Monday, August 19, 2013

Ray 'Police State' Kelly as a Government Tool

ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos showed an interview with NYC police commissioner Ray Kelly, this Sunday. Kelly is considered a candidate to replace Janet Napolitano as head of the Department of Homeland Security. During the interview Kelly discussed the ruling by a federal judge declaring that the way his department carries out its “stop-and-frisk” policy is unconstitutional.

Kelly argues that because of the ruling, shootings and murders are likely to go up in the city and, indeed, they are likely to do so. But is this justification for going back to  “stop-and-frisk” ? Kelly argues it is. Perhaps his strongest argument for  “stop-and-frisk” came in a recent WSJ op-ed,  The NYPD: Guilty of Saving 7,383 Lives.

Kelly wrote:
Since 2002, the New York Police Department has taken tens of thousands of weapons off the street through proactive policing strategies. The effect this has had on the murder rate is staggering. In the 11 years before Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office, there were 13,212 murders in New York City. During the 11 years of his administration, there have been 5,849. That's 7,383 lives saved —and if history is a guide, they are largely the lives of young men of color.
So far this year, murders are down 29% from the 50-year low achieved in 2012, and we've seen the fewest shootings in two decades.
These are indeed impressive numbers, but they are taken from the prospective of a police state planner, who is given a mission to decrease crime, without looking at the policies that result, in the first place, of some trigger happy "young men of color" strolling through the city as though they are at risk of being shot, if they don't shoot first---which they are.

That problem starts long before "stop and frisk". It is the result of LBJ "Great Society" policies, which have resulted in fathers abandoning families. It is the result of poorly educated youth by government, especially at inner city schools. It is the result of minimum wage laws, which make it impossible for unskilled youth to get jobs. It is the result of the insane government war on drugs, which causes drug dealers to carry weapons. (Without the war on drugs, there wouldn't be any reason why marijuana, cocaine etc. wouldn't be sold cheap next to aspirin in convenience stores by grandmothers at the cash registers.)

And so, we have a series of government interventions against the liberties of individuals that cause the gun-shooting young men. What really, from their perspective, is their alternative? But, instead of Kelly calling for the end to drug laws, minimum wage laws and mandatory "education" sentences, he is in favor of even more invasions of liberties, the stop and frisk.

In short, he is a tool. He is a cog in the wheel of ever expanding government. He doesn't see the solutions that would eliminate gun-shooting youth all together, he only sees the solutions that result in more government  intimidation and coercion--solutions, where thousands upon thousands, by his own admission, have been killed.

He is all for more police power: .

But, he has it all wrong, we don't need greater police powers, we need less government, a lot less. Then there would be no reason to expand the police state. The expansion of the police state is always a slippery slope. First they frisk young black kids, who will they frisk next and why? Maybe, not you today or the next day, but someday, maybe on the suspicion that you are carrying gold coins or maybe your cell phone is scanned to look for a Bitcoin app. That's the direction a police state moves in.

Oh and, btw, just to prove you are getting immune to all this, you are getting occasionally frisked on suspicion of being a terrorist and probably don't even realize it, but it happens every time you take  a plane---and soon other means of transportation.

3 comments:

  1. No reason to reach to any of the above analysis. There's a very simple explanation: NYPD and Bloomberg are engaging in a giant post-hoc fallacy. Crime has been declining for decades NATIONALLY despite an explosion in private gun ownership over the same period. NYPD and Bloomberg are riding this wave but lie to the people and credit themselves for the purpose of grabbing more power.

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  2. Exactly! Compare and contrast the reduction in crime in NYC vs that of the national average. I am willing to bet this alone nearly wipes out all of Bloomberg's "gains".

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  3. Being apart of the enforcement class takes a special kind of psychopath and Kelly fits the bill as do 99.98% of cops.

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