By Steve Pomper
When is a crime not a crime? When government won’t enforce a law? Sure. But it also may as well not be a crime if someone doesn’t report it. It seems, west coast cities such as L.A., San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle have found a unique way to lower crime rates: don’t enforce laws or prosecute crimes, so people stop reporting criminal activity.
According to a San Francisco Gate story, tourists are avoiding destinations like San Francisco. The urine and feces, vagrants blocking sidewalks, bucket-loads of syringes scattered about, and the unreported street crime are keeping people away.
About San Fran’s current crime culture, an Australian tourist wrote on Reddit, “Is this normal or am I in a ‘bad part of town?’ Just walked past numerous homeless off their faces [drunk, high, etc.], screaming and running all over the sidewalk near Twitter HQ and then a murder scene. Wife is scared to leave hotel now.” Embarrassing.
The SF Gate also reported on another Aussie tourist, Matthew Bate, was killed outside a hotel in 2017. FOX 2 KTVU reported San Francisco police arrested David Murillo and charged him with the murder. This reported crime underscores the major crimes increasing in cities where people are underreporting lesser crimes.
Underreporting crime also extends to firearms. In a 2016 paper from Brookings.edu, a study conducted in Washington D.C. and Oakland, CA. found that “few gunfire incidents resulted in 911 calls.”
Researchers used the gunshot detecting technology Shotspotter to correlate gunshots with 911 calls. “It turns out that the reporting of gunfire incidents is extremely low.”
This is a consequence of not enforcing laws against leftist-sanctified criminals. This lax law enforcement and non-reporting of lawbreaking results in fraudulently lower crime rates, which leftist politicians then use to promote their reelections.
A recent report by Seattle’s KOMO News shows how bad it’s getting. A survey of over 100 people from the King County’s Building Owners and Managers Association reveals many, perhaps most, crimes are going unreported. “Of those who have experienced seven or more incidents a month, 80% did not report anything to police.”
In a dramatic illustration, on October 14th, a “homeless” man spent two hours attempting to set fire to a business. Was the suspect consumed by shadows, hiding in an alley? Nope. There he was, surrounded by his personal items scattered on a well-lit sidewalk.
He stood next to the Trinity nightclub, frenetically fanning the flames with an item of clothing. The club sits in the Pioneer Square district of downtown Seattle—ironically, near the King County Courthouse and not many blocks from the Seattle Police Department headquarters.
Captured on video, you can see people walking nearby and cars passing as the arsonist works. At one point, the suspect even flags down a passing motorist. The suspect then returns to fan the increasing flames.
Neighborhood people asked KOMO News reporter Matt Markovich to see the suspect’s picture. No one reported recognizing the suspect who remains at large. Neighbors said they “wonder if the police do catch him, will he be prosecuted?”
KING 5 News reported more evidence of increasing crime. Another Pioneer Square business, Simply Seattle, has been burglarized four times just this year. Most recently, burglars ripped off thousands of sports jerseys most selling for $130. The most popular, of the now defunct NBA Seattle SuperSonics, cost $300. The owners have reluctantly decided they will only sell the iconic Sonics jerseys online.
The cultural decay produced by non-enforcement of certain laws against certain people is unconscionable. People in leftist-run cities are so inured to the absence of the rule of law and equal justice they no longer call the police not only for minor street crimes but also for serious crimes. Any passerby could have prevented this crime by pressing three digits on his or her cell phones—but none did.
The man was finally successful with setting the building ablaze. And even though the building was unoccupied, firefighters were at risk of injury or death because the fire had spread up the wall to a difficult location to fight, between the ceiling and roof. If I sound like I’m taking that part personally, my wife was a firefighter for 25 years.
This reluctance to report crimes may have led to a down tick in crime stats, but it has also led to a surge in unreported crimes at all levels of severity. Still, leftist politicians don’t seem to care, and the onslaught against civility and the cops continues.
Rick Oltman in his article, “The Underreporting of Crime,” at socialcontract.com writes, “The underreporting of crime in our country has become an epidemic that threatens our Republic with increased violence and urban anarchy.”
Oltman says crime stats are used to deploy the commensurate police resources to the neighborhoods where needed. However, if people don’t report crimes, the crime rates go down, and so may the number of officers assigned to a specific area. Although, if city leaders don’t allow the police to do their jobs and refuse to prosecute offenders, when cops do manage to sneak in an arrest or two, none of it matters, does it?
But a community’s eventual descent into non-reporting is human nature, right? People will only do something that doesn’t work for so long. In fact, isn’t that the definition of insanity? Trying something over and over and expecting different results?
Well, yes. And that is at the heart of the problem. Voters in large west coast cities repeatedly elect the same kind of candidates. Apparently, they keep expecting different results.
Why?
Because radical leftist community groups, academia, and politicians, along with their mainstream media allies have been quite successful in selling anti-police, anti-conservative, anti-Republican myths.
Many people in leftist-dominated communities are fed up with their radical officials. But they fear the anti-cop, anti-conservative, mythology more than they fear the leftist reality: a proven progressive, socialist disastrous track record.
I can understand the aversion to insanity. However, reporting a crime even if you’re likely to get the same negative results can still mean increased patrol officers assigned to your area.
And that will be really great—eventually, someday, if/when the anti-police pendulum swings back toward sanity—if certain city and county governments ever allow cops to get back to doing their jobs and then the people can get back to reporting crime.