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Policing
Anthropology Policing

Just Like Us, You Say

January 16, 2024 205 Comments

Further to previous rumblings on the subject of crime, another small but noteworthy point:

Why, it’s almost as if antisocial tendencies were not neatly confined to only one form of expression.

This reply to the above is not, I think, entirely trivial:

Part of the reason that they were so desperate to cancel Live PD is that it showed 6 hours of this every weekend.

— someonesalt (@pervertputt) January 15, 2024

Indeed. As noted in one of our earlier discussions:

If you’ve watched the reality series Cops or Live PD, pathological selfishness is very much a staple, a defining attribute of the assorted misfits and predators. I remember one lengthy pursuit of thieves who’d robbed a store at gunpoint, terrorised its owner, and then fled the scene in a stolen car, and whose bid to escape did costly damage to other people’s property, and caused other road users to veer and crash, resulting in serious injury.

When finally apprehended, the thieves, themselves unharmed, were entirely unconcerned by the horror and destruction left in their wake, or the fact that it was all but miraculous that no-one had been killed. Instead, they were loudly indignant, as if they were the victims of the drama, heatedly objecting to the discomfort of handcuffs, and demanding to know why their phones had been confiscated. While, within earshot, injured children were being rushed to hospital.

Scenes like the above, of which there were many, may explain why progressives disliked the series, dismissing it as “copaganda.” I suspect the actual objection is not so much, as claimed, that the series portrayed the police in a sanitised or flattering light, as the officers were rarely the focus of the viewer’s attention.

The stars of each episode, if that’s the right word, were usually the lawbreakers. They, not the police, held the attention. They were generally the ones driving events, whether those events were alarming or farcical. And so, the series offered a glimpse into the mindset of the criminals – the recurring patterns of malevolence and selfishness – in their own words and by watching their own actions.

And obviously, we can’t have that. It makes pretentious sympathy much more difficult to muster.

Regarding those progressive assumptions and their routine departures from reality, I’d somehow forgotten about this chap:

In Professor Dettlaff’s imaginings, a world without physical consequences for robbery and predation would mean “individuals have everything they need to thrive.” Except, of course, any third-party protection from the aforementioned habitual criminals and assorted sociopaths. This “new, liberated society,” in which policing has been “firmly disavowed,” will, he insists, “truly keep us safe.”

I’d also forgotten about some of the professor’s peers and cheerleaders – among them, fellow educator Leigh Kimberg, who’s all about “compassion, healing, justice and equity,” and announcing her pronouns to random passers-by. She’s also somewhat miffed by expectations of rigour:

It’s quite something to have a supposed educator demanding that the editors of supposedly academic journals stop even the most basic attempts to ensure that key assertions in their publications are not just made-up or wildly delusional. But this, it seems, is where we are.

There’s more to be had via the links above, and in the subsequent threads.

Try not to steal anyone’s car while you’re reading.

Update, via the comments:

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Reading time: 5 min
Written by: David
Academia Policing Politics Problematic Competence

Elsewhere (320)

October 30, 2023 62 Comments

Emil Kirkegaard on schooling and intelligence, and their limited relationship:

These results should certainly not be interpreted as showing that one can easily boost learning by merely adding more schooling. In fact, there is no easy way to boost learning. Everything has been tried. There are more resources on the internet to learn from than ever before in human history, yet general knowledge hasn’t increased, and children and adults aren’t any better at arithmetic. Clearly, opportunity to learn isn’t an important variable in explaining differences between people. And dare I say, it never was?

From a cost-benefit perspective, more forced school for children means more teacher salaries to be paid. Since the effects of this on children’s actual learning seem to be somewhere between non-existent and minor, I suggest that this isn’t worth the price. 

And speaking of education:

Students At University of Augsburg Call For “Gloryholes” To Be Installed In Lecture Halls, Cite Benefit To Queer Community.

A group of students at the University of Augsburg in Germany have called for “gloryholes” to be installed in lecture halls in order to contribute to the “diversification” of the campus. Gloryholes are holes in walls or partitions created with the intention of allowing people to engage in anonymous sex acts in public. 

The specifications for said installation are quite detailed, including soundproofing, wall handles, and knee pads. For safety and comfort, one assumes.

Heather Mac Donald on progressive evasions and the consequent cultivation of anti-white sentiment:

We are tearing down the fundamental standards and values of western civilisation based on a lie. And that lie is that any racial disparity today is by definition and necessarily the product of racism and discrimination.

So any standard that has what’s known as a “disparate impact” on blacks, whether it is a teacher licensing exam, a medical doctor licensing exam, enforcing the law – if any of those standards have a disparate impact, resulting in either the underrepresentation of blacks in meritocratic institutions, or overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, the only public explanation that is allowable is that the standards resulting in that disparate impact are racist, and the next step is that they must come down.

I argue that that assumption of racism as the explanation for disparity is wrong, that the far more plausible explanations for any disparities in representation are the vast academic skills gaps, on the one hand, when it comes to meritocratic institutions, and vast gaps in rates of criminal offending, when it comes to the criminal justice system.

But as long as racism remains the only allowable explanation, we are going to continue tearing down ideas of excellence, of merit, and moving towards, at best, a state of mediocrity, and at worst, one of risk to people’s lives, stunted scientific and medical progress, a mediocre judicial system, and the inability to push young people to reach their highest achievements.

We see gifted and talented programmes being torn down across the country – not because they’ve been shown to be unsuccessful in cultivating our best young math talent, but simply because they don’t have 13 per cent black students in them. 

We’ve been here before, of course. More than once.

Helen Joyce on the perversity of wokeness:

For me, the revelation has been that when an institution enshrines a lie at its heart, that destroys its integrity and subverts its mission… Organisations that should have child safeguarding at their heart, such as the NSPCC and Girlguiding, now allow men who identify as women to oversee girls’ private spaces and intimate care. Gay rights campaigners press for children confused about their gender to be put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that turn them into sterile facsimiles of the opposite sex. Since these children are statistically more likely than others to grow up gay, this is a form of gay conversion therapy. 

And finally, a thread on what happens when, in the name fostering progress and sensitivity, the police start hiring the sexually dysmorphic.

Apparently, these be-wigged individuals are bringing tolerance and understanding by harassing people manically, and repeatedly lying, and stalking women and sending them headless birds, and strangling people, and attacking a woman with a hammer. Oh, and hoarding explosives, obviously.

If that isn’t sufficiently bizarre, I do have more.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

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Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Free-For-All Policing Those Poor Darling Armed Robbers

He Was Expecting Free Hits

October 3, 2023 62 Comments

Readers may recall this unhappy scene, mentioned here, part of a spree of racially targeted Seattle home invasions:

The day is coming when thugs like this will be shot by angry homeowners or neighbors, and no one will give a shit, because it would have improved life for everybody. https://t.co/lrz5KGBO81

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) August 29, 2023

In a more cheering turn of events, the perpetrators, five black men and one black teenager, were recently apprehended and charged with no fewer than fourteen similar crimes, the victims of which were all of East Asian ancestry:

KOMO News listed the names of the five men and the charges so far filed against them. The name of the teen involved in stalking, attacking, and tasing of mostly older Asian people was withheld because he’s a misunderstood and confused youth who has no idea that he’s part of a gang of thieves. Or something.

Hey, it’s an easy mistake to make. Accidentally putting on a balaclava and stalking someone, based on their race, then menacing them, and tasing them, and tugging the wedding ring from their twitching finger, and then barging into their home and taking their stuff. And then doing it all over again, and again, and again, all entirely by accident. I mean, who here hasn’t done it?

And as we’ve been told, repeatedly, from on high, the creatures who do such things are just like us.

Only more downtrodden and deserving of sympathy.

Needless to say, most of the suspects have extensive criminal histories and over a dozen prior convictions for assault, burglary and robbery, plus numerous other charges for domestic violence, animal cruelty, and driving without a licence. One suspect, a Mr Javez Tubbs, has been the subject of 30 warrants since 2006.

Fourteen firearms were found in the gang’s possession.

What catches the eye, however, is this brief exchange between the sixteen-year-old home invader and the judge:

Accused: “I can’t get house arrest?” Gesticulating: “You let people out. You let people get out…”

Judge: “I’m not letting you out.”

Accused: “Why not?”

Judge: “Why not? Maybe you should ask [your attorney].”

Or,

Consequences, for me? I thought this was a progressive city, full of enlightened people. Oh, the unfairness of it all.

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, outrageously.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Modern Savagery Policing Politics

It Ain’t For Their Benefit

September 4, 2023 72 Comments

A short thread of possible interest, on a subject we’ve touched on before.

If an illustration of crime would help, this one is quite vivid:

What would you do in this case?

https://t.co/w2joaaDoSx

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 4, 2023

The story here. Note the line,

This is not the first time that the migrant has been sentenced to deportation.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the video above, commenter anon a mouse suggests,

Er, boiling hot water?

Not, I think, unreasonable. Assuming one were interrupted while making a nice pot of tea. Though I’d imagine it’s easier to think of such things when you’re not taken aback by the unreal nightmarishness of it all.

Pst314 adds,

Which reminds me that some self-defence instructors emphasise training oneself to develop habits of thought for dealing with such situations.

Again, I’d guess that many of those who’ve witnessed or experienced serious, aggressive criminality may have been wrong-footed and inhibited by their own disbelief – their own struggle to process the alien behaviour that they’re seeing. Sociopathic activity and feral predation can – to the civilised – seem bewildering and surreal.

If another horror-show example is needed, here you go. Note the merriment. The sense of fun.

It’s perhaps worth noting that egalitarian assumptions don’t exactly help on this front – say, the belief that such creatures are just like us, only more oppressed, and that their wellbeing is somehow a matter of great importance. A conceit that is not only wrong, and insulting, but which is often disabling when it really matters.

If, for instance, someone with a big, shiny knife is breaking into your home in the middle of the night, you should not, ideally, be distracted by any great concern for whether or not your attempt at self-defence results in them getting injured or ceasing to be. Not least because their ceasing-to-be would be a very good thing. A gift to the world.

And yet, among our betters, we see all kinds of mental contortions and obvious dishonesties:

Readers may also wish to ponder the implicit conceit that the burglars – the ones brandishing carving knives – are the real victims and should therefore be spared any meaningful consequence of their own chosen actions, their own sociopathy. Because, apparently, one should sympathise with the people breaking into one’s home and driving off with one’s stuff. In one’s own car.  Perhaps these are skills only available to Guardian columnists.

It’s pretentious, neurotic, and morally revolting.

See also this chap, who, being sophisticated, can’t bring himself to use the term Molotov cocktail. You see, it was only a “beer bottle stuffed with toilet paper and gasoline” that was thrown, “non-violently,” into someone’s car. No biggie.

And we mustn’t forget Mr Zack Ford, a “proud SJW,” who believes that women should allow themselves to be mugged, or worse, lest their muggers come to harm.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Policing Politics Those Poor Darling Shoplifters

Why Don’t You Welcome Further Degradation?

August 28, 2023 93 Comments

In the comments, Nikw211 steers us to the pages of the Observer, where Ms Martha Gill has some thoughts on shoplifting.

First, some setting of the scene:

Within corner-shops and supermarkets and department stores, a new mood of lawlessness circulates. Owners of small shops have long complained that they are being treated as larders; now the owners of large ones have joined them.

Co-op despairs that shoplifting is “out of control”; along with antisocial behaviour incidents, the crime has increased by a third in the first half of this year. Meanwhile, John Lewis has taken to offering free coffees to passing [police] officers. “Just having a police car parked outside can make people think twice about shoplifting from our branches,” the head of security for the John Lewis Partnership has said, with more than a hint of desperation.

And,

Earlier this month, there was the “TikTok looting” of Oxford Street, where teens ran amok around stores after a thread urging people to “rob JD Sports” went viral. The trend has a longer sweep: in the past six years, shop thefts in Britain have more than doubled.

All rather grim. If not entirely surprising to readers familiar with this blog’s Progressive Retail Experience series. The collection to date, some 495 entries, can be found here.

Ah, that mood of lawlessness.

Ms Gill links to an article including figures by the British Retail Consortium showing a steep increase in predation. Unmentioned by Ms Gill, however, is the equally marked rise in retail staff experiencing physical abuse, sexual assault, and threats with weapons. Thieves, it turns out, are “becoming bolder and more aggressive” as shoplifting has blurred into mob robbery and open, gleeful looting. Though, again, this detail is not explored in the Observer.

Ms Gill, you see, is in search of less obvious, more exotic victims:

What to do about shoplifting? It’s a delicate subject. Shoplifting is not quite like other crimes. Pilfering, purloining, filching, snaffling – it is by nature relatively trivial 

Retailers who’ve been sexually assaulted or threatened with machetes may, I suspect, take a different view. And whether the person wielding the machete could be construed as “vulnerable,” a feat accomplished in the Observer article, may not, at the time, have been foremost in their minds.

[M]ost of all, shoplifting is a crime that seems to reflect social need: it rises when the economy dips. The current spate seems partly fuelled by the cost of living crisis. Starving your population and then “cracking down” on it for nicking baby formula or a can of soup can start to make a government look rather unreasonable. 

Except, of course, that studies on the subject repeatedly point out that the majority of shoplifting is not done out of some noble desperation, but rather for kicks, or status, or for black market resale, including the aforementioned baby formula. In reports on the phenomenon and its common causes – say, by the same British Retail Consortium – the words alcohol abuse and drugs crop up frequently, as do the words gang activity and organised crime.

By most estimates, shoplifters are on average caught around 2% of the time, usually after dozens, even hundreds, of thefts; and of those apprehended, roughly half are turned over to the police for prosecution. The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention adds, “While the romanticised face of shoplifting is the starving parent stealing bread to provide for a child, the reality is this is rarely the case.”

Apparently, Ms Gill could not find space in her article for such insights. Instead, Observer readers are treated with a detour into the world of Dickens and literary solidarity with shoplifters – “quite often we are on the side of the light-fingered lifter.” Indeed, we’re told that shoplifting can be construed, by those so inclined, as an act of “social defiance.” We are, however, reminded that small businesses should, perhaps, where possible, be spared such predation – and that, “stealing is not always the best way… to address inequality.”

Eventually, we arrive at the offering of solutions. Naturally, this being the Observer, rumblings of punitive consequences are frowned upon. Jail time for repeat offenders is, we’re assured, “exactly the wrong approach.”

Says Ms Gill,

Not only does “cracking down” on shoplifters through the criminal justice system raise difficult moral problems, it doesn’t even work. 

What those difficult moral problems might be is not made entirely clear. Nor is it obvious why imprisoning habitual thieves, thereby interrupting their criminal adventures, should be considered a total failure and unworthy of the effort.

Instead, with some contrivance, responsibility for thievery is laid elsewhere:

Once, goods were kept behind counters, but since the birth of large supermarkets they have been laid out near the door, ready for the taking. Automated self-check-out means the customer in effect monitors their own behaviour. 

Retailers, it seems, are asking for it. What with those short skirts. Sorry, accessible goods.

Ms Gill then cites academic Gloria Laycock, whose solution to the swell in shoplifting and mob robbery is suitably unobvious and therefore statusful:

“A radical policy might be to decriminalise shop theft,” says Laycock, tongue only half in cheek. “This would put the onus directly on the shops, which could employ the measures that actually work, like putting goods back behind counters.” 

Quite how a supermarket might function with all of its goods rendered inaccessible, hidden away under lock and key, is, sadly, left to the imagination.

The general idea, presumably, is that the rest of us, the law-abiding, should resign ourselves to ever more inconvenience and social degradation, and being increasingly alienated from our own neighbourhoods, because punishing habitual criminals, even those armed with machetes, is terribly unfashionable. At least in certain circles. Those inhabited by academics and Observer columnists, for instance.

And so, the preferred, progressive trajectory, as implied above, entails a more demoralised, more dangerous, low-trust society. In which pretty much anything one might wish to buy will be out of reach or shuttered away, and in which every customer will by default be treated as suspicious. Because apparently, we mustn’t acknowledge a difference between the criminal and the law-abiding. Except, that is, to imagine them as more vulnerable than we are.

We will lock up the product, but not the thief. And utopia will surely follow.

Ms Gill is not alone, of course. According to her Guardian colleague Owen Jones, expecting persistent shoplifters to face consequences for their actions is now among “the worst instincts of the electorate.” Because shoplifters are “traumatised,” apparently. The real victims of the drama.

At which point, a thought occurs. If repeated thieving is so high-minded and so easily excused, perhaps Ms Gill and Mr Jones would be good enough to publish their home addresses, the whereabouts of any valuables, and the times at which they’re likely to be out, or at least preoccupied or unconscious.

Or do our betters only disdain other people’s property?

Update, via the comments:

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.