Poster child for urban decay
Image via www.builtstlouis.com an interesting site worthy of a visit
East St. Louis is in the news these days because they are laying off 19 police officers (out of 62).
Drudge responds with:
But why would criminals run wild? Police don’t usually prevent crime, they respond to it. Arrests can prevent crime, if the criminals are kept locked up. But just having police out and about in relatively small numbers (sector car for instance), doesn’t. If St. George didn’t have police on the streets pentyanty money raising traffic tickets would drop but crime would’t rise.
So what is different in East St. Louis? Primarily culture and government.
One big difference…the town has mostly black residents. St. George is mostly white. For some reason, black folks seem to commit more crime than white folks do, especially when congregated together. Facts are facts. There are lots of theories on root causes of black crime rates. But large populations of blacks didn’t have higher crime rates always. The trend seems to be related to the “war on drugs” and the decline of black males as involved Dads. It is related to culture not race. A failed culture, I’d submit, that has high percentages of its men in prison, and higher percentages of its woman bearing children without male involvement or support.
What else is different? Democrats run the East St. Louis. Republicans run St. George. East St. Louis. Googling East St. Louis corruption finds plenty of hits. St. George, none (except for hits on application page for the police force banning corruption).
Those same Democrats also banned handguns in East St. Louis. So that now that they have run the city’s finances into the ground and severely hampered police coverage, they’ve also left their citizens defenseless.
I’m sure there are other issues, such as St. George treats business well (except for brazenly high electricity rates), and East St. Louis views them as things to plunder. But at the core, I think culture and governance sums up how East St. Louis has gone astray.
Well done East St. Louis! You’ve provided a model of WHAT NOT TO DO. Alas, I fear many cities with similar cultural demographics and management will be in the news for similar reasons in months to come.
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:47 pm
To what extent do you think your analysis relies on seeing what you want to see? Handguns, irresponsible blacks, Democrats, single mothers, tax on business – where have we heard about those factors before?
Can you cite any other analyses of East St Louis and similar communities – Camden NJ, Council Bluffs, IA, Pontiac, MI, Warwick, RI, West Memphis AR – near large cities in industrial decline?
If East St Louis cannot afford to protect its citizens, shouldn’t the state step in the assure minimum public safety? Isn’t every state citizen entitled to public safety? Or is every community merely a self-sufficient island where social diseases must be quarantined to prevent spreading to the rest of the state?
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I reported differences from St. George to East St. Louis. St. George has experienced a depression type economic contraction. No uptick in crime. If anything, I’m told it is less by law enforcement types I know (because illegals have left).
Nice debate tactic, asking for data. But I’m not your data slave. Look it up if you like. That wasn’t the purpose of my post. The point isn’t industrial decline, but the RESPONSE to it. Economies change constantly. A non-corrupt city populated by members of a viable culture wouldn’t be where they are today.
You hold a quaint and dangerous view that East St. Louis should protect its citizens. My point was that if they can’t, they shouldn’t withhold tools useful for citizens doing it themselves. In any event, anybody that depends on government to “protect” them from criminals is in a fox/henhouse type situation. You should protect yourself, then your family, and neighbors. Police can assist in extreme cases and in arresting those who you haven’t slain.
August 3rd, 2010 at 3:34 pm
When seconds count the police are only minutes away.
You may be interested in the analysis in “Reason Saves Cleveland.”
It doesn’t directly address cultural or gun control issues, just a poorly run city.
August 3rd, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Back to the life of the caves? One of the features of civilization is specialization of labor to free the members of the community to specialize in useful contributions. The excess food from agriculture production allows supporting some of the community to provide protection, among many other services, so that the citizens can do what they do best without devoting time and effort to things like defense and production of food. The individual citizens provide the means for those services with taxes on their wealth or income. As the organization of the community expands to wider areas, like states and nations, the umbrella systems expand with it to provide an efficient structure for the entire community. If one part can temporarily no longer provide services like security, the larger community helps.
Withdrawing the security organization forces individuals to organize their own defense, and packing heat is only part of the needed measures to defend against the rapacious world. In the extreme as services are terminated, the community reverts to the inefficient “every man on his own” of the caves. And civilization declines proportionately.
August 4th, 2010 at 10:29 am
If I can interpret what you are arguing for: it is better to be subject to rape and murder because it creates a “better society” than if people are allowed to defend themselves.
I am not speaking specifically about St Louis here, but failed cities in general. The simple fact is that no government, even successful ones can defend you. They can try to prevent crime and they can clean up after it, but in the midst of an assault you are quite simply alone. I agree that St Louis needs to clean up its act, but denying the necessary tools of self defense to people who are in a city of crime run wild is nothing short of an accessory to every foul crime that follows.
Side note: while the specialization of labor is necessary for any complex society, I still have to feed myself, dress myself and defend myself.
August 4th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
I’m not arguing here against the individual’s right of self-defense, however intense the individual thinks he needs. I’m arguing against a system that relies wholly on such individual self-defense as was implied in the original post and rebuttal. The entire community needs a complex security system of which individual self-defense, however extensive, should be only a part. And it is role of the state to assure its citizens that adequate security is being provided, even if, and perhaps especially if, the citizens are unable to organize their own adequate defense. They could be unable for a variety of reasons: overwhelming attack, disability, poverty, natural destruction, riot, etc.
While an intense focus on second amendment rights may be satisfying to its advocates, it can be only a part of the task of security for the well functioning society that we envisage. A good security system provides a network of measures that both deter attack and collects any perpetrators that slip through the net. A really good system obviates the need for individuals to arm themselves to the teeth against expected attacks. In the East St Louis case and in other similar cases, it seems that the community does not have the means for a good defense and needs outside help. That’s where state backup enters, and if that is still inadequate, national backup. That’s how a defense in depth works. In my lifetime I have seen several instances of needed national intervention.
August 5th, 2010 at 6:42 am
“Back to the life of the caves?” That may seem like a witty put-down, but some solutions are just that simple. What isn’t simple is taking responsibility for your own choices/actions and forcing others to do the same.