Should authorities use force to halt violence?
By Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk
Recent riots on the streets of London have set off a fierce debate there about whether the United Kingdom's recent recession-driven austerity measures are causing unrest, or whether authorities should simply crack down with the harshest possible measures.
Similar debates are developing in the United States, where so-called "flash mobs" of teens are blamed for violence in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City.
What's behind the violence? How can it be brought to a standstill? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, consider the issue.
Joel Mathis
Urban violence is nothing new but American city-dwellers are used to the problem being mostly contained to poor, largely minority areas of our cities. The recent incidents in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City are notable for one commonality: they took place in those cities' glitzier shopping districts, "good neighborhoods" usually untouched by strife.
Cynicism is easy; violence only matters when it happens to the white and well off. But the perception of increased violence, fair or not, can create a negative feedback loop that has real effects on a city and its prospects. Think of New York in the 1970s; it took decades for the city to make a comeback.
So while we need to plug away at underlying social ills ― and there are many ― we should also take quicker and more direct action. We must flood the streets with cops.
The idea has an honorable liberal pedigree. It was President Bill Clinton, after all, who pushed to put 100,000 new police officers on American streets back in the 1990s. And smart police forces have adopted "community policing" methods ― where officers walk a beat, like in the old days, getting to know neighborhood residents ― that have proven effective in preventing crime, but require manpower.
Here's where government austerity compounds the problem: The police forces in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City have been stretched in recent years by recession-era budgeting. The problem will get worse: Federal grants to local police forces across the country are being slashed in the name of deficit cuts. Police forces are being asked to do more with less. Like everybody else, they can't.
The drive to slash domestic spending isn't just affecting social programs and the safety net. It's cutting into protective services that could help put a lid on violence and unrest. Be sure to give thanks to the Republican Party.
Ben Boychuk
Oh, please. Federal funding of local police was never the panacea its liberal supporters claim. Of those "100,000 new cops" President Clinton proudly touted during his eight-year administration, a National Institute of Justice report concluded that federal grants only paid for somewhere between 69,000 and 84,000 new police.
Meanwhile, a Heritage Foundation study concluded that police forces would have grown during the same period by some 40,000 officers anyway. Local police simply used federal funds instead of state and local dollars.
What's more, millions of federal taxpayer dollars flowed to police departments patrolling the mean streets of Beverly Hills, Calif., Wellesley, Mass., and Lake Forest Illinois. (A hit-and-run drunk driver in Beverly Hills sideswiped me in the mid-1990s. Nobody was hurt, but when my passenger alerted a nearby patrol car, the department responded with six more black-and-whites, one motorcycle and ― briefly ― a helicopter.)
Our problem is arguably much deeper than a mere misallocation of federal, state and local resources. Flooding the streets with more cops is fine where it makes sense. How do you know where it makes sense? New York City's amazing 77 percent drop in crime since 1994 was the result of several factors, including community-based policing. Rather than just cracking heads, New York's Finest used their heads.
Community policing worked because police knew where to go thanks to an analysis and accountability system called Compstat, one of Chief William Bratton's major innovations.
Bratton's data-driven police philosophy has spread across the country to cities such as Los Angeles, Baltimore, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Could it help prevent mob violence in London, too? We'll likely never know.
Bratton for a moment was a candidate to take over Scotland Yard. But the Brits blanched. "America polices by force," one London cop told the New York Post. "We don't want to do that in this country." The yobs and thugs know all too well that Britain no longer polices "by force." Let's hope we never adopt that view here.
Ben Boychuk (bboychuk@manhattan-institute.org) is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Joel Mathis (joelmmathis@gmail.com) is a writer and blogger in Philadelphia.