Thread by @WholePicture_

#Thread about #racism #Police #Right #UnitedNations #city #Crime #drugs :

America's most dangerous city is fighting crime with a radical plan
Baltimore has the highest murder rate of any major American city.

Source: nzz.ch/pro-global/usa…

Now the responsible public prosecutor no longer wants to prosecute a number of crimes - in order to have more resources for solving serious crimes.

In 2020, in Baltimore, the largest city in the state of Maryland, an average of one person fell victim to a crime almost every day: 335 people died in a city with 615,000 inhabitants.

For comparison: in the whole of Switzerland, with its 8.6 million people, there were 46 completed homicides (number for 2019). Baltimore therefore has an unflattering reputation as the most dangerous city in the United States.

The Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby has recently announced a radical policy change. She has presented a list of nine offenses that will no longer be prosecuted in the future.

These include possession of drugs, prostitution, certain traffic violations, unauthorized entry, open consumption of alcohol and urination in public.

The idea behind this is that the police let the "little fish" run while they concentrate on solving violent crimes and property crimes.

Overall, compared to the previous year, 39 percent fewer people ended up in the justice system and a fifth fewer were put in jail.

Violent crimes in Baltimore fell by a fifth and property crimes by 36 percent. However, if you only look at the murder cases, the 335 victims mentioned are only associated with a decrease of 13 deaths.

In 2011 the number fell below 200 for the first time in four decades. Since then, some things have changed for the worse: Since 2015 - and thus of all things, when Mosby took office - there have been over 300 deaths per year.

In addition, one might argue that in view of the Corona crisis, fewer violent crimes are to be expected, as people - victims and perpetrators - stay at home more often.

However, this is not the case in the USA. Cities near Baltimore such as Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York have seen sharp increases in serious violent crime. In Philadelphia and New York, the number of consummated homicides rose by around 40 percent each in 2020.

This puts the development in Baltimore in a slightly better light.

The prosecutor argues that the relationship between the black population and the police was poisoned because so many people were arrested for minor offenses.

An entry in the criminal record also makes it difficult to find a job or apartment.
That in turn leads to more psychological stress, that leads to more drug use and so on.

When it comes to drug use, according to Mosby's credo, nobody should slip into the justice system, but rather get help from a specialized local organization.

Black makes up 13 percent of the population, but 35 percent of prison inmates convicted of drug offenses is 35 percent. At least in the case of marijuana, various American cities no longer punish possession and consumption.

I think that's the right approach. What good is it to put people in jail for a little marijuana, because they can't get an apartment because they were in jail, so they don't get a good job, and thus become criminals?

One should make life difficult for people as little as possible from the side of the state, and rather concentrate on the serious crimes. If you have the serious crimes under control and have free capacities, then you can deal with smaller crimes.

In many countries it has unfortunately only partially been recognized that it makes sense to legalize drugs and place them under state control in order to make the quality and therapies available.

Biden therefore instructed the Justice Department to come up with a regulation within 30 days to stop the proliferation of these weapons. Biden wanted to sign the rulings on Thursday. He sees in this only the beginning of the struggle for a stricter gun law.

Biden also wants to nominate David Chipman as head of the ATF supervisory authority, which, among other things, combats the illegal use and sale of firearms in the USA. Chipman was most recently an advisor to the Giffords Center, which advocates stricter gun laws.

A few weeks ago, two severe attacks in the United States caused horror.

In and around the city of Atlanta in the US state of Georgia, an attacker shot eight people in three massage parlors in mid-March. About a week later, a gunman killed 10 people in a supermarket in the town of Boulder, Colorado.

After the two acts, Biden had called, among other things, to ban weapons such as assault rifles. He also called for regulations to check gun buyers and gun owners more strictly.

Both steps have been discussed in the USA for a long time, but have not yet found the necessary majorities in Congress. Many Republicans oppose tightening gun laws. The gun lobby is very strong in the United States.

The Democrats currently have a slim majority in both houses of the American Congress, but would have to rely on Republican votes in the Senate.

I only think that banning assault rifles is not enough, that hardly brings anything. Assassins don't run through the mall with a huge assault rifle, they use inconspicuous pistols.

At close range you can kill as many people as you can with a rifle. That is a very rash suggestion from Biden. He probably suggested it simply because it is probably the most likely to be accepted. For many, large automatic rifles are too crass. That won't really do anything.

Here Biden has a symbolic policy.