Who Bears Accountability for Violent Crime?

You won't find out if you refuse to look at the main cause.

I had to laugh, in a sad sort of way, when I read the Washington Post’s article titled, “After violence, D.C. officials demand ‘accountability.’ Defining it is harder.”

Actually, it’s not hard at all, at least if you’re serious about it, which the Post and other liberal outlets make determined and successful efforts not to be.

The story starts out soberly enough, which was probably unavoidable given the subject matter:

D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III stood behind crime-scene tape draped across four lanes of Georgia Avenue, the evening rush hour brought to an abrupt halt by a hail of gunfire that killed one man and injured three others, including an 8-year-old child.

He recited the sparse details of the Jan. 3 shooting and expressed anger, a grim ritual he has repeated often in his two years running the force in the nation’s capital. He did so again Wednesday after two children and a man were shot and wounded exiting a Metrobus in Northwest D.C.

Yes, DC has a murder problem. It’s not as bad as Baltimore or Chicago, but it’s enough of a scandal that even the Post thinks covering it can’t be avoided. And of course, almost all the victims (and almost all the killers) are black, although if you say this out loud, you’ll go on The Bad List.

At both shooting scenes, Contee said he hoped the community demands “accountability” for those involved — turning to a word he and other city leaders have used frequently as gunfire has generated headlines and claimed children’s lives….

But the accountability they refer to is often vague — meaning different things to different people, or meant to imply someone else, or some other institution, needs to do more.

Judges too lenient. Police too tough. Not tough enough. Too many cops. Too few. Law enforcement not trusted. Defund the police. Fractured homes. Lack of city resources. Substandard schools. Nothing for kids to do. Catch and release. Substandard arrests. Prosecutors drop cases. Judges set criminals free. Alternative justice. Restorative justice. No justice. No accountability.

See anything missing? Hint: Virtually everything recited is about what government actors or advocacy groups do. Is there anyone else involved in violent crime?

D.C. officials insist they aren’t shifting blame by demanding accountability, but instead pointing out that police are but one part of a larger ecosystem that includes a dozen or more criminal justice entities that all deserve scrutiny.

You see, it’s all the “larger ecosystem” and “criminal justice entities” that should get the focus. This account is from city officials, mind you, including the Mayor and the Chief of Police.

And while it’s certainly true that cops, prosecutors, judges, probation officers and other parts of the “ecosystem” have some explaining to do……..still……..does anyone see that the Post’s coverage here is missing something?

[DC Mayor Muriel] Bowser, caught between a reformist Council seeking alternatives to policing and residents wanting harsh consequences for offenders, has said she is pursuing a multifaceted approach. She supports resolving underlying issues such as poverty and addiction, and has put money into alternative justice programs such as violence interrupters to mediate conflicts. But she is also under pressure to stop shootings that are happening now, and has pushed for a larger police force and tougher penalties for offenders.

Where to start? The idea that poverty causes violent crime is complete bunk. Violent crime rose explosively in the 30 years between the end of the Fifties and the end of the Eighties (see this chart), when the country was becoming much richer and standards of living across the board rose significantly. Yet during the Great Recession roughly 15 years ago, when living standards declined for two or three years, violent crime fell considerably (continuing a precipitous decline that began in the early Nineties).

And drug use does contribute to crime, but not in the way Mayor Bowser implies. The principal factor linking addiction and crime is not the biological or psychological effect of the drug itself, but the addict’s need for money to finance his next hit, a need he not infrequently meets by armed robbery.

Lastly, does any serious person believe that “violence interrupters” and “mediators” reduce murder? Let me ask that another way: Do interrupters and mediators ever show up at the time and place that someone is about to get killed? Maybe that’s happened, but I never heard of it. And do the jurisdictions with interrupters have lower or higher murder rates than the country as a whole? I doubt the answer to that question will surprise anyone who subscribes to Ringside.

The union representing D.C. police officers says lawmakers shirked accountability by enacting laws restricting police tactics and shrinking the size of the force, and are complicit in “a tragic loss of life and a horrific increase in the number of victims experiencing violent crime.”

OK, someone is starting to get it, but still the “answer” focuses on what public actors should do to change their behavior — behavior that, while misguided or even perverse, does not shoot anyone in the street.

To activists, city officials’ use of the word “accountability” is code for mass incarceration, harking back to the old-style, tough policing they are trying to change.

Authorities “can’t police your way out of crime. You can’t cage your way out of crime. And so if that’s what they feel … accountability is, D.C.’s in trouble,” said Nee Nee Taylor, co-conductor for Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a Black-led mutual aid and community defense organization.

No, we can’t police our way out of all crime, and we can’t jail our way out of all crime, but the notion that aggressive policing and sober jail sentences won’t considerably help out is a point-blank lie (although never denoted as such by the Washington Post, which takes delight in routinely telling us that, “Donald Trump falsely claimed….,” followed by whatever he said last night).

As the Post and everyone knowledgeable in the field understands, more police, more aggressive policing, and more jail time for more criminals massively decreased crime during the roughly two decades (not so long ago) when we tried them, roughly 1991 - 2011. The crime decrease in that period, and for those reasons, was probably the most startling and hopeful, (if, for ideological reasons, most under-reported) domestic story since WWII. Ms. Nee Nee Taylor’s contrary version is enough to make George Santos seem like Diogenes.

Finally, way, way down near the end of its long story, the Post quotes someone with an inkling of who’s “accountable” for violent crime.

The District’s newly elected attorney general, Brian Schwalb, whose office prosecutes juvenile offenders, said “real accountability results in people at the end of the day changing their behavior. Accountability for young people is oftentimes an appreciation they have done something they shouldn’t have done, and a commitment to not doing it again.”

Goodness gracious! Yes, it’s all true. The center of responsibility for shooting people on the street is the person doing the shooting. It’s not the cops or the prosecutors or the judges. It’s not the ecosystem. It’s not the Second Amendment. It’s not the defense bar. It’s not even fellow travelers like BLM and other bile-filled and/or airhead “criminals-are-victims” advocacy groups.

The person responsible for the shooting is the guy who does it — who does it out of things the Post never once mentions. Things like greed, malice, vengeance, spite, or one form or another of grotesque callousness for the rights and well-being of his fellow creatures.

The Post and its Leftist allies are mystified by accountability for murder, not because they don’t know where to look, but because they refuse to.