
That’s the whole truth of the matter right there.
Follow the program. Stick with the narrative.
Journalism died two decades ago. All that remains is Propaganda programs with varying degrees of sophistication.
Gonna copy & paste my comment from todays earlier post in Chicago, sorry!!:-
Same ‘ol talking points:-
– Blame the NRA
– Blame Trump
– Blame anyone except for themselves
The police in Chicago are hamstrung by politics and politically correct establishment elites. There is a revolving door justice system where repeat offenders plea bargain down to misdemeanor offences and get released to offend again inevitably leading to them killing someone. Certain segments of society glorify the gang lifestyle and ridicule those amongst their society that do want to study and work hard to better themselves. The communities are quick to protest and try to blame others for the violence, but won’t help the police put the perpetrators away.
Do I know what the answer is? No, but the way to solving the problem is first to identify it, p*ssyfooting around the situation so as to be politically correct helps no one. As far as I see it, only one of the 2 main presidential candidates will state the truth as to the causes of the violence problem in Chicago.
Ahhh, talking heads, don’t you just love ’em?
More true than you know.
“Profiling” works evrytime it’s tried.
Gotta work on definitions. “Profiling”, seems to me, means you form an opinion of someone by his appearance and/or actions. That’s fine, so long as you take no action because of that opinion. When you decide to “stop and frisk”, however, for whatever reason, profiling or other, you need to have probable cause or your actions violate 4A. Worked great for NYC, but was eventually declared unconstitutional and stopped. Correctly, IMHO. Instead of instituting “stop and frisk” back in the day, NYC would have done better to get out of the firearm prohibition business and start encouraging citizens to be prepared to defend themselves, including against robbery. Which would have been constitutional.
Take a look at the pertinent SCOTUS case, Terry v. Ohio, regarding ‘stop and frisk;’ The standard for such activity is NOT full-blown probable cause, but instead reasonable suspicion. This decision has been around since 1968, and is still the Gold Standard for police officers on the subject.
A ‘reasonable OFFICER’ through his experience and learned intuitiveness can determine what is ‘reasonable’ in given circumstances when deciding to make a ‘Terry Stop;’ Activity that a regular citizen might find innocuous can provide reasonable suspicion to a police officer. Once the officer can articulate his reasonable suspicion that a person IS behaving suspiciously, or in a certain place at an unusual time under unusual circumstances, and intends to make contact, he has a right to ‘frisk’ said person for weapons as a matter of course, relying upon the learned reasonable belief that nefarious people are often armed–otherwise, his reasonable suspicion wasn’t ‘reasonable’ in the first place–reasonable suspicion provides cause to search for officer safety purposes. Absent reasonable suspicion (admittedly, a rather vague standard), the search becomes unreasonable as well.
If SCOTUS still holds to this doctrine, there is no reason for cities to hold differently except for PC reasons. Courts can, however, and do find that abuse of Terry v. Ohio by officers will invoke Mapp V. Ohio and the ‘poisonous tree’ doctrine. That one is the REAL ‘Gold Standard’ for Search and Seizure, by the way.
You’re mistaken Larry, while probable cause is needed to arrest and charge someone with a crime, in Terry vs Ohio the Supreme Court ruled that only reasonable suspicion is required for stop & frisk or investigative detention.
“Truth be told, Chicago is Chiraq because the city’s in cahoots with the gangs, enabling their growth and power with a revolving door justice system.”
Exactly and well said, Robert. Chicago has a long and sordid history of corruption consisting of tacit agreements between its political class and criminals. This current accommodation with street gangs is just the latest iteration. When you realize this, the salient fact about official “gun violence” complaints in Chicago is that they’re fundamentally a shuck-and-jive. The people in charge and the people doing bad are on the same side.
Here it is again. Bookmark it. Robert, and it as a hyperlink to your last paragraph. Chicago politicians lobbying for gang support.
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/
have nots trying to reach the top of the pile. “tip o’ the pin, maw!”
farrakhan’s boys versus cogic? not so much.
it’s still prohibition, but this time around factor in the tinderbox of streaming data and being disrespected. powderkeg.
might sort itself out. dedicated triage facilities drag it along ad nauseum.
The principal problem with the shootings in Chicago is the low death rate, only about 15% according to heyjackass.com. This, of course, means that the cost of medical care for the survivors is extracted from the taxpayers, whose birth rates are consequently low. Natural selection might be operating ruthlessly, but not very efficiently and certainly not in any positive way.
Yeah, they need to slow their response times in certain areas, let the boys bleed a bit longer, say an hour or two. I imagine that would improve those statistics. But, would not be popular, since some of the visiting customers might be affected as well, and we can’t have that!
And that would provide data that could end the caliber wars. If you wait an hour you will find out that the 45 is more lethal than a 9mm.
The problem is that they are using FMJ ball rounds. They feed better in marginal weapons and hollow points are double secret illegal.
And #4 completely missed by this “expert”. It’s been an extremely hot miserable wet humid summer(74° dewpoint right now). When you have little impulse control there’s even less now …and rousting 100000 gangbangers ain’t gonna’ fly anymore.
Uh, ban gang-bangers?
Then ban politicians?
/sarc
“1. An increased level of confrontational gang interactions; 2. more guns being carried; 3. and local police pulling back in proactive stops.”
How about, let’s reverse that. 1. Local police pulling back proactive stops because of the Ferguson effect, which leads to 2. more guns being carried by gang bangers, which means that 3. an increased level of confrontational gang interactions are going to end up with someone getting shot.
Either they want cops to do something about crime, or they don’t want cops interacting with blacks and running a risk of someone getting shot by a cop. You don’t get it both ways.
What about banishment? Just kick ’em out.
I know there’s case history of appellate courts striking down such punishments, but if it were a state constitutional provision, they’d have less wiggle room, right?
Maybe we could attach ankle monitors, but instead of arresting someone when they exceed the perimeter, we could arrest them when they enter the perimeter.
“Just kick ’em out.”
Horsecrap, that wouldn’t solve a thing, just move the problems elsewhere. This was solved decades ago, have we never seen “Escape from New York”? Don’t kick ’em out, LOCK ‘EM IN!! Blow up roads and bridges, set up some autoguns to kill anything that moves, leave a few cases of seeds and say goodbye for around 30 years. Anybody still alive will be an expert farmer.
If we act fast we might be able to find some retired VOPOs to help us set up “the Wall.” if we wait they will die off and we will lose their expertise.
This is more off a shower thought than a serious question but: if all firearms magically vanished overnight, would bangers go at it like the Dead Rabbits and the Five Points Gang at the beginning of Gangs of New York? ‘Cause if so, I’d bring popcorn and lawn chair for that sh!t (sarc)
Chicago has a gang problem because the judicial system cash flow depends on it. Commit crime, set bail pay bail, assign public defender, plea down, court cost, corrections, overtime, repeat…endless cycle of local, state and Feds relying on stupid people stealing, drug dealing, assulting, raping, whoring, and murdering to make their coin all the while lying and stealing from the public taxpayer.
I hate “follow the money” arguments cause they tend to be right,
At some point it’s going to reach critical mass. Revenge killings eventually run out of subjects.
Criminals used to be afraid of the justice system. There’s been a rotating door in the courtroom so they’re not afraid of judges. They still used to be afraid of the police; now they seek confrontations with the cops for hope of a payout. Chicago better get used to it.
Who cares, Chicagoans are getting what they voted for. The city has reached a critical mass of liberals and ghetto savages. This means the only acceptable “solutions” will involve taxing the citizens more to provide more free stuff for the vermin and hiding one’s head in the sand. Anyone with any common sense has already made a reservation with U-haul.
If guns magically disappeared tomorrow, people would kill each other with clubs, knives and strangling thumbs.
Then the next day someone would build a home made gun.
The gangs and the Democratic Party run Chiraq as a partnership.
That’s why the gangs are still there.
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