How Pinker got Pwned

A couple weeks ago, Steve Sailer wrote about how homicide rates have sharply spiked in Baltimore this year relative to 2014 ever since #BlackLivesMatter became a thing.

But apparently it’s not just Baltimore.

Homicide rates have been spiking in quite a few cities in the first half of this year. I summarize the data in that article. (Indianapolis, LA, Phoenix, and San Diego are only given as “declines.” I arbitrarily assign that a value of -10% and assume that homicide rates in 2015 ≈ homicide rates in 2012, which is the last year for which we have data in a convenient format. Multiplied by 7/12 to take into account that the data for 2015only covers the first 7 months).

Now this sample is highly urban, accounts for less than 10% of the US population, and might have been nitpicked for the areas with the most drastic increases for inclusion. So conceivably and even probably at the national level there will not quite be the ~17% increase in the homicide rate (minus 1% point to account for immigration into the cities) observed here. And it is also possible that things will start calming down in the next few months.

Even so, a significant increase of 10% seems all but inevitable, which once it comes to pass would constitute a drastic reversal of the post-1990 trend towards decreased homicide levels. This reversal appears to be especially sharp in predominantly Black areas (compare the increases in Baltimore, Milwaukee, and St. Louis to those in San Diego or Phoenix).

“Why is there a synchronicity among these cities?” said Peter Scharf, an assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health whose research focuses on crime. “One reason may be President Obama is broke. Governors like Bobby Jindal are broke, and mayors like (New Orleans’ Mitch) Landrieu are broke. You don’t have the resources at any level of government to fund a proactive law enforcement.”

Or maybe, just maybe, with SJWs, #BLM activists, and their political enablers running circles around the forces of authority, the former become demoralized and effectively go on strike.

Janard Cunningham is lucky to be alive. Pulled over by an Alabama police officer for erratic driving, Cunningham exited his vehicle during the traffic stop, aggressively approached the police officer and delivered a debilitating sucker punch to the officer’s head.

When any police officer is debilitated by a criminal’s blow to his head, it’s a life or death moment. Threatening deadly force against an attacker is perfectly reasonable. Even using deadly force to terminate the attack might be justified. But thanks to the fashionable demonization of police officers driven by activists and their enablers in the media, that’s not what happened next.

Instead, Cunningham seized the stunned officer’s firearm and pistol whipped him senseless. The officer said he didn’t defend himself because of fear of what the media and the activists would do to him. “A lot of officers are being too cautious because of what’s going on in the media,” the unnamed police officer told CNN. “I hesitated because I didn’t want to be in the media like I am right now. It’s hard times right now for us.”

And those Blacks for whom Black Lives don’t Matter in the least take over the streets.

So much for “expanding circles of empathy.”