Throwback error number 763 #crimestats

Throwback error number 763

by digby











More evidence Trump's stuck in the 1970s:


This is just nonsense he's selling his paranoid white voters who think that the big cities today are still like a scene out of "The Out of Towners"

Trump didn’t cite any evidence to support the point he’s trying to make. But his claim that crime is at “record levels” in the inner-city or elsewhere is false. Violent crime in America’s cities has actually been declining for two decades. The New York Police Department’s latest crime figures embody the point — while murders are up 12 percent so far this year relative to 2014, they’re down 82 percent compared to 23 years ago. 
“The average person in a large urban area is safer walking on the street today than he or she would have been at almost any time in the past 30 years,” the authors of a report on 2015 crime data for the Brennan Center For Justice wrote.
I think he may actually believe his drivel. His delusions are very powerful.  But it isn't true and it's important that people point this out. It's in the context of this lower crime rate that Black Lives Matter and similar concerns about over policing are particularly relevant. Trump and his people want police to "take the gloves off" at a moment of relative safety just as they want the border patrol and ICE to "take the gloves off" at a time of drastically reduced immigration. None of this is based upon increased threats of crime or economic competition. It's the work of a demagogue ginning up fear and hatred for his own purposes. 

.