{"id":74349,"date":"2020-06-05T11:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74349"},"modified":"2020-06-05T06:46:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T11:46:33","slug":"sheer-brilliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74349","title":{"rendered":"Sheer Brilliance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking along University Avenue, looking unsuccessfully for “white supremacist” graffiti. Distracted, he misses Avery LIBRELLE, who is roaming the streets with a cell phone, reporting people who aren’t socially-distanced enough to the governor’s snitch line. They nearly run into each other. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: Merg!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Uh, hey, Avery…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: It’s time for cities to de-fund the police!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Huh. Seems…illl-advised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: It’s high time we did it! It’s the only way to cure systemic racism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Right. And deaths from house fires will stop when cities abolish fire departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: We’ll come back to that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Huh. Hey, what could go wrong? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: Camden, New Jersey did it<\/a>! In 2012! And guess what, Merg? Crime fell!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Yep. It “fell” because in 2012, it was literally the most dangerous city in the US, of any size. A city of about 77,000 people in 2010 – about the size of Fargo or Duluth – it had 69 homicides. You do the math…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: Hey…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Sorry, my bad. I’ll do the math. That’s a homicide rate well over 100 per 100,000 – triple that of Detroit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: And guess what, Merg? Crime has fallen<\/em>! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Along with the entire rest of the US. And it’s “fallen” to 31 per 100,000<\/a>. Which is, if it were a city over 200,000, would make it the fifth most dangerous city in the US, after Saint Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It’d be tied with Kansas City. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they do all that magic with a “re-organized” police force double the size of the old one . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: (Has become distracted<\/em>) Hey – is that a white supremacist I see over there? With an assault rifle? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: It’s a city road crew worker with a jackhammer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIBRELLE: I”d better see what Vox.com says about it…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERG: Er…about crime?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(But LiIBRELLE has wandered away already<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And SCENE<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking along University Avenue, looking unsuccessfully for “white supremacist” graffiti. Distracted, he misses Avery LIBRELLE, who is roaming the streets with a cell phone, reporting people who aren’t socially-distanced enough to the governor’s snitch line. They nearly run into each other. LIBRELLE: Merg! BERG: Uh, hey, Avery… LIBRELLE: It’s time for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[419,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2020-riots","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74349","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=74349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74350,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74349\/revisions\/74350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}