Heroin Helper
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Fear is Not a Thing of Value
Cops Cause Crime
In Beth's description of what's been happening in Philadelphia, she touches on an important and mostly ignored fact of crime prevention: putting more cops on the street does not decrease crime--violent crime, in particular. We are dealing with this in my little neck of the woods: The Bay Area.
Power monger Jerry Brown has been major of Oakland for the last four years. He is asking the people of Oakland to pay close to sixty million dollars ($60,000,000) to put another 100 cops on the street to fight the rise in Oakland's already high violent crime rate. Opponents are countering him with the fact (as though facts have any place in politics) that study after study has shown that more cops don't make for a safer community.
What does, then, if more cops don't? The answer is obvious, but it can be hard seeing the obvious sometimes. The better the economy, the lower the crime rate. There are many reasons for this, but let me just list three: idle hands, lack of need, lower stress.
A man down in Southern California wrote a little pamphlet called, "Three Reasons Why Police Increase Crime".(1) In it, he shows, using computer models that the more cops you have, the more crime you have. Basically, he shows that the more money a town spends on cops, the less it spends on producing goods and services that can be offered to other towns. As a result, the more cops a town has, the worse its economy is. Therefore: the more cops a town has, the more crime it has.
I'm trying to track down the author. I would like to have it available to Heroin Helper readers. It's important and fun reading. Until then, vote NO on more cops. Make those guys get a job where they have to produce something of value. "Fear" is not a thing of value.
Notes
1 According to the booklet, it may be acquired through Reach Out Now. Their address is 11142 Balboa Blvd, Suite #148, Granada Hills, CA 91344. They ask for a check or money order donation made payable to RON. However, this booklet was printed in early 1993. It is likely that they aren't around anymore. They have no presence on the Internet, for example. I am going to try to contact them. If I learn anything, I will report it here.
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