Crime is Down, except in my town...

I came across a rather interesting article on FOX yesterday. Conservative Scalawag beat me to the punch on mentioning it, though. Kudos, sir.

WASHINGTON — Unemployment is high, the economy is down. Yet for all the signs of recession, something is missing: More crime.

Experts are scratching their heads over why crime has ebbed during this recession, making it different from other economic downturns of the past half-century. Early guesses include jobless folks at home keeping closer watch for thieves, or extra benefits keeping people from resorting to crime.

Preliminary figures gathered by the FBI for the first six months of 2009 show crime falling across the country — at a time when many experts and police officials had expected crime to rise under the pressure of high unemployment, foreclosures and layoffs.

Murder and manslaughter dropped a surprising 10 percent for the first half of the year, according to the FBI's data.

"That's a remarkable decline, given the economic conditions," said Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied crime trends.

Rosenfeld said he did not expect the 10 percent drop in killings to be sustained over the entire year, as more data is reported. But he said the broad declines are exceptional, given that past recessions have boosted crime rates dating back to the 1950's.

The professor said there are several possible explanations, including that extended unemployment benefits and other government attempts at economic stimulus "have cushioned and delayed for many people the big blows that come from a recession."
Those benefits will have to run out eventually, he cautioned.

Another possible factor is that with more people home from work, it is harder for burglars to break into a home or apartment unnoticed by neighbors, he said.

Rosenfeld said another possibility is that because big cities tend to have an outsize impact on crime statistics, those cities' so-called "smart policing" efforts are still working to drive down rates.

"What you see are the large cities, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York in particular are down considerably, and those large cities are driving the overall change," he said.

Overall, violent crimes fell by 4.4 percent and property crimes dropped by 6.1 percent, according to the data collected by the FBI. Crime rates haven't been this low since the 1960's, and are nowhere near the peak reached in the early 1990's.

The new figures show car thefts also dropped significantly, falling nearly 19 percent and continuing a sharp downward trend in that category. Some believe that big drop in car theft is due largely to the security locking systems installed on most models, as well as more high-tech deterrents like global positioning systems.

The figures are based on data supplied to the FBI by more than 11,700 police and law enforcement agencies. They compare reported crimes in the first six months of this year to the first six months of last year.

The early 2009 data suggests the crime-dropping trend of 2008 is not just continuing but accelerating. In 2008, the same data showed a nearly 4 percent drop in murder and manslaughter, and an overall drop in violent crime of 1.9 percent from 2007 to 2008.

According to the FBI figures, reports of violent crime fell about 7 percent in cities with 1 million or more people. But in towns with 10,000 to 25,000 people, violent crime ticked up slightly by 1.7 percent.

Each city's data was different, but collectively pointed to less crime in every major category.

Nationwide, rape fell by 3.3 percent and robbery by 6.5 percent. Arsons, which are subject to a variety of reporting standards, declined more than 8 percent.

The FBI's data for New York City shows 204 reported murders in the first half of 2009, compared to 252 in same period last year. By comparison, Oklahoma City saw reported killings increase from 26 to 32, the FBI said. Phoenix, Ariz., saw 10 fewer killings, dropping from 86 in the first half of 2008 to 76 in the first half of this year, according to the data.

Separate statistics compiled by the Justice Department measure both reported and unreported crimes.

Okay…what about the fact that once that imbecile and his cronies took over in Washington, gun sales went through the roof? Maybe crime is down because more people are armed & prepared for self-defense?

Maybe the chronic shortage of ammunition I keep hearing about has meant that the bad guys can’t get ammo for their cheap, poorly-maintained guns that they rob and murder their local citizenry with? Nahhhh, shortages only ever effect the law-abiding citizens. Criminals always find ways to get guns and ammo. Gun control laws only keep law-abiding citizens unarmed & defenseless while criminals just get better armed.

Maybe the economy is so bad that the few bullets that are left in stores are unable to be purchased because the economy is so shitty that no one can afford the ammo to go commit crimes with?

Wouldn’t you think that with Global Warming keeping it so damned hot, and with Al Gore claiming that the earth is a few million degrees just under our feet, that crime would be astronomical due to heat-related insanity?

Then again, you have cops bringing handguns to snowball fights…

But it’s not down everywhere, obviously…like in my backyard.

Unemployment in South Carolina is up…like 12.3% now. Gun crime in my town is UP. WAY UP. I live in a town of 6500 people 40 miles from Charleston. We’re the county seat for a very rural county of about 39,000. In the past year or so we had a deputy sheriff shot & killed, my wife & I were caught in a shooting at a gas station that ended with 11 arrests, one wounded (and armed) juvenile, and yours truly with a 9mm hole in his quarter-panel 8 inches from my kneecap. Being a law-abiding gun owner (and slacker who hasn’t gotten his concealed carry permit), my .45 was at home.


We’ve had a lady murdered in her driveway. We have had no fewer than 10 shootings, in town and just outside the limits, in the past 8 weeks alone. One of those was a drive by that killed three, including a 20-month-old baby, and sent several others to the hospital. Three assclowns recently broke into an elderly woman’s home and after she fired at the intruders, they maced her & shot her, kidnapped her, stole her car, and left her in the trunk of her car a few miles from my door. She’s recovering and should be just fine.

Beware of Owner: Gun Control means being able to hit your target.

The shitty economy means that I haven’t got the extra money to put towards getting my wife a weapon and getting us both our carry permits. It’ll be $300 to get our permits and then maybe another three or four hundred to get her something she likes and is comfortable with.

Maybe Obama will give me a Homeland Security bailout grant to arm my family? Yeah, right…


Due to economic hardship, it's harder to mack in a pimp ride. However, it's also easier to look like a Tru Playa with a smaller bank roll...

CSI Walterboro: Election 2008

In the midst of this super busy and crazed electoral season, a certain local election here in South Carolina has caught my attention. It seemed that out of nowhere election signs started cropping up to try to sway my vote for the position of County Coroner for Colleton County. It sort of got me thinking…why in the hell are we voting for the guy who declares people dead?

The current coroner for Colleton is Richard Harvey. I’ve known Richard for nearly five years. I see him all the time at Stingrays hockey games. I joked with him during the last election cycle, asking him what he’d done for the dead people of Colleton County that should earn my vote. His opponent is Michael Crosby, whom I know nothing about but is probably a decent fellow.

Most of us likely think that a coroner and a medical examiner are the same thing, and most of us get our idea of what a medical examiner is from watching Jan Garavaglia on “Dr. G, Medical Examiner”, or Doc Robbins on CSI, who is listed as both a coroner and the Chief Medical Examiner in the show credits. Either way, it would seem that the individual in question declares people dead and does autopsies & such on the aforementioned deceased folk.

Medical examiner:
An appointed medically qualified officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and bodily injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortems, and sometimes to initiate inquests.

Coroner:
[related to Anglo-French corouner, from coroune, meaning crown]: An officer of a county, district, state, or municipality; originally, in medieval England, an official who upheld the monarch's rights of private property. From the 16th and 17th centuries on, the chief duty of the coroner was to hold inquests on the bodies of those believed to have died by violence or accident, or who suffered grievous bodily harm. In modern times, in the United States, the coroner is an elected official.

A coroner is not necessarily a medical examiner. Medical examiners are medical doctors who have specialised in anatomical- or forensic pathology. In countries such as the United States, where the coroner is an elected, political position, a coroner need not be a medical examiner, though many are. Many jurisdictions in America have replaced the coroner with M.E.’s, which leads me to the argument of how/why do we go about electing a coroner in this day & age?

I mean, I have yet to see a debate between coroner candidates. Maybe we should get the candidates together on TV and have some slick moderator bait them like they do with Presidential candidates? Well, it turns out that there was a debate of sorts, on October 13, when candidates for all elected offices were invited to come and meet their constituents by the Colleton County Taxpayers Association (CCTA). The event was open to the public. The format for the forum consisted of candidates being asked three to four questions from the planning committee of the event, then they were asked questions from the audience, and finally they were given the opportunity to address the gathering in a two-minute closing statement.

The questions from the Taxpayers Association for the Office of Coroner included; (1) Will you be a full time coroner? (2) Will you or have you ever used a county vehicle without reimbursing for gas? (3) How many deputy coroners do you/would you have? And (4) How diverse is your workforce? From the audience the candidates were asked about their medical training and background and their knowledge of autopsy policy and procedures here in the South Carolina. In addition, Mr. Harvey was asked about how much of his time is spent away from the county teaching at MUSC.

Kinda lightweight, if you ask me. Where’s the hardball questions? Stuff like “What will you do for the dead people of Colleton County?” I’m assuming that the question about the gas reimbursements would relate to personal use of a county vehicle, since asking someone to pay for the gas they use in the performance of their official duties would be ludicrous. And something tells me that if someone dies while Richard is in Charleston at the Medical University, chances are that they’ll still be dead when he gets back. Let the man teach.

I’ve yet to see any flyers in my mailbox highlighting their positions, either. So far, all I’ve seen are the ubiquitous roadside signs asking for my vote. Of course, what positions would a coroner really need to have? It seems to me to be a position that really should be a hired slot, filled by a well-qualified individual, instead of having to shell out money for signs and stickers and buttons, and taking time away from doing actual governmental work to get elected, not to mention the governmental expense of the balloting/voting process. I mean, hell, you hire a town manager based on a resume and work experience, and that person operates your entire town. But we have to have an electoral process for the person who shows up in the plain white van to say “Yup, he’s dead”.

I know that’s really oversimplifying the duties of a coroner, but it’s not exactly a CEO deal, and in dinky old Colleton County, South-by-God-Carolina, we’re not exactly in the same sort of criminal forensics territory of, say, Los Angeles….or even Omaha or Des Moines. We don’t get too many exotic methods of death here. Most non-natural causes of death here involve someone wrapped around a tree.

What exactly does one have to do wrong in order to get voted out of office as coroner? Declare someone dead who wasn’t? Refuse to declare an obvious corpse dead?

So, don’t forget to vote in November, and don’t forget your county coroner. Make sure the right person zips closed your body bag and sends you off for toe-tagging. You’re really only pronounced two things in your life, and that’s either married or dead, and one of those you can only do once despite what they say about till death do us part. Make sure the right person declares you dead.