13 days, 22 murders

Being a policeman in a city is REALLY hard. ... at a time when a lot of activities have been shut down due to a pandemic, there is a lot of social strife that has come to head, and the real unemployment rate (not the BLS nonsense) has to be at least in the 20 to 30 percent range, and among minorities is twice that (as the gap in unemployment between whites and blacks is widening).

The one thing about being a cop in St. Louis right now. ... wiht all the stresses that particular job brings. ... it's an actual job. ... with pay, and with pretty good benefits relative to a lot of other things.

 

I should have been less opaque, too.

The narrative -- at least if you read the NY Post right now -- is that everyone is against cops, and because they are getting no backing from politicians, and cops aren't being allowed to somehow effectively stop crime, murders and other crime have suddenly surged .... because the cops have been made toothless and aren't being allowed to do their job (causing morale problems).

My comment was about the fact that whenever economic hardship hits inner cities even worse than it already had, the murder and overall crime rates, take off. In this case, a lot changed very quickly, which is why it has created turmoil and a lot of horrifying stories about murder after murder in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in major cities.

"Law and order" isn't going to be an effective answer to that. ... as long as the unemployment rate in those neighborhoods is hovering around 50 percent (the real number), racial strife is the worst it has been in decades, and people are feeling a ton of uncertainty due to the virus spread.

 

And we're back to. ... being a cop is a hard job. Presumably anyone who signs up for it knows what they signed up for in the early days of training.

It's also no surprise that the job gets even more stressful and dangerous when unemployment soars, racial strife is the worst it has been in decades, and a viral pandemic has people on edge.