QPP 48: Jeff Asher on Gun Arrests

Jeff Asher speaks about the gun arrests and violence in 2020. And we’re joined by Brandon Del Pozo.

He wrote about it for vox.

And his data is here.

Audio:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45289222

Youtube link for those who prefer:

Automated uncorrected transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker 1 Hello and welcome back to Quality Policing, I am Peter Moskos, and I am here once again with Jeff Ashar, crime analyst and. Head of I don’t know what your title is, Boss Man at Crime Analytics, and he is sitting in hot New Orleans right now. I am in New York City and will probably be joined by Brandon del Pozo, who is the former chief of police in Burlington, Vermont, and a former who I am not certain if it’s what his title was, the inspector, former ranking officer and precinct commander with New York Police Department. So welcome, Jeff. You were I think this is your third time on this. Know, no doubt this really helps your your wallets and your media status by appearing more than once on quality policing

[00:01:01] Speaker 2 is retiring next week. Thank you.

[00:01:03] Speaker 1 Yeah, I’m just doing this now, you know, out of love. Well, actually, that’s true, but not because I can retire. And I should mention there is more equality policing, dotcom and including a link to the article we’re going to be talking about primarily. So check that out. And you can also from quality policing DOT, come see my collection of violence reduction essays,

[00:01:30] Speaker 2 which

[00:01:31] Speaker 1 you didn’t contribute to. Damn it. But but one day maybe there’s still no deadline. But welcome back. So you had an article in the got published yesterday or the day before in Vox Dotcom, I should mention. I always like to that this is being recorded on June 13th. Twenty twenty one. And if you Google Vox and Jeff Asher come up and it is also it’s it’s coauthored. It is by Rob Arthur and Jeff Asher. Who is Rob Arthur. I’m unfamiliar with them.

[00:02:06] Speaker 2 I don’t know. He’s just my brother Rob is a he’s from Chicago. He’s very smart. He’s a PhD in genetics and he does a lot of data stuff. He used to work for five thirty eight. He Rob is the one that did the math but found that the baseballs had changed and that the seams have been lowered. And that was why there was more home runs. So. So he does all the fancy math and I’m just there for the eye candy I guess most of our stuff. But we’ve written a handful of things together, so this is another good opportunity to write.

[00:02:48] Speaker 1 So the first thing people will see is a headline that says one possible cause of the twenty twenty murder increase more guns. And I mention that because after reading the article, it’s like that’s not really what the article says. And we know authors don’t write headlines and often they get them wrong. This one seems particularly egregious only because the more guns caused the violence increase in twenty twenty is a theory out there and there isn’t. Well, we can talk about that. I’m going to say there isn’t really any data to point to that as a causal effect on your article is far more nuanced, but it does talk about the trends in gun arrests and how many cities seven, eight,

[00:03:38] Speaker 2 six with ten cities have data, some better than others. So we talk about that there were ten cities. Most of our examples come from like a half dozen, six to eight cities that had better data, like your your beloved Baltimore. The data, it showed the same trend. But the the data is kind of crappy from the restaurant. So that and, you know, there’s a couple of other cities I was just reading about, Madison, Wisconsin, which we didn’t include in the piece, but has quarterly data. We were really interested in the monthly because quarter is also is of quarter of twenty twenty, which was huge. The second quarter was April when everyone was locked down and in June when everyone was going crazy. So we really tried to hone in on the places with good monthly data which which was limited a little bit to get a lot of things. Just don’t put good data out there.

[00:04:36] Speaker 1 They don’t and I should compliment you and I do some of this whole pat myself on the back to a lesser extent, but I’m just as fabulous and known, in fact, for collecting current homicide data from cities because the Ukraine, the FBI doesn’t do that. And Jeff and I, Jeff, very nice about sharing data as researchers should be. And so I’ve been able to look at this data as well. Hey, there is Brandon del Pozo. We’ve already started, Brandon, but welcome, Brandon. So I would just getting into the crux of Jeff’s article. And so what what do these data show, Jeff?

[00:05:21] Speaker 2 Well, so what it shows that we really caught my eye was Jens Ludwig, who’s at the University of Chicago crime lab, did a piece talking about Chicago stops and how basically the number of stops plummeted in Chicago starting in March, April and then continuing through the year. And there was a sort of this increase in May and then decrease again in June, July, and then it sort of increased to the rest of the year. So you saw this stop, the drop in stops. But what he found was that there was an increase in the number of firearms found. So with the sort of assumption being that unless police suddenly got really good at figuring out who they were stopping Stoss, the number of stops still being random, that it was indicative of an increase of the number of firearms that were being carried. And so you can see that we looked at 10 cities of data in all 10 cities. We found that the share of firearms per arrest went up again starting in that April, May time frame, suggesting before everything went to hell with the protests and gun violence increasing and whatnot, there was an increase in firearm carrying. And then in many of these cities, you saw an increase in the number of firearms. So that’s that’s undoubtedly evidence that there were more people carrying firearms. If you know, in Chicago, there was a 70 percent drop in the number of stops from January to May, but an 80 percent increase in the number of firearms found. So not just a share changing, but the actual number. Tucson, Arizona, similarly had like a 30 percent drop in arrests and a 30 something percent increase in the number of weapons possession arrests. And you saw that again and again in pretty much every city. And then for a handful of other cities, a lot of cities, you saw it stayed high through the rest of the year. So like Philadelphia is a good example where the number of arrests plummeted in the in March, April, May timeframe and the share of those arrests that were firearms went from about three to four percent on average to 15 percent in April, seven 1/2 percent in May, and then through the rest of twenty twenty in September, it was 12 percent. In October, it was nine percent and it was 15 percent in November and 14 percent in December, where you were getting basically twice as many weapons, arrests, weapons, possessions, arrests with a thousand fifteen hundred fewer arrests. So if it’s not 100 percent and I sort of when I do my analysis, I live in this place where we’re just trying to progressively advance our understanding of what’s happening and the idea being to provide evidence of certain hypotheses that then really smart people can go out and get 50 cities or 100 cities of data. But this is certainly indicative of that. Firearm carrying began substantially more often in April, May timeframe and then stayed there through the rest of the year. And so when I think about why murder rose last year, there was a cause and it was elevated for the first quarter and the second quarter. And so some of that, I think, might have been pandemic related. But when we really talk about why the last year’s murder increase was historic, it was everything that happened over the summer and everything that happened throughout the fall. And so obviously,

[00:08:56] Speaker 1 let me just repeat what you said there, because I think it’s important murder was trending up in most cities and nationwide, 10, 15 percent, I would say, was sort of a standard. This is year to date, twenty twenty versus twenty nineteen. And had it not been for the great increase that happened at the end of May and June, we would be talking about that 10, 15 percent increase because it’s you know, because that’s a big increase on a year to on a yearly level. But what followed it was so much greater that it’s it’s almost I don’t want to say irrelevant because there’s still people getting shot and killed. But there’s so there’s probably there are two separate things going on here and they don’t. Negate each other and all but the big one happened, the big increase happened from June on.

[00:09:43] Speaker 2 Yeah, the FBI’s preliminary data had it at seven percent after the first quarter, 15 percent after the second quarter. Some of that is June. So, you know, maybe we’re still talking about a historically large increase in murder, but we’re not talking about twice the previous historic high for an increase in the percent change. So when I when I think about it, I think, what are the causes? Why did people start shooting each other more often? And what are the accelerants? Why did it get so bad and when? So when I think of this piece, I think this definitely fits in the accelerant bucket that you had so many more firearms on the streets that otherwise things that maybe not were shoot would not have been shootings, people carrying firearms a lot more often, which as whatever it is. And I think that it’s very complicated. What caused the increase in June, whatever caused that, those factors and what continued what caused it to continue past just the protests in June was all put on steroids because basically twice as many people were carrying guns as we’re carrying before. This is not hard and fast evidence of that, but I think it’s pretty strong, convincing circumstantial evidence. And I wrote a piece, so obviously I’m convinced by it. But and so and the other the other interesting thing that I think it it doesn’t inherently neglect, but it complicates is this idea that there was this drop in policing. There was definitely a drop everywhere. There was a drop in arrest. There was a drop in stops with the idea being that, OK, police everywhere were willing to go and get firearms. And that’s not inherently untrue. There might have been just so many firearms on the streets that police were doing there less of everything. But we’re still getting more firearms. But it does certainly it makes it difficult to say police more willing to go after firearms when all of the evidence from the city suggests that they were getting for firearms more often than they were before. And I think the positive read on that is police were more committed to getting the firearms than everything else. I think it’s just a complicating factor in something that Twitter everything has to be simplistic and I think is pretty complex.

[00:11:56] Speaker 1 Well, there are a lot of academics that are a little simplistic, I think, saying, oh, well, clearly violence went up because of covid and sort of leave it at that, that economic anxiety somehow causes people to go out and get the gun they wouldn’t have gotten before because more people bought guns and then shoot each other. I just there’s a way it just doesn’t make any inherent sense to me. And the data doesn’t support that argument, which is why I think we’ve got to look at this stuff now. Let me I am thinking from a sort of New York bias perspective, because I live here and most of the cops I talk to are NYPD. Their answer, I think, to what you just said is, first of all, most guns are gone and the bulk of guns or gotten by a very small group of officers, you know, in some specialized unit that’s kind of, you know, dedicated to against trying to get guns off the street. So they. The rest of the cops, in a way, don’t matter much for gun arrest. I mean, yeah, you might get one incident to arrest or you might stumble across one. But in a way, at least in large cities, you have sort of you have more than two, but at least two different police departments, one doing the routine patrol and then a segment of the other focusing on guns. So those people focusing on guns could be doing the exact same job. And guns, there are more guns on the street. I think we can assume that because shootings almost doubled. So, of course, they gun arrests go up. That’s as I was going to go. Yeah, so what’s this? So what? I mean, just there’s a simple correlation between gun possession and gun arrests, let’s say, assuming cops are doing the same thing. OK, and then. Like what else is what? Well, what else are these numbers showing and feel free to join in Bratton if you’ve got black sites, thoughts. But I think

[00:13:59] Speaker 2 the other thing is they show that it was and we know there’s been shooting throughout, but it was really widespread and it was everywhere and it was everywhere early on. And I think that that’s

[00:14:09] Speaker 1 really what this of early

[00:14:11] Speaker 2 being like April, May, before all of the protests and everything

[00:14:16] Speaker 1 went up. You’re saying. But shootings weren’t up in April.

[00:14:18] Speaker 2 Many shootings were not think they were elevated? I think in a lot of places, like couple percent, the murder the murder number was elevated a little bit.

[00:14:30] Speaker 1 Something else I heard which rings true, I don’t know if it is, is that simply it was a lot easier to focus on gun offenders. And when covid was at its peak, March, April twenty twenty, simply because those offenders were not did not wear outside, they weren’t doing the lockdown. So the basically the percentage of people in any given neighborhood who were on the street and up to no good increase greatly during that time there also and I don’t want to complicate too many events, but the world is complicated. There are a lot of there was a lot in New York specifically, there was a big release from jail in January due to bail reform from December. Really, though, December 20, 19, January twenty twenty. And then there was another large release from jail in April and where the population of New York City jails dropped below 4000 for the first time since, I think nineteen forty six, the mayor issued a glorious statement celebrating that and then shootings increased immediately in May. So I mention those because, of course, as you know, there’s not a single factor. What we’re trying to break this down as much and figure out what happened. And then there’s the other thing, of course, is that the shooting increase was almost universal, though not everywhere. You know, Anchorage, Alaska, saw murders go down 50 percent and no one seems to know or care. I mean, I don’t know. But, you know, it’s a bigger city, the Newark, New Jersey. And what was going on there, they had covered their economic anxiety. Shootings did not go up in Canada or Mexico or really any other country I’m aware of in the world, which certainly means, well, what if this happened without covid in America? I doubt it, but it was not. I think that

[00:16:24] Speaker 2 I think that speaks to our unique love affair with guns in this country.

[00:16:28] Speaker 1 I mean, but El Salvador has guns and covid and they saw a decrease in violence like, you know, we’re the only country is the effect, let’s say, is uniquely American. It may be because we have the combo of guns, bad mental health care and in poverty and in a violent culture inherently. But again, El Salvador and Mexico are haven’t been known as particularly peaceful places recently. So there is something unique to America. And that’s why it seems like the protests post Floyd Mayweather. I’m not saying it’s the only thing, but that clearly to me is the catalyst, because, first of all, it was largely uniquely American and more so. It correlates perfectly with the increase in violence. That’s when the violence started in most cities. Right. Magnificent Mile. I’m a Chicago guy, was born in Chicago. And it started in New York the day after the police precinct was burnt in Minneapolis, which I think. I don’t know. OK. Uh. And and, well, let me mention that Minneapolis police precinct, because to anybody who has done the job and probably many people who haven’t. That was a huge event. You’re not supposed to give a police stations. I was shocked. I’m now at, you know, at some point, what are you going to do? You can’t you shouldn’t just start, you know, shooting from snipers into a crowd. So but it was there were still police. So if you’re going to give it up, you can’t have police officers in the station when you do it. That was a big deal to cops. It was inconceivable and then it happened. So, yeah, I want to point that out as a specific inflection point also. So I’m looking at just data here in Chicago and. April, there were one hundred and thirty gun arrests, which is the lowest number perhaps ever, at least as far back as this data goes, which is the start of 2017. Then it picks up again. When these protests happen, so that’s April. So that’s that’s a lockdown, right? Yes, I would have expected to see a drop in June because a lot of the cops who would take guns off the street presumably were reassigned to protest detail. But you don’t really see that there’s a little dip, but. How? I don’t know what I’m asking how. Yeah, and I don’t want to knock a guy who gathered the data because it’s good data to have the always like

[00:22:57] Speaker 2 and that’s we’re having more widespread stops. Data, I think, would be interesting because you’re not talking about response to shootings. You’re talking about people you’re pulling over. And sort of a random subset of you are of the of the overall population. When we looked at the Chicago data, Chicago does have their investigative stop data that you can sort of play with. And so if you compare like trying to see was there a change in who people were, who was getting pulled over, who was getting stopped, the the demographics didn’t change at all in when the firearms the sharp increase of the number of firearms increased, the amount of drugs that they were finding was the same. The percentage of drugs was the same. So it was just that the share of firearm shot shot up, which again, seems to be suggestive of increased firearm carrying. But I would rather have 20 cities. There’s only a handful of cities that have actual stops, data that shows whether or not a firearm was found.

[00:24:01] Speaker 1 We wrote about this yesterday. I’m I’m leery of that percentage. I mean, it’s worth talking about. And I know we’re not going to bet I’m not here to to give you a hard time, but I’m leery of that percentage of arrests that are going to rise because I just think the denominator is so much more important in that case than the numerator I like. Look, but the raw numbers I find quite interesting and just how many times someone were taken. But I mean during covid cops for limited interactions, partly because fewer people were out and partly because they don’t want to get covid and a lot of cops did. So like, of course, arrests went down and gun arrests also went down, but the percentage went up. But I just think that’s that that’s such an odd month that I don’t know how useful that that that that figure is. Let me also, before I forget, when you mention we’re talking about the economic conditions, I think shootings went up, let’s say, June 20, 20, dramatically. The inflection point, you know, give or take a few days. What bothers me, some people say, oh, well, it’s a clearly social economic conditions as those didn’t change. And, you know, May twenty ninth, twenty twenty. We have yeah. Of course, America is violent because of all those issues. But the increase isn’t caused by that because those didn’t change on that day. And the problem, if you look at macro economic conditions, it’s too broad. First of all, I find something a little patronizing and disrespectful to say, oh, of course, they shoot each other because they’re poor. I know most poor people don’t shoot each other. Most people in poverty don’t shoot each other. So the number of shooters in any city like Take New York, they’re eight million people. Last year, I think, what, two thousand people were shot. Let’s say each person was shot by an individual shooter, which isn’t true. But we’re still only dealing with 2000 shooters in a city of eight million. So what happens to, you know, eight point two million minus two thousand? I’m saying a lot of people are never going to shoot anybody in a crime, no matter how desperate they become. And that includes the vast majority of people who are extremely desperate and in an economic sense. It doesn’t matter if those people have jobs or not, I mean, it does for them, it does for society. But in terms of violence, it doesn’t matter. What matters is those 2000, maybe 3000 potential shooters in New York City and in other cities, it’s even smaller now that they lose legitimate jobs and start shooting anybody. I doubt it. I don’t most of them probably didn’t have legitimate jobs before that. Did the economic situation change? I don’t know. But any time you use a huge macro indicator, whether it’s the unemployment rate or anything else, it doesn’t, including non economic indicators. It seems to miss the point that it is repeat violent offenders that need to be focused on. And I think that’s why the macro analysis always fail. Well, they know if they have the answers before the questions are phrased, I mean, we know what they’re going to say and it doesn’t matter what happens in the world, because they’ve they’re going to say they’re going to go to their little pet projects and and the causes they’ve always supported.

[00:29:42] Speaker 2 But. Go ahead, Jeff. I can say that I think when I think about the economy, one of the questions that we have to answer is not just why did it rise so much, but why did it why it stayed elevated for most of the last year. And so then, like, I’m in New Orleans, you know, you got your experience from New York, essentially. I am from New Orleans. New Orleans had an increase in the June, July timeframe and then a huge surge in the October, November timeframe. And so that’s not tied to anything. And when I think about why did that happen, if you want to make an argument that the economy, you know, the stimulus money ran out and the the unemployment insurance was was denied and people had saved in economic desperation, what started? I don’t know that it’s inherently the case, but I think when you think about it, how do you explain why it is persisted through the fall? I think maybe it becomes potentially a more persuasive potential argument. But then, you know, there’s been several stimuli since the last of the last six months. So what you know, why is it still up? I think right now I have it up 18 percent year to date relative to last year. So, you know, I think it’s for me at least, obviously, the economy is a loser of an explanation for why it started in June, because.

[00:31:04] Speaker 1 Because, I mean, unemployment skyrocketed when it happened. So I talk in March and then maybe the

[00:31:11] Speaker 2 economy was OK. That’s why it was off a couple of percent economic. And at least one of the first piece I wrote on this was last July before it was more clearly tied to everything that happened in June. And you had a lot of guys like Austan. Murder was up 40 something percent in Austin through May down.

[00:31:35] Speaker 1 I want donuts.

[00:31:36] Speaker 2 This is this is Andy Ashar making his podcast debut.

[00:31:40] Speaker 1 Welcome to Quality. Please go. Nice money. But so so unemployment was going down after a huge spike. It was it was steadily decreasing throughout twenty twenty. So one could say, well it was still higher than it was. Sure. But like again you’re trying

[00:32:01] Speaker 2 to that

[00:32:02] Speaker 1 the, the theory fit the data and it doesn’t very well. But I don’t

[00:32:07] Speaker 2 know that there’s any one theory inherently that fits all of the data. Why did it happen everywhere? Why did it persist? Why was it up early? There’s and that’s why when I talk about

[00:32:21] Speaker 1 what about and I don’t think this explains it all, but I think it actually is important. And I don’t I don’t want to oversimplify too much. What if because people who got arrested for carrying illegal guns weren’t detained in jail? How about that?

[00:32:35] Speaker 2 I mean, it’s possible I don’t know that we inherently have a lot of data on that specifically. Like we know when the war ended, it was largely nonviolent stuff, which I guess weapons possession is inherently nonviolent, is a crime. I can’t speak to that one way or another because I don’t know that there’s enough good data of what what was being released. I know in New Orleans, New Orleans went from about thirty five hundred people incarcerated in 2010 to about a little over a thousand last year. And twenty nine came late twenty nineteen. And when it hit it fell to like eight hundred or so. So the drop it was, you know, you’re talking about a 20 percent drop from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty but a tiny drop from twenty ten to twenty twenty. You know you’ve already, you’ve already accomplished this huge drop over the preceding ten years where New Orleans had this dramatic decrease in violence, New Orleans and the fewest murders they’d ever recorded in nineteen twenty nineteen and also had the fewest number of people incarcerated in twenty nineteen. So I guess

[00:33:52] Speaker 1 I’m and I also say, I mean the problem is incarceration figures are also very crude because most people incarcerated have now shot someone. So sort of looking at the you know, now you’re even more of a data man than I am, Jeff. But I’m willing to consider sort of logical theories and Branden’s of damn philosophy PhD guy. So he’s always sort of going off the deep end on this stuff I. I wouldn’t want to, you know, make major policy just based on sort of theories in our head, but I’m willing to accept logical theory if we don’t have the data. I’m willing to sort of entertain logical theories that seem to make sense rather than say, well, we don’t know because we don’t have the data. Well, we’re never going to have that data, but people are getting killed. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can’t prove that it’s all about it. But I mean, look, if you can if you got arrested for a gun. And if you literally get a ticket to, say, show up in court, we don’t know when because courts aren’t functioning, but some point months from now, years, maybe you’re going to have to answer for this in court and you are literally home with your same crew that night. Normally, I think the concept of deterrence is overrated, but at some point there’s a deterrent effect not just in not just individual deterrence, but general deterrence. If there’s no I mean, you lost your gun, but that’s all right. You got another that has to have an impact on. Gangs that are that may shoot someone is there was literally no consequence to getting around what they had to get arrested. The other west side, I have a friend, a former student of mine, who police there for a long time. It didn’t used to be you didn’t have to. They’re not used to be returned fire in New York. That is a new and unfortunate development. I have to push back a bit. I understand your logical point about risk price, but it’s also important to mention that when stop, question and frisk was at its most absurd peak shootings, we’re not actually going down much in the entire decade from 2010 to 2020 was somewhat. Of a level period to from two I’m sorry, from 2000 to 2010, the decrease happened before and after a stop and frisk mostly, which is in. And the last episode of this podcast, former chief of Department Lewis Anemone was going bonkers at this concept and he was saying to people, we need more touches and Luas just going ballistic because he said, no, this is not what policing is about. This is not how you bring down crime. And with my colleague, Arthur Storch, who was also precinct commander, was saying, you know, you end up stopping people who I mean, this is, to put it mildly, don’t need to be stopped. You’re stopping people who are easy to stop simply to produce numbers. It became a stat based frenzy. Well, let me guess where

[00:40:16] Speaker 2 I’m going to complain about the IRS data. How is it that that data is not online? I know that they have. I think the 20 19 stops data is online. They somehow only publish quarterly. It drives me nuts that the premier police department in the nation does not have its own data hooked up to be automatically updated every day that they do it quarterly, several months after the fact. Drives me crazy,

[00:40:38] Speaker 1 but I will give them credit that there’s a lot of data online, though. It’s not. Yeah, it’s not.

[00:40:44] Speaker 2 I may be the most annoying person in the world at this fact, but it still drives me crazy. Yeah. Are you afraid?

[00:40:52] Speaker 1 But the data they do have is good, but it’s not it’s it’s up to last year basically, but there’s a it is worth pointing out that are New York City, they’re they’re they’re mandated. They put out a lot of the NYPD puts out a lot of data on everything, which I like looking at. But yeah, you’re not going to get recent data, but only, you know, if you’re one of the eight people in the world that once last week’s data with the rest of us are stuck looking at Compstat and it comes out on Tuesday. You know, the thing about stops, I would argue, with the illegal unconstitutional part of stop, question and frisk. And the New York cops were still stopping people based on legitimate, reasonable suspicion that needed to be stopped. Violence actually went down during that era. And that’s important to point out. The police department still doing a very good job. Chicago had a different story. I want to get the year right. I think it was the start of twenty sixteen when cops there stopped stopping people because the report was made long and onerous and was going to the ACLU, who was was looking for cops making illegal stops or at least not writing them up correctly. When Chicago stops plummeted, murders and shootings skyrocketed, should say and I mention that partly for its own sake. But earlier we asked, well, why haven’t shootings gone down again? I’m afraid that we are the new normal, because we saw that in Chicago. We saw that in Baltimore after the riots related to Freddie Gray on twenty fifteen more shootings. That was the first time in Baltimore where I saw anywhere that it wasn’t trending up. Shootings were at X level on one day and then there were one point seven X the next day there was just a complete break. It wasn’t even an inflection point. It was just a doubling almost. And basically it stayed there ever since. So I’m afraid that you get one style of violence when cops, police one way and then another, when cops, police another way. And we’re sort of stuck here now. That’s my fear.

[00:43:09] Speaker 2 Yeah, and I mean, I guess the the challenge in New York did OK, and then New York City, Chicago did OK in the years after their surge in bringing violence back to where it was

[00:43:23] Speaker 1 left, sorta.

[00:43:25] Speaker 2 So we’re making

[00:43:27] Speaker 1 progress. Yes, we’re making progress

[00:43:29] Speaker 2 as opposed to Baltimore, which was, you know, has been out with about 300 murders every year since 2013. I mean, it’s it’s been kind of luck and randomness is the thing that’s been driving whether or not murder goes up in Baltimore. So I think I would agree with you that we’re we’re sort of at this inflection point now a year later, where nationally either we see things very slowly, Trenchtown and people do good work or we are more like a national Baltimore where this is the new normal and right now murdered. The last time I updated murder was up twenty two percent or twenty one percent nationally in the 67 cities that I have data for. And so if that number happens this year, we have the most murders we’ve ever recorded. So I don’t think

[00:44:17] Speaker 1 the numbers are up this year because only now are we up to that period of the twenty twenty increase. So exactly.

[00:44:25] Speaker 2 So now, come on. That should come out in theory, but let’s say if we have another 10 percent increase, we’re still talking about one of the highest rates of murder right now. I guess the question is, is it is it possible for us to get back to where we were? You know, let’s maybe 20, 14 is no longer the goal. And it’s twenty, fifteen, twenty sixteen is the goal, which would be substantially fewer murders than we had this year and last year.

[00:44:53] Speaker 1 And part in a part of what also bothers me about a lot of the discussion around this is there’s this sort of. People throw their hands up and go, well, I mean, this is the way it is and I’m saying I’m afraid this is the way it is. But so I was Chicago had seven hundred and sixty nine murders last year and five hundred and nineteen the year before. Baltimore had three hundred and thirty five last year, which was actually down on twenty nineteen. But Baltimore had fewer than 200 murders not that long ago in 2011 and two hundred and eleven murders in 2014. This isn’t ancient history. I don’t see why we couldn’t go back to that. But apparently people say, well, we can’t go back to that model. Well, I don’t know why not. Why not go back to a model of. And it’s not only policing, as Brandon said, though. I mean, I focus on policing because it’s my professional field and also because I do think it’s the single largest variable that influences quick changes in violence, are changes in policing. But, yeah, we just got to put it in perspective. So last year’s increase, do we are we saying confidently, Jeff, what it was

[00:46:07] Speaker 2 now if the FBI had a twenty five percent of the available cities, but they were missing New York, Chicago, New Orleans.

[00:46:15] Speaker 1 So I think twenty five percent give or take and to the largest previous yearly increase in American history was 1968, which I got right here. Well, twelve point seven. Yeah.

[00:47:33] Speaker 2 OK. St. Louis recorded the highest murder rate of any American city that’s ever been recorded above 250000. Yep.

[00:48:40] Speaker 1 There was a cop evidently within 25 feet of the shooting and was unable to identify the suspect. Well, first I want to say I honestly believe and I’m not well, I guess I am biased. I think Fell’s Point is one of the world’s great neighborhoods. Let me just say that I mean that literally from lived in Amsterdam. I live in New York. It’s a fabulous place. It is now. It’s considered a sort of yuppie richer part in Baltimore, but it’s still. Yeah, let me just you know, I just want to say something nice about Fells Point in Baltimore in General City. Yeah, yeah. But so since that shooting and the and the response to it, which has been large in the media and politics, there’s also been pushback going. You know, also the business people have written letters threatening to withhold taxes if the city can’t insure basic public order. And there’s been pushback going out. Wait till the residents of the eastern west, you know, Eastern District and Western District in Baltimore. Why are they paying taxes? Because the city hasn’t been able to maintain basic order there for for, you know, for decades. Fell’s Point is is a largely white neighborhood. So that’s part of it. The other victim, most shooting victims and are black. So why don’t they get the same attention? That’s it’s important to mention that it just needs to be out there. That said, I just want any of these shootings to get the attention they matter. I don’t know why people tend to dismiss shootings in St. Louis or other parts of Baltimore or Chicago. It’s just well, you know, that’s what happens. No, no, it’s not just what happens. There are a lot of people that are living in fear, but it seems that it takes a shooting in Fells Point or and hate crimes or some white college girl getting killed before people care about any of this. And some people get mad when I say that sometimes all we care. I know certainly people who live there and the victims and their families and their loved ones cares. But I’m talking about society in general doesn’t seem to just seems to accept violence in certain areas and not others. I’m for not accepting it. And if it takes the sensational Sentinel event to wake people up, that’s I’m fine with that. But the question is then what do we do about it? And that’s, of course, of course, there’s a lot tougher. I’m well, actually, now we’re going to make it another episode we might actually do in the same sitting. But I do want to talk about your your op ed about Washington Square, because that relates very much to the Fells Point situation. But we’re going to hold off on that because. Because. Yes, stay tuned and Jeff, you’re welcome to stay around and join us. Join us for that.

[00:51:22] Speaker 2 I have screaming going on here.

[00:51:26] Speaker 1 Yeah. So what was it about Pheles putting out it’s. So. I get that you don’t get to that yet, let me let me interrupt, because I don’t want you to get to that. I want to stay focused on Jeff’s article a bit. Let’s do some hypothesis testing, OK? More people are carrying guns that I think we can say is a given and just data shows that and more shootings show that as well. Carrying illegal guns. I’m talking about, you know, this is such a predictable crew of the anything anything but police brigade. The police are the problem brigade. So rather than sort of. I think looking at more obvious police, things like say, oh, well, gun sales are way up, so clearly that would increase shootings. Now, is that true? What do you think?

[00:53:16] Speaker 2 Not inherently by itself. The you know, the old maxim, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. I mean, I certainly would laugh at that as a concept. But as far as like what drove murder up, I don’t think that it was just gun sales or gun carrying. Otherwise, we probably would have seen this huge surge in murder coming in January, February, March, April.

[00:53:42] Speaker 1 I also think a lot of people who say that are, you know, not part of America’s gun culture. They seem to be shocked every time they learn that people carry guns. And this is America, God knows how many hundreds of millions of guns are out there. But legal gun sales were up dramatically. And my thought is, I mean, some level I wish we could change. Personally, I wish we could change America’s gun culture and be like less violent nations and fewer guns and shootings. But I’m not worried about legal gun sales because most gun owners aren’t shooting people, you know, and most guns aren’t used in crimes. I just don’t believe that legal gun sales somehow lead somebody in New York to say, oh, yeah, I’m going to start carrying a gun on the street. Like, I just don’t get that cause and effect there. But I don’t know how we can prove or disprove it. Yeah, logically, but I also like is there anybody who wants a gun who can’t get one? I just think the supply is already so immense, similar to drugs, that supply side interdiction, low, noble and perhaps still has to be part of the strategy on principle. I think it’s futile. I don’t think anyone suddenly last year was like, I can finally buy that gun I’ve wanted for ten years, but maybe I’m wrong.

[00:55:49] Speaker 2 Well, maybe it wasn’t so much a supply issue as a demand issue that the what what we’re seeing is that the pandemic made people want to carry guns more often

[00:56:01] Speaker 1 than people might actually go buy for it. And they put out

[00:56:03] Speaker 2 orders and and obviously the supply wasn’t an issue. So what we have evidence is that the the interest in carrying was up before the interest in using was up

[00:56:13] Speaker 1 and much more sympathetic to the cause and effect working that way.

[00:56:43] Speaker 2 Yeah, we you know, I think anybody that deals with crime stats knows that these would all be these beautiful things to have are just all I want is to know how many murders that were last year. And it’s June and we still don’t know that, so. Yeah, maybe maybe we’ll figure out that a higher percentage of shootings of murders involve firearms. But aside from that, I don’t know how much more we can answer there.

[00:57:09] Speaker 1 In New York, the percentage of murders committed by firearms has gone up. It was amazingly and blessedly low for a long time. And and I like comparing New York City to Newark, New Jersey, because they’re literally a subway ride away. So I’m hesitant to say the percents, but I think it was like 70 or high, 60 percent in New York where we’re firearm related. And this is on a very low level. And across the river in Newark, New Jersey, it was your standard American urban rate of like 80 or 90 percent that you know. So I would say local policy matters because, yeah, people

[00:57:49] Speaker 2 know New York is much lower. And in terms of the percentage of murders that occur with firearm, and that helps the clearance percentage be much higher than most cities. I mean, if you look at the scatterplot of percent with firearm versus percent cleared, New York is all the way to the top right corner with, you know, high, high clearance, I guess, bottom right corner, high clearance, low percentage. Baltimore’s in like, you know, 30 percent cleared and 90 percent with a firearm, as is New Orleans and other cities like that.

[00:58:19] Speaker 1 Hmm. Let me wrap it. We were just because I see we’ve been at it for I try and cut these once they get over an hour. I do want to point out again, Jeff ASHers, great piece in Vox Dotcom. Yeah, well, I’ll just stay one possible cause of the twenty twenty murder increase. I believe the headline at that because in the next two words, more guns don’t actually than I thought.

[00:58:44] Speaker 2 I thought about emailing my editor like could you do contributor rather than cause there. But it was you know,

[00:58:51] Speaker 1 what you do show is that there’s and there are indicators that gun illegal gun possession was going up in the earlier parts of twenty twenty, which I think is an important contribution. And you’re not saying it’s definite. Of course. And among ourselves, we don’t need to give all the caveats we’re thinking of. I know. I know you don’t stretch your data, so I don’t want to I don’t want to do it for you. But it’s an interesting piece. I’ll link to your data on the website because you make that anyone can look at it, right?

[00:59:24] Speaker 2 Sure. Yeah, I’ll open it.

[00:59:26] Speaker 1 So, yeah. And then it’ll be a quality policing outcome. I am here with Jeff Asher and Brandon Deposal. Thanks for joining us. And it’ll be a separate episode, but we’ll we’re going to morph right into a brand and article about public order in Washington Square Park in New York City. So stay tuned for that. And thanks for listening.