does not know what he\u2019s talking about<\/a>.<\/p>\nGun violence is exploding in St. Paul.\u00a0 The Chief says \u201c . . . basically it\u2019s yesterday\u2019s fistfights are today\u2019s gun fights.\u201d\u00a0 But then he says it\u2019s \u201c . . . a community health problem, this is a public health crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
A health problem is caused by disease.\u00a0 The cure is quarantine and medical treatment for those infected, and sanitation to prevent spread of illness. \u00a0Americans know very well how to handle outbreaks of disease.\u00a0 St. Paul does not have a public health problem.<\/p>\n
St. Paul has a cultural problem.\u00a0 Perfectly healthy people are choosing to shoot each other instead of fistfight.\u00a0 We\u2019re not willing to quarantine residents in Frogtown and there is no medical treatment, no vaccine that cures bad behavior.\u00a0 Bad behavior is cured by deterrence and punishment, to make bad behavior unacceptably costly to the actors.<\/p>\n
When Charles Napier wanted to end the Hindu practice of burning wives alive on their husband\u2019s funeral pyre, he explained to the priests: \u201cThis burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.\u201d\u00a0 The practice of suttee ended abruptly.<\/p>\n
In fairness, it may be that the Chief knows exactly what\u2019s going on in his city, but he\u2019s afraid to speak the truth because the City Council is a bunch of liberals more concerned with signaling their virtue by mouthing politically acceptable platitudes than with protecting their citizens by enacting effective law enforcement measures.\u00a0 As long as the people dying are young Black men and poor children on the East Side, what\u2019s the big deal?<\/p>\n
Can we talk about adding another light rail line now? Because that\u2019s a big deal. That\u2019s something we care about.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have to\u00a0hope\u00a0<\/em>that there’s a lot of smart cops out there acting dumb because they want to keep their jobs.<\/p>\nThe alternative? \u00a0Remember – today’s police forces didn’t exist when the Constitution was written. \u00a0I have a hunch they are more like the standing armies our forefathers feared than our current standing army is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: St. Paul Police Chief Axtell does not know what he\u2019s talking about. Gun violence is exploding in St. Paul.\u00a0 The Chief says \u201c . . . basically it\u2019s yesterday\u2019s fistfights are today\u2019s gun fights.\u201d\u00a0 But then he says it\u2019s \u201c . . . a community health problem, this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-tyranny","category-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63635,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63625\/revisions\/63635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}