(Originally published in AUN-TV.)
Law enforcement veteran Michael Letts points out a new report that reveals why people like Gov. Newsom and George Soros aren’t accurate in the blame game.
Crime has increased rapidly over the past year, between all these “blue counties” trying to punish their police forces with budget cuts and setting up restrictive gun laws, believing that will be the resolution to their problems. Clearly, it wasn’t.
But, of course, people like California Governor Mike Newsom and billionaire George Soros blame the “red counties” for the increase in violence, because it couldn’t possibly be their fault, right?
Newsom even stated at one point, “8 of the top 10 murder states are red.” To add to that, Soros noted that “violent crime in recent years has generally been increasing more quickly in jurisdictions without reform-minded prosecutors” and “murder rates have been rising fastest in some Republican states led by tough-on-crime politicians.”
Of course, some news outlets ate this info up like it was potato chips. But a new report from the Heritage Foundation may make the data a bit hard for them to swallow.
According to the report, a “flawed” methodology was used in putting their numbers together, using only nationally based numbers instead of local. And even then, things just didn’t add up.
“It is true that red states have higher homicide rates than blue states, but the problem with this is that crime is a hyper-localized phenomenon,” Kevin Dayaratna, co-author of the report, explained to Fox News. “It doesn’t make sense to talk about at the state level. It makes sense to talk about at the local level because that’s where the prosecutions occur. The local level crime is handled at the local level by local police, so when you look at this question on a local basis, namely the county level, you’ll see that the trend is reversed.”
One would think that when measuring the criminal activity across a state, you’d look locally into what’s happening in each of the cities and add up the numbers that way. But apparently, Newsom’s calculator was broken that day, so he made a “guesstimate” instead.
“If you look at the analysis on a state-by-state level, it’s 34% higher in red states and blue states, according to the most recent data we analyzed, but then when you look at it as a county-by-county level, it is 60% higher in blue counties than red counties,” Dayaratna added.
But before you go, “Well, wait, what if this report is basing itself on bias as well?”, that’s not the case. Dayaratna added that the study is “drawing conclusions from state-level homicide data in such a manner is flawed, as each state consists of a combination of federal, state, county, and local law enforcement agencies, as well as prosecutors with different approaches to law enforcement often based on highly divergent political beliefs.”
“Looking at homicide rates by county, states show skewed distributions with many counties having little or no homicides, and a handful of counties with excessively high homicide rates. Thus, state homicide rates can be heavily influenced by a few counties. When those counties have different politics from the rest of the state, it can flip the conclusion about the association between political identifications and homicides.”
It just goes to show that when it comes to solving the criminal problem, gun laws aren’t getting it done. Because people can still get their hands on guns, through out-of-state visits, online purchases, and what have you. And that’s just off the top of my head – the possibilities are endless.
Hopefully this report wakes a lot of people up and makes them realize that there’s only one real way to combat the violence – police. Plain and simple. These people can cry “defund!” all they like, but look at the rising criminal numbers and tell me that’s an effective solution. It’s not. I don’t care what Gov. Newsom has to say on the matter.
Maybe those flawed Democrats in Boston can take a closer look at that $3.4 million bill they just vetoed for criminal support and realize it’s not about a flawed computer system, it’s about keeping people safe. Stop making excuses and start making moves to bring this country back to order. Because you aren’t going to do it on words alone.
About The Author:
Michael Letts is the Founder, President, and CEO of InVest USA, a national grassroots non-profit organization that is helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs. He also has over 30 years of law enforcement experience under his belt, hence his pro-police stance for his brothers and sisters in blue. Those interested in learning more about Letts can visit his official website here.
