"US violent crime rose 18 percent in 2011" by Pete Yost | Associated Press, October 18, 2012
WASHINGTON — The number of violent crimes unexpectedly rose by 18 percent in the United States last year, the government said Wednesday, the first time that total has risen in nearly 20 years.
I'm already smelling something, and it is not the smell of gunpowder.
Property crimes went up by 11 percent, their first increase in a decade....
Does that include all the bank fraud, because if not that number should be zooming.
The increase in violent crime was the result of an upward swing in assaults, but the incidence of rape, sexual assault, and robbery remained largely unchanged, as did serious violent crime involving weapons or injury....
Oh, so the gun violence has not gone up, huh?
--more--"
I guess we might call this next item a misfire:
"Chicago reports 435th homicide, tying 2011 tally" Associated Press, October 30, 2012
CHICAGO — Also Monday, the FBI announced that the number of violent crimes reported to police nationwide decreased 3.8 percent last year to 1.2 million, the fifth straight year of declines.
So two weeks later I'm told the exact opposite? WTF?
In the same period, the total number of property crimes reported to law enforcement agencies went down by 0.5 percent to 9 million, the ninth consecutive year that figure has fallen, the FBI said. Property crimes resulted in estimated losses of $156.6 billion.
Yeah, that doesn't include foreclosure fraud or mortgage-backed securities scam losses; otherwise, it would be in the trillions.
--more--"
And Chicago has the toughest gun laws on the books! Meanwhile, down in Kennesaw, Georgia they require you to be trained and armed (much like a militia) and the crime rate is the lowest in the nation.
Related: Court strikes down Illinois concealed carry ban
Yeah, forget what works.
Let's get back to gun control:
"Slayings dim hopes in Chicago" Associated Press, January 29, 2013
CHICAGO — A bloody weekend in which seven people died has abruptly ended, for now, hopes that Chicago might be putting a lid on its frightening homicide rate....
Police say the homicide rate is a reflection of the city’s gang problem and a proliferation of guns.
Yeah, THAT is where the REAL PROBLEM LIES! And MOST of the gang-bangers weapons are of the ILLEGAL VARIETY! What is it they say, criminalize guns and only the criminals will have them?
Of course, when government intelligence agencies are rife with gun- and drug-running operations what else would pone expect?
Chicago has what city officials have called the strictest handgun ordinance in the country. But police officials say more should be done.
Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy wants lawmakers to increase jail time for those who are caught with illegal weapons, including for felons who aren’t allowed to have them and for straw purchases — people buying guns for others who are not supposed to have them.
Which means all those government agents moving guns to the most vicious drug cartels are to be prosecuted?
Chicago’s handgun ordinance bans gun shops in the city and prohibits gun owners from stepping outside their homes with a handgun....
Okay, but if anyone comes through that door....
--more--"
You know who could save Chicago....
"Chicago’s mayor tries to enlist banks in anti-gun campaign" by Mary Williams Walsh | New York Times, January 25, 2013
Yeah, and they are going to $ave us from global warming, too.
Fresh from persuading a $5 billion pension fund in Chicago to divest from companies that make firearms, the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, on Thursday urged the chief executives of two major banks to stop financing companies ‘‘that profit from gun violence.’’
Do they have any investments in Israeli companies because they could dump those at the same time?
Emanuel sent letters to TD Bank, which provides a $60 million credit line to Smith & Wesson, and to Bank of America, which provides a $25 million line to Sturm, Ruger & Co., asking the CEOs to push the companies to ‘‘find common ground with the vast majority of Americans who support a military weapons and ammunition ban.’’
Looks large, but it turns out those are chump-change small fries.
Related: Globe Night at the Garden
How did you think they were paying for player salaries?
Emanuel’s effort to enlist banks in the gun control campaign is just one example of a new willingness by a public official, galvanized by last month’s carnage in Newtown, Conn., to wield the power of the purse.
See: Sandy Hook Hoax?
After seeing the videos and reading the blogs I think that question mark can be removed.
New York state’s big public pension fund and California’s fund for teachers have already frozen or divested their holdings in guns, and California’s fund for other public workers, known as Calpers, is expected to take up the issue in February.
Related: The Best College in the Whole Wide World
I gue$$ some dive$tments are different from other divestments.
Massachusetts Treasurer Steve Grossman has also directed the state pension fund to review any investments in gun, ammunition, and other companies.
Related: Mass. to review pension holdings in weapons firms
Officials wise to review state pension fund’s gun investments
New York City’s public advocate has put pressure on banks and investment firms by ranking their gun holdings by size and calling those with the 12 biggest stakes the Dirty Dozen.
‘‘Elected leaders understand that this is a tool of government with huge ramifications,’’ said the public advocate, Bill de Blasio, who is a trustee of the city’s $45 billion pension fund. ‘‘What happened in Newtown sort of crystallized this.’’
In Philadelphia, Mayor Michael A. Nutter has prepared a wide-ranging set of principles that companies would have to adopt before receiving city pension money. He calls them the Sandy Hook Principles, after the Newtown elementary school, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults with an assault-style weapon on Dec. 14. They are modeled on the approach the city took more than a decade ago to put pressure on companies doing business in South Africa under apartheid.
Also see: The Philly Frisk
Hey, it is the city of brotherly love, right?
How successful Emanuel, himself a one-time investment banker, will be with bank executives is also uncertain....
What happened over at Freddie, Rahm?
The trustees of Chicago’s main pension fund had just voted to unload more than $1 million worth of gun stocks, and he said it was time for the bankers to get on board....
De Blasio said he had already seen results from his Dirty Dozen list, a ranking of the New York-based financial services companies with the biggest holdings of firearms manufacturers. Compiled from filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the list includes hedge funds, banks, investment firms and an insurance company.
The day after he unveiled the list at a news conference, he said, he received a phone call from Laurence D. Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, which de Blasio ranked second with gun holdings of about $346 million.
“Obviously, he was concerned about how the public saw the firm,’’ said de Blasio, who is running to succeed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, an outspoken advocate of gun control....
The biggest gun investor on the list, with at least $706 million in gun holdings, was Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm that created a small conglomerate called the Freedom Group out of a number of smaller makers of guns, ammunition, and shooting accessories.
I'm just wondering why that knowledge was saved for last.
Actually, when you think about, investing in gun-makers and hospitals makes good bu$ine$$ $en$e. You are making money on both ends!
I'm no longer wondering, are you?
--more--"
So the surges must be from other big cities like Washington, New York, and Boston, right?
"D.C. on pace for fewest homicides since 1963" by Eric Tucker | Associated Press, November 24, 2012
WASHINGTON — The drop reflects a downward trend in violent crime nationwide and is in line with declining homicides in other big cities. Though murder has risen in Chicago, New York City officials say homicides sank to 515 last year from 2,262 in 1990. Houston police reported 198 homicides last year, down from 457 in 1985, while Los Angeles ended last year with fewer than 300 after reporting 1,092 in 1992. Across the country, violent crime reported by police to the FBI fell by 3.8 percent last year from 2010.
I hope you will excuse me if I pop off, dear readers.
Though the nation’s capital is hardly crime-free today, and crime in some categories is up, the homicide decline is notable in a place where acts of violence — sometimes not far from the US Capitol — embodied the worst of the crack scourge.
The number of homicides in this city of more than 600,000 residents averaged about 457 between 1989 and 1994, a staggering rate that attracted unwanted attention. ‘‘A war zone? No, Washington, D.C.,’’ was the sub-headline of a 1992 People magazine story, while The Economist in 1995 called it ‘‘the violence capital of America.’’
The 1990 crack cocaine arrest of then-mayor Marion Barry fed a perception that the city where the nation’s laws were made was, itself, lawless....
One overarching factor is the city’s gentrification — the 2011 median household income of $63,124 is higher than all but four states, census data show. Whole city blocks have been refashioned, drug dens razed, a Major League Baseball stadium built in place of urban blight, highrise public housing replaced by less-dense garden style apartments. Though the poverty rate has risen, the growing wealth has pushed impoverished communities farther away from the city center.
In other words, Washington D.C. has been made into a sanctuary of the elite. It's called the beltway, I believe.
Yup, they have SIMPLY PUSHED the PROBLEMS of RISING POVERTY and CRIME OUT of VIEW for OTHERS to DEAL WITH! But it's a HUGE SUCCESS!!
--more--"
Related: Report: DC fails to investigate sexual assaults
D.C. cathedral to host gay weddings
I think love is always better than violence.
"Report: US law enforcement deaths down in 2012" by Eric Tucker | Associated Press, December 28, 2012
WASHINGTON — The number of law enforcement officers who died performing their duties in the United States declined by about 23 percent in 2012 after rising the two previous years, a nonprofit organization reported Thursday....
Only the second year since 1960 that the number of fatalities was below 130....
That's a DEEP DROP, and yet it is being minimized!?!
The decline is heartening after two straight alarming years and may suggest that police departments, though still battered by budget cuts, are placing a greater emphasis on officer safety, said Craig Floyd, the chairman and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based memorial organization.
‘‘I think officers are approaching these potentially life-threatening situations in a more cautious, focused manner,’’ said Floyd, noting the increased prevalence of body armor among officers....
Translation: Tyranny works -- for $ome.
--more--"
But somehow gun violence around the country is surging.
Massachusetts has a national reputation as a bastion of gun control, but crimes and injuries related to firearms have risen — sometimes dramatically — since the state passed a comprehensive package of gun laws in 1998.
I gue$$ it is whatever agenda needs advancing at a given time, folks. It's either gun violence surging and fear so the disarming of the American people can progress, or it's gun violence down so the government can claim it's keeping us all so safe -- and thus justifying more repressive measures.
Murders committed with firearms have increased significantly, aggravated assaults and robberies involving guns have risen, and gunshot injuries are up, according to FBI and state data.
If true, most of it is coming from Boston, Springfield, and Worcester.
To gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association, these statistics are evidence that gun control does not work. But to gun-control advocates, the numbers show that no state — no matter how tough the laws — is protected from firearms violence when guns are brought in from other states....
Aaaaaah, you SEE the AGENDA, no?
Yes, we need a FEDERAL GUN CONTROL LAW!
“If you’re a kid in New Bedford and you had a beef with somebody, what do you do? You drive three hours to Maine to buy a gun,” said New Bedford Mayor Jonathan Mitchell, a former federal prosecutor in Boston, who appeared with Menino and other Massachusetts mayors last week to press for stricter gun laws.
Really?
Despite the threat posed by out-of-state guns and the increase in firearm deaths, Massachusetts still had the second-lowest rate of such fatalities in the nation in 2010, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.
There is that smell again.
But calls to crack down on out-of-state guns, sometimes bought by straw purchasers who resell them illegally to criminals in Massachusetts, have become more urgent as gun crimes and injuries have increased....
When they start going after government straw purchasers feeding guns to mass-murdering Mexican drug cartels I'll start noticing.
The debate over gun control has been stoked by the recent shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn....
The more that "event" is flogged the more suspicious I become.
Deaths by firearms in New Hampshire occur at twice the rate in Massachusetts; in Maine, the rate is triple....
“Guns have no borders.”
Nor do drone missiles when you think about it.
******************
Philip Markoff, known as the “Craigslist killer,” bought his alleged murder weapon in New Hampshire. Markoff, a former Boston University medical student, was charged with shooting a masseuse in a Boston hotel in 2009. He was awaiting trial when he committed suicide the following year at the Nashua Street Jail.
See: Singing the Suffolk County Jail Blues
Nobody knows....
According to law-enforcement records, Markoff bought a 9mm pistol at the State Line Gun Shop in Mason, N.H., while using another man’s New York driver’s license and falsely saying he had attended college in New Hampshire.
Menino and many gun-control activists are pushing to make illegal firearms trafficking a federal crime. They argue that it would help crack down on straw purchasers who buy weapons in states with lax gun laws, return to tougher jurisdictions like Massachusetts, and resell the weapons to criminals and other unlicensed buyers....
Gun-control advocates suggest that rising gun violence is linked to large cuts in police budgets, recession-related poverty, and the continuing flow of guns from out of state. “Since 2000, law enforcement funding has been cut by billions across the nation,” said John Rosenthal, founder and chairman of Stop Handgun Violence, an advocacy group based in Newton.
All the more reason to own a gun.
Instead of crimping the ability of law enforcement to combat gun crime, he said, those funds should be restored....
Meaning more money for police in this time of austerity and budget cuts?
--more--"
So gun violence in Boston is way, way up?
"Boston uses two high-tech tools to combat crime; Tracks gunfire and parolees" by Brian Ballou | Globe Staff, September 03, 2012
Pioneering a new way to synthesize crime information, Boston police made nine arrests in the past year by comparing data from two high-tech monitoring systems: Shotspotter, which reports the location of gunfire, and one that identifies any probationers or parolees wearing court-ordered GPS trackers in the area.
See: On the Beat in Boston
While authorities laud the new technology, however, some people see it as a potential threat to civil liberties.
“Often when police want to stop and frisk someone, they will use the ‘high crime area’ rationale, and this is another version of that,” Segal said.
Kenney said he is not a “big fan” of Shotspotter because it has been known to mistake loud noises, such as fireworks, for gunfire. However, he said, the Boston police’s new system “is an interesting application, if they do it in a controlled way.”
One problem that could arise from the cross-referencing, he said, is that many of the people wearing GPS monitors live in areas where gunfire is not uncommon.
But authorities say the system can also exonerate people.
“One overlay recently revealed that a person whose name came up during an investigation as the possible shooter couldn’t have done it because he was not in the area,” Fitzgerald said.
The cross-referencing is not a substitute for typical investigatory methods, authorities said, but they justify it by pointing to the high recidivism rates among former convicts. Fitzgerald suggested that it might also have a side benefit of helping authorities find witnesses.
“We are already seeing impressive results from the combined use of these two systems,” said Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis. “Our strong partnership with the Probation Department is providing us with the opportunity to quickly identify possible suspects and get violent offenders off the street.”
Also see: Focus on high-crime areas cited in homicide fall in Mass.
Doesn't seem to make sense to me because the unread and uncovered sections of my Globe are loaded with gun violence.
I guess it is all WHICHEVER AGENDA NEEDS ADVANCING at a GIVEN MOMENT, huh?
Boston police to open office in Bromley-Heath complex
But somehow gun violence around the country is surging.
Have you HAD ENOUGH MIXED MESSAGES and MIND MANIPULATION from the MOUTHPIECE PRESS yet?
Then stop reading now.
"Gun-related crimes on the rise in Massachusetts; Firearms flowing across borders" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff, February 04, 2013
I gue$$ it is whatever agenda needs advancing at a given time, folks. It's either gun violence surging and fear so the disarming of the American people can progress, or it's gun violence down so the government can claim it's keeping us all so safe -- and thus justifying more repressive measures.
Murders committed with firearms have increased significantly, aggravated assaults and robberies involving guns have risen, and gunshot injuries are up, according to FBI and state data.
If true, most of it is coming from Boston, Springfield, and Worcester.
To gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association, these statistics are evidence that gun control does not work. But to gun-control advocates, the numbers show that no state — no matter how tough the laws — is protected from firearms violence when guns are brought in from other states....
Aaaaaah, you SEE the AGENDA, no?
Yes, we need a FEDERAL GUN CONTROL LAW!
“If you’re a kid in New Bedford and you had a beef with somebody, what do you do? You drive three hours to Maine to buy a gun,” said New Bedford Mayor Jonathan Mitchell, a former federal prosecutor in Boston, who appeared with Menino and other Massachusetts mayors last week to press for stricter gun laws.
Really?
Despite the threat posed by out-of-state guns and the increase in firearm deaths, Massachusetts still had the second-lowest rate of such fatalities in the nation in 2010, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.
There is that smell again.
But calls to crack down on out-of-state guns, sometimes bought by straw purchasers who resell them illegally to criminals in Massachusetts, have become more urgent as gun crimes and injuries have increased....
When they start going after government straw purchasers feeding guns to mass-murdering Mexican drug cartels I'll start noticing.
The debate over gun control has been stoked by the recent shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn....
The more that "event" is flogged the more suspicious I become.
Deaths by firearms in New Hampshire occur at twice the rate in Massachusetts; in Maine, the rate is triple....
“Guns have no borders.”
Nor do drone missiles when you think about it.
******************
Philip Markoff, known as the “Craigslist killer,” bought his alleged murder weapon in New Hampshire. Markoff, a former Boston University medical student, was charged with shooting a masseuse in a Boston hotel in 2009. He was awaiting trial when he committed suicide the following year at the Nashua Street Jail.
See: Singing the Suffolk County Jail Blues
Nobody knows....
According to law-enforcement records, Markoff bought a 9mm pistol at the State Line Gun Shop in Mason, N.H., while using another man’s New York driver’s license and falsely saying he had attended college in New Hampshire.
Menino and many gun-control activists are pushing to make illegal firearms trafficking a federal crime. They argue that it would help crack down on straw purchasers who buy weapons in states with lax gun laws, return to tougher jurisdictions like Massachusetts, and resell the weapons to criminals and other unlicensed buyers....
Gun-control advocates suggest that rising gun violence is linked to large cuts in police budgets, recession-related poverty, and the continuing flow of guns from out of state. “Since 2000, law enforcement funding has been cut by billions across the nation,” said John Rosenthal, founder and chairman of Stop Handgun Violence, an advocacy group based in Newton.
All the more reason to own a gun.
Instead of crimping the ability of law enforcement to combat gun crime, he said, those funds should be restored....
Meaning more money for police in this time of austerity and budget cuts?
--more--"
So gun violence in Boston is way, way up?
"Boston uses two high-tech tools to combat crime; Tracks gunfire and parolees" by Brian Ballou | Globe Staff, September 03, 2012
Pioneering a new way to synthesize crime information, Boston police made nine arrests in the past year by comparing data from two high-tech monitoring systems: Shotspotter, which reports the location of gunfire, and one that identifies any probationers or parolees wearing court-ordered GPS trackers in the area.
See: On the Beat in Boston
Not what it used to mean.
Analysts at the Boston Regional Intelligence Center at police headquarters have been cross-checking data from Shotspotter, the acoustic gunfire detection network deployed in violence-plagued areas of the city, with the probation department’s GPS monitoring system in Clinton.
If the GPS shows a parolee or probationer in the area, it can give police a place to start the investigation; statistics show high rates of recidivism among people who have served time in prison. It can also rule out parolees and probationers as suspects if the GPS shows them far from the gunfire. The approach may mark the first such collaborative effort in law enforcement.
“I haven’t heard of it being done anywhere else,” said Dennis Kenney, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, who has studied both systems.
Analysts at the Boston intelligence center do the cross-checking manually, making phone calls and typing information into a computer, but are working on a system that would automatically merge the information and relay any “hits” to investigators in the field.
“It’s a work in progress, and that will start off as a pilot program, obviously with testing to make sure that it works properly,’’ said David Carabin, intelligence center director.
And once established you'll never get rid of it.
Approximately 1,800 probationers who wear bracelet monitors are living in Boston, with about a third of them convicted of crimes against people. In addition, the state Probation Department monitors approximately 200 parolees in the city who wear the devices.
“This is a great use of technology that already exists, and it gives investigators a heads-up on who may have been in the area,’’ said Paul Fitzgerald, a superintendent in the Boston Police Department who oversees the intelligence center....
Ah, who cares about those anymore in 21st-century AmeriKa?
Matthew Segal, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said Shotspotter helps police respond more quickly to crime scenes, but the marriage of that tool with any GPS-based tracking system could diminish constitutional rights for a sector of society that already has a reduced expectation of that protection.
Tyranny always has its selling points.
The idea of doing the cross-referencing was born on a Saturday morning about a year ago, when Davis met with Ronald P. Corbett Jr., the commissioner of the Probation Department.
--more--"
Also see: Focus on high-crime areas cited in homicide fall in Mass.
Doesn't seem to make sense to me because the unread and uncovered sections of my Globe are loaded with gun violence.
I guess it is all WHICHEVER AGENDA NEEDS ADVANCING at a GIVEN MOMENT, huh?
Boston police to open office in Bromley-Heath complex
At least crime is down.
