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Last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul set out to prove that Democrats could “fight crime” just as offensively/ineffectively as Republicans do, with a flashy plan to deploy the National Guard to do bag checks in the New York City subway.
And how is that going?
So far, the plan has been widely criticized, and not just by those of us on the far left who think a militarized subway zone is actually likely to make things worse, but by people of all political leanings (who also seem to think that a militarized subway zone is likely to make things worse!). Especially commuters who say the National Guard’s public transit presence is “terrifying.”
Notably, it did absolutely nothing to help the woman whose boyfriend pushed her onto the subway tracks, who has now lost her feet, proving that crime and violence are not always necessarily going to be things found in a bag.
But Hochul doesn’t want to go too crazy, which is ostensibly why she has decided that the National Guard members she has posted in the subway should maybe not be holding enormous assault rifles while rifling through commuters’ belongings.
Via NY Daily News:
Gov. Hochul has pulled back the big guns in her subway safety surge, ordering the National Guard not to carry military-grade assault rifles when they check straphangers’ bags for weapons.
Many of the 750 troops Hochul deployed Wednesday to check straphangers’ backpacks hauling laptops or school books or bags carrying groceries carried M4 carbines, military assault rifles whose 5.56mm rounds can defeat some body armor.
Unlike their civilian counterpart, the AR-15, the M4s are capable of automatic fire.
Well, that certainly does sound unpleasant.
Hochul only made the requirement after disturbing images of heavily armed National Guard members started circulating around the internet — though she may want to consider that even unarmed National Guard members are not going to make for a charming photo-op.
Yes, people are freaked out by crime. That’s understandable! People, frankly, also like to see politicians acting rashly and thoughtlessly and doing things that are far more likely to make things worse when it comes to dealing with the problem of crime. They want to see it handled cowboy-style, because that is a lot more immediately satisfying than the boring things that actually do work, like community-based violence intervention (CVI) programs, funding social services, and other things that don’t make anyone look like a total bad ass.
Via ACLU:
Investments in housing, health care, jobs programs, education, after school programs, gun control, environmental design, and violence interruption programs have all been proven to quantifiably reduce violence. For example, one study found that every additional community-focused nonprofit in a medium-sized city leads to a 12 percent reduction in homicide rate, a 10 percent reduction in violent crime, and a 7 percent reduction in property crime. In Philadelphia, simply cleaning vacant lots in neighborhoods below the poverty line resulted in a 29 percent decrease in gun assaults.
There is no element of catharsis in such measures, and so many people don’t really see them as things that can effectively address violent crime, at least not with any sense of urgency. And the fact is, even if these measures had incredible results, the politicians who pushed for them would not get the same amount of “credit” for reducing crime as those who pushed for harsher punishments or a police state.
However! People also tend to not like the idea of living in a police state, either. They don’t want to go down to the subway and see 750 uniformed National Guard members checking people’s bags, because that makes them feel just about as unsafe as crime reports do.
It seems unlikely that this experiment is going to end well for Hochul. It would be nice if Democrats like her could realize that Republican-y measures for crime-fighting (cathartic though they may be) work about as well as all of their other policies — which is to say, not at all. Perhaps someday!
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