• VHS [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 hours ago

    Violent crime has been trending downwards in general, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the snowstorms and extreme cold this past month have caused more people to stay inside further driving it down.

  • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    12 hours ago

    Violent crime has been down across America lately. Baltimore had it’s lower murder rate in like 50 years (and that actually was correlated with the mayor implementing some progressive community policing reforms which did help accelerate the trend), however nobody is exactly sure why. One theory is that because fentanyl has become the main narcotic being distributed in the US, and fent is so easy to distribute you don’t really need a proper “organized crime” network to do it, it’s resulted in less and less powerful street gangs who aren’t fighting over turf as much, but that’s just one theory.

    • InexplicableLunchFiend [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      12 hours ago

      Fent also makes you a sleepy sleepy guy instead of meth or crack which make you into active roaming criminals fiending for more. Fent is also so cheap you don’t really need to rob people to keep up the habit

      • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        12 hours ago

        Yeah this is part of the reason why people PERCEIVE crime as being higher in cities despite it actually being lower. There’s less violent crime but there’s a lot more obviously intoxicated and destitute people in the street. They may not be committing any crime (well besides having and consuming an illegal substance) but having so many clearly desperate people in your immediately surroundings is still very unpleasant and makes people feel less safe.

    • LaughingLion [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      14 hours ago

      Baltimore having its lowest crime spree isn’t an accident at all. Their mayor is a lefty and has this proactive community outreach he’s doing. Like, he’s deliberately moved away from policing to fix violent crime. The lowering of violent crime in Baltimore far exceeds what we’d expect to see for the national average.

      The way you put it makes it seem like their efforts there haven’t been useful and that flatly untrue.

      • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        14 hours ago

        Didn’t mean it that way. Im from the Baltimore area originally think his policing reforms are great and definitely were a huge contributor to the lower murder rate.

        But it is also true that rates were already declining before he entered office and have been declining across the country. He accelerated the trend in his city but the trend was already happening.

      • anotherspinelessdem@lemmy.ml
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        15 hours ago

        I have to imagine size and potency, as well as a partial legal framework for it to exist in (medical use).

        If I want a balloon up my ass of fentanyl I could probably make 10x more on it, but why bother when I could buy it off the resident who needs to pay off half a mill in student loans?

        • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          14 hours ago

          haha as if there weren’t enough pressures to stay out of US medicine, becoming collateral in the drug bust of your colleague sounds like a nightmare.

          • anotherspinelessdem@lemmy.ml
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            11 hours ago

            There’s incentive not to snitch or arrest since fewer people are in medicine these days because of the huge cost of that education (at least in the US), so you’re incentivized to keep your mouth fucking shut if you see or hear of any fent dealing because it might take a while to replace them and all those patients will fall on your overworked shoulders, which will undoubtedly result in deaths and they might actually be very competent as a doctor, and their replacement will be in even more debt. Thus the system perpetuates itself.

            The problem with debt traps is that they inevitably result in desperate people doing desperate things.

      • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        15 hours ago

        It’s so potent a very small amount can supply a lot of dealers. No need for submarines or secret tunnels or guys driving box trucks with false bottoms, a guy with a backpack can get a ton over the border. Plus it’s often in pill form so it’s easy to disguise as legal medication.

  • Juice@midwest.social
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    10 hours ago

    The right stops letting doctors measure COVID cases so politicians can falsely claim countermeasures are unnecessary

    The left stops letting cops measure crime so the people can prove police are unnecessary

    They walked so we could run

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      13 hours ago

      The left stops letting cops measure crime

      Do you think cops are statisticians or something lmao? Even if a ton of pigs walk out, reports of crimes are still recorded

      • Juice@midwest.social
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        13 hours ago

        If a cop does arrests someone, some kind of report gets filed, by the cop or someone in the dept. That report goes into a database. That database is searched by whoever makes the crime reports, to determine what crimes are being committed, where, how much, etc., the admin of the individual police officers are also cops.

        The amount of crime that is caused is used to justify increases in the police budget and expansion of the force. Politicians do shit like making unhoused illegal, so that more “crimes” are committed (when actual crime is on the decline), so they can justify increasing police budgets because their constituents are racist and love pigs. Q.E. motherfuckin D.

        Also I was half joking, im surprised how many comments there were to my stupid post

        • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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          12 hours ago

          Also I was half joking, im surprised how many comments there were to my stupid post

          It’s because “@midwest.social” is taken as a liberal bat signal here, hexbears will always think the user is a lib being dead serious without the hint of sarcasm or irony

          Unfortunate side effect of federation

          • Juice@midwest.social
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            12 hours ago

            Really? ive heard that before from bears but ive never really seen it myself. The owner admin of the instance is an authentic leftist, kinda ancom in my experience. The admin worked with me for some of my meddlesome socialist schemes in the past, and we know some of the same people in our state. Although, it is the Midwest, so the average user might just be a little backward. hell I’ve been dressed down by bears more than once, it fucking sucks.

            Still love you guys but its mostly unrequited . i used to be a bear myself, but I got banned from a comm for being a trot

            • Azarova [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              10 hours ago

              Unfortunately I think a lot of people here (myself included, though I try to check myself) don’t give the benefit of the doubt to anyone not on Hexbear or Lemmygrad. It’s led to a lot of awkward and avoidable friendly fire imho.

              • Juice@midwest.social
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                10 hours ago

                Your instance is constantly under attack. There’s a certain logic to defensiveness that, imo, isnt very compatible with socialist liberation. The siege mindset has its own rules, and your instance is legit a safe space for vulnerable people.

                In order to combat it, your instance would need something like a party program, organization and a practical form of education. Meanwhile all of your enemies are invisible. Its enough to drive anyone to become defensive, that’s why people come to harass your members and be disgusting chauvinists on your instance.p

                I don’t appreciate the way some bears respond to me, especially over occasional authentic political disagreements, but I understand it and try not to take it personal. Although some bears can be especially nasty. I think there are things y’all could do to improve it, I wish that hexbears would self-organize in a conspicuous, widespread, and meaningful way. Short of that though, its just the internet, not worth it for me to get bent out of shape over. Hexbear do Hexbear, and I’m rooting for you all

            • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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              12 hours ago

              Don’t know what to tell you, we keep getting libs with lib takes from that instance, and we have no toleration of liberalism here, not at this late date

                • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                  1 hour ago

                  To be fair it would be infinitely more ironic for us to be tolerant of people who want to see us and the planet die for the sake of markets

              • Juice@midwest.social
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                11 hours ago

                Probably an pointless gesture, but. Completely different context, but there’s some nuggets that might be applicable to the zero tolerance posture. Also it’s a fucking classic, can’t read it enough!

                I don’t really operate under the zero tolerance mandate, personally and in my organizing I feel like I have to tolerate a great deal of liberalism. Mamdani (only mentioned cuz he’s features in the meme and generally regarded positively in this post thread) was backed by NYC-DSA, and that chapter is very much on the right of the org, moderate “Democratic party realignment” advocates, but still very effective, active, organized comrades. We struggle against that tendency of DSA every day, literally spent about an hour talking to a comrade about it earlier. In the meantime, tons of new people are joining the org, many have some kooky ideas and wrongheadedness. To me i need to try and educate, thats the nature of my work and i seem to have a knack for it. Liberalism cant be combatted as an individual ideology, only as a structural manifestation of bourgeois opportunism (incidentally another major insight of Lenin’s LWC.)

                OTOH, Im not involved in the concerted efforts keeping your instance a safe place. Seems like there’s a vicious campaign against your instance that is just completely undeserved. I commend the zero tolerance for racism, transphobia, all forms of chauvinism; and those things def go hand in hand with liberalism.

                It’s a hard problem. I hope I’m not coming off preachy just sharing my experience. And like you said, this historical phase will sort us out sooner rather than later, one way or the other.

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      14 hours ago

      The CDC primarily measured average COVID cases through waste contamination tests, not hospitals testing and reporting numbers. If you cut the funding for those tests to the CDC then yeah, they aren’t going to do the sewage tests to measure the rates. No such thing has happened for the NYPD.

      Crime rates usually come from the incident reports filed directly by police officers. In a healthy policing scenario, most of these incident reports are created from someone calling or notifying the police about something going on, not from them just stumbling onto something.

      If anything may this indicate that police were purposely instigating and escalating incidents, depending on what the percentages of “community instigated incidents” are. It could also just mean that it is fucking cold outside and people just aren’t doing shit at all. These numbers don’t really mean anything without a hell of a lot of extra context.

      However, the statistical relationship between an increase in policing and a decrease in crime has always been tenuous, at best.

    • Juice@midwest.social
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      10 hours ago

      Oh I get it now, the way I framed it makes me sound like a sucky centrist. Which is the reason it got such a reaction.

      Well don’t worry, actually I’ve transcended politics. You’re welcome

      • Juice@midwest.social
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        12 hours ago

        What? What I said isnt analysis. Its just an admittedly dumb comment.

        This might be the wrong sub to be not 1000% serious

        • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          12 hours ago

          Sorry I think some of us are a bit too trigger happy when it comes to other instances and your joke was a bit too vague but I found it amusing

          Like don’t get me wrong, if an actual bootlicker (be they lib or chud) came in here and started talking shit I’d pull out all the big guns and open fire without hesitation but I don’t think you actually crossed a line here

          • Juice@midwest.social
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            10 hours ago

            Its very funny, its probably the most engagement ive ever had in almost 2k posts on Lemmy. I wasnt even serious and it wasnt even that funny of a joke. I actually edited it to make it seem less like a centrist comment, but apparently somewhat missed the mark. Appreciate all the comments though! Cheered me up during a stupid, exhausting, busy day of work

              • Juice@midwest.social
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                9 hours ago

                Am I able to use them? That would be awesome, it was my fav thing about your instance, I miss it.

                I kinda forget how to use them though, its been like 2 years.

                But you’re good I had a long, frustrating day too