A Cop with an Uzi on Every Corner
Crime in some places in the US is so bad - so much worse than average places - that drastic steps are needed. Read this story in the New York Times today and try to imagine living in this housing project. Sure, if you asked me, housing projects should not exist in the first place. They just breed problems. But the reality is that they do exist - and the out of control crime in many on them should not be tolerated by our society. The same is true for all areas with out of control crime rates.
One way to deal with this would be to put a cop on every corner with an Uzi in these bad neighborhoods. I am not kidding. In fact, I got this idea years ago from a liberal friend of mine who used to be a cube mate at work. Really, the first job of government is to protect its citizens. We need a one hundred-fold increase in policing in the worst neighborhoods. In housing projects a cop may be needed on every floor 24/7.
All of this could be done as a federal effort (for one reason, it is expensive). Good FBI statistics are kept on crime rates in neighborhoods. We know exactly where the major crime centers are. They are mostly in inner city neighborhoods in big and mid-sized cities. Set a crime rate threshold, and if it is surpassed then send in legions of federal police to help the local police.
This approach would of course draw fire from many as being racist. That is because nearly all of the really bad neighborhoods are either black or non-white Hispanic. But so what? Do the non-criminals in the bad neighborhoods have to be at the mercy of the roaming thugs in their midst just because some cry racism?
It seems that we have a war going on inside the US, in inner city neighborhoods, but we forgot to send any troops in to fight to defend our citizens. We need to send in scores of police to retake these awful neighborhoods and then occupy them. Really, why has this never come up? Of all the nonsense that government does - how about simply shutting down the terrible criminal environments that millions of Americans, mostly non-whites, have to deal with every day?
If my neighborhood suddenly had crime rates like in say the inner city of Detroit, I would welcome a cop on every corner. The more the merrier.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:10 am
While some will accuse actions like this of racism, more will accuse government of overstepping its bounds with what would seem to be a declaration of martial law if certain thresholds are met - martial law that only applies to a small area, as opposed to nation-wide.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Hoodlumman,
I understand that. But marital law implies that you shoot people after curfew and so on. That would not be needed. Just a whole lot of cops doing standard police work would do the job.