Earlier this month, the Justice Department released a report accusing the Baltimore Police Department of racism, making particular note of the police practice of clearing corners of loiterers and trespassers in high-crimes areas. This practice of enforcement, said federal lawyers, is oppressive to minority communities, a stance echoed by Black Livers Matter activists, academics and the press. But what about the law-abiding people that actually live in such areas? What do they want police to do in their communities? As a matter of fact, they are begging the police to enforce trespassing and loitering laws. In this article in the National Review, Heather Mac Donald writes
This critique of public-order enforcement ignores a fundamental truth: It's the people who live in high-crime areas who petition for "corner-clearing." The police are simply obeying their will. And when the police back off of such order-maintenance strategies under the accusation of racism, it is the law-abiding poor who pay the price.Community members are not only frustrated, they are scared. A gas station owner in West Baltimore, whose business became overrun by loiterers following the release of the DOJ report, begged the police to "[p]lease help me." A grandmother worries about groups of teens hanging out around her steps because she wants her "grandkids to be in a safe environment." A copy store owner, who noticed a worsening of loiterers following the Freddie Gray riots in April 2015, says he calls the police whenever people gather in front of his store because their presence "scares people away. Legitimate people, honest people," which affects his ability to make money and pay his bills. Another woman wonders, "What ever happened to loitering laws?"
Mac Donald continues
What are the police to do? Do they answer the charge of community members to maintain public order, or do they ignore them? If cops don't answer the charge, they quickly lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the people that support and need them. But if they do, the ACLU and BLM will swiftly make racists out of them for upholding their duties to keep communities orderly at the beseeching of the community members themselves.
This year in Chicago alone, through August 30, 12 people have been shot a day, for a tally of 2,870 shooting victims, 490 of them killed .... The reason for this mayhem is that cops have backed off of public-order enforcement. Pedestrian stops are down 90 percent. "The streets are gone," the head of Chicago's police union, Dean Angelo, told me earlier in August. "The cops are driving by people on the drug corners, they're not sweeping the corners anymore."Out of street disorder grows more serious crime, says Mac Donald. This fact is lost on activists and academics, and ignored by the press, but understood by so many other law-abiding people living in high-crime neighborhoods who are watching their communities tailspin into further decline with each passing day.
What are the police to do? Do they answer the charge of community members to maintain public order, or do they ignore them? If cops don't answer the charge, they quickly lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the people that support and need them. But if they do, the ACLU and BLM will swiftly make racists out of them for upholding their duties to keep communities orderly at the beseeching of the community members themselves.
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