Murder is down 12.5% in New York City, but rape, assault, hate crimes, and most other bad behavior are up in the Big Apple this year. So sure, former cop, now Mayor Eric Adams has to do something to make people in America’s biggest city safer. But he sounds like he’s making good on concerns that he’d turn New York City into a surveillance state:
Progressive Democrats had warned last year Adams would turn the city into a police state, but concerns about crime overpowered them. And Adams believes he has a mandate to make change.
…In an interview with POLITICO, Adams promised an expansion of technology-assisted policing to detect weapons. Over the past year, he has promoted the use of cameras and lauded divisive facial recognition devices.
“It blows my mind how much we have not embraced technology, and part of that is because many of our electeds are afraid. Anything technology they think, ‘Oh it’s a boogeyman. It’s Big Brother watching you,’” Adams said. “No, Big Brother is protecting you” [Sally Goldenberg and Joe Anuta, “‘Big Brother Is Protecting You’: Eric Adams Pledges Stronger Policing, More Technology in 2023,” Politico, 2022.12.24].
Remember, Adams is a Democrat. He’s offering tough-on-crime policies that should please Republicans. But he’s talking about the Orwellian embodiment of oppression as a symbol of safety. A mayor and police force watching our every move is arguably better than an unregulated mob of Kyle Rittenhouses roving the country looking for opportunities to turn troubled streets into shooting galleries, but how much better?
This sort of thing fills the void when virtue leaves…
James Madison wrote that our Constitution requires “sufficient virtue among men for self-government,” otherwise, “nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”
Having property and part times living in a small SD town in which there are a number of the “non-virtuous” among other inhabitants, I have found it necessary to install cameras with facial recognition capabilities on said property. These are not strictly big city or governmental issues of the day.
I’ve never been so concerned about personal safety as when I lived in Rapid City and everybody was armed and doing meth.
When Garrison Keillor opened A Prairie Home Campanion in the Rapid City Civic Center Theatre on November 20, 1999 he cited a statistic that Pennington County has the highest per capita gun ownership in the United States. A nervous chuckle rolled through the audience.
The number of experiences that i have had in gun and pawn shops in Rapid City that have taken me aback are too numerous to count. Two are vivid: a fifteen year old with mother in tow pointing at a Glock in a case saying: “that one” and a man buying five AK-47s with cash.
That’s a tired, worn out story, Lar. You repeat it word for word every holiday, it seems. The one about Mr. Garrison, I mean. I guess it is one of many holiday traditions for grudznick, as when you’re my age you want something that’s predictable and consistent in your day, outside of the mashed potatoes and gravy. I guess for me, that’s you, and I’m grateful for your participation.
There is tremendous comfort living where we don’t need locks on the doors. Imagine doing that in Rapid City and its environs.
I love you guys. Peace on the good Earth. This video is a gem if you like to laugh in order to bury the pain of the candy corn cry baby. Just joshin
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sUaBzZE9YHM
A better idea is that people should behave.
larry – if you want to be truly frightened about the goings on in RC – you should see the collection of certain WW2 era “memorabilia” that resides in the basement of the owner of one of those pawn shops.
Ron Jon, what “virtue” has left that you are talking about? Whatever that “virtue” looks like, it has apparently left South Dakota as well, where entry to the Capitol requires a search by police and where everyone carries surveillance-capable devices in their pockets, just like Americans everywhere else.
But “Big Brother”—is that really the mode of government we want Democrats putting on their marquee? And will Republicans make any hay about it, or will their Giuliani-law-and-order mindset make them cheer Adams’s tacit deprioritization of civil liberties?
Why do humans living in dense urban populations have higher rates of risky behavior?
Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that reproduces in cat species, whether domestic, feral or wild. Infected mice lose the fear of cat urine and are more likely to be preyed upon spreading the parasite even more.
Toxoplasmosis has been linked to depressed mood, feelings of guilt and even suicide.
Is a human trophic level just the larder for a pack of predatory oligarchs who feed on miserable and quarrelsome superconsumers? Probably. It’s no secret that capitalists want to manipulate the food web and its supply chain but maybe they have some natural enemies after all.
Some of us believe the Earth is consciously reacting to an infestation of humans. Wetlands are being destroyed for cropland, livestock demands on water supplies dwarf the needs of cities, global biodiversity is threatened, Arctic ice packs are disappearing, humans are breeding less nutritious food and pesticides are killing native pollinators.
More recently, toxoplasmosis has been linked to risky behavior in wolves after they ingested cougar scat while living in and around Yellowstone National Park. Although wolves and cougars try to avoid each other’s habitats they are also known to disperse over great distances. “Moreover, the authors write in the study that it’s possible T. gondii-infected pack leaders could be leading their packs into more risky territory, increasing their encounters with cougars.”
Learn more: Parasitic infection increases risk-taking in a social, intermediate host carnivore.
Those nudes at the airport are problematic, but you only have to hold your stomach in for a few
seconds. Otherwise facial recognition is fine. If the technology screws you it’s probably because of your doppelganger. Maybe you can meet them sometime.
Mr. Kurtz identifies threats to life, health, and safety everywhere. The world’s a dangerous place to live. Try not to live in fear. An enjoyable survival depends, to a degree, on NOT, paying too much attention. Pay attention to 15 year olds with Glocks…if your pet cat gets you, ‘that’s just the breaks.
Rapid City) FBI’s rape capital for decades. The old AG said that’s because women feel so safe, we report more than other cities. Hahaha. Anchorage, Alaska put us at number two for rapes.
2001
PIERRE) According to FBI figures, Rapid City had the highest crime rate for rape among the nation’s cities last year, but Attorney General Mark Barnett doesn’t believe rape is more common in Rapid City than it is elsewhere.
Women are more likely to report rapes in Rapid City and other South Dakota cities because they know the police will investigate, catch the rapist and prosecute him, Barnett said.
“I don’t believe this is some sort of reflection of a violent population. I think just the opposite is true,” the attorney general said. “The difference here is they get reported and they get solved, so they show up in the statistical database.”
https://rapidcityjournal.com/fbi-rapid-city-is-rape-capital/article_7403945d-50c1-5dfe-9f07-79ae4f5db6d2.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/605581/us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-rape-rate/
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
https://www.thecentersquare.com/south_dakota/this-is-how-much-money-south-dakota-s-economy-makes-from-the-gun-industry/article_c87337cf-753e-5d03-8d6a-a31b1a5b6dac.html#tncms-source=infinity-scroll-summary-sticky-siderail-latest
KOTA evening news blurp during the week of LNI) an interviewee from a children’s agency said SD handles more than 4,000 child sexual abuse cases every year. SD doesn’t need spy cameras, we need officers and investigators to put eyes on every convicted sex offender every day to make sure they’re not victimizing someone again because it is well known these kinds of offenders are never cured of their sickness. Our arrest, let alone conviction rate, is atrocious. Rapid City is actually a burst on a map graph that shows radical discrepancies in number of rapes reported and number of arrests, as well as the less than 1% rate of convictions. As we can see from the comments made by the police chief and AG in the articles linked above, we should be so proud of being at the top of the FBI’s list for aggravated assault.
SD has the second highest rate of forcible rapes (70.2) in the nation (Sutter, 2014), with an average of 781 sexual offenses against persons occurring per year from 2012-2018, and at least 4,000 children face sexual abuse each year (Ethel Austin Martin, 2019).
https://doh.sd.gov/documents/Prevention/RPE_SD_StateActionPlan.pdf#3
Maybe if there were less guns and one out of umpteen media law enforcement spokespeople informing women where and when rapes are occurring, we would be able to make healthier decisions and avoid going a certain route on the way home so we don’t end up another rape victim with another un arrested, un prosecuted rapist at-large.
One day… just make me King for one day….