Mastodawn

Question asked on the bad site:
If a big problem in Chicago is "too many illegal guns," then why don't police arrest more people for possession? Why if a cop stops someone with an illegal gun, do they just take the gun away, and not charge the person with a crime?

Answer:
First, read this thread for background.

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109786171967593536

Then understand that:
* Arresting folks for this illegal gun possession makes illegal gun possession go up😢
* But there is a proven strategy for reducing guns👍🏿

mekka okereke :verified: (@[email protected])

If you were a cop in Chicago, 5 years away from your pension, and the mayor's office told you to hit your arrest quota or be fired, would you do the right thing and not contribute to systemic racism? Or would you just say,, "This is kinda messed up!" And over-arrest innocent Black folk? Trick question. Because it doesn't matter what you as an individual would do. You're only one person. Most Chicago cops are just making the arrests that the system incentivizes them to. Yes, even the Black cops.

Hachyderm.io

Young Black men carry guns when:
* They fear for their safety
* They cannot trust the police

Young Black men carry guns illegally when:
* All of the above
* They cannot afford a legal gun / haven't registered it / have a criminal record, usually for something non-violent like drug possession

If a non-criminal feels unsafe, they will carry a gun. If they cannot carry legally, they will carry illegally. The vast majority do not intend to use it to commit crimes. But they end up victims.😢

When people feel safer, and people trust police more*, they just stop carrying guns as often. This has been successfully implemented in city after city. Boston. East Palo Alto. Detroit. LA.

Policing is so violent and unaccountable in the US, that the most reliable and consistent way to increase trust in police, is to decrease the number of contacts, citations, and arrests.🙂🙃

* People aren't foolish to distrust the police, especially Black people. Especially in Chicago.

A man that lives in a dangerous neighborhood and is carrying an illegal firearm for protection, will run if he knows that any police contact will land him in jail for 5 years. You already know how that run often ends.

That decreases trust in police further.

Even if he is not shot, going to jail for 5 years doesn't make his neighborhood safer. His dependents will sink further into poverty, furthering the cycle.

Taking his weapon away doesn't make him feel safer either. He will get another one.

To reduce illegal (and legal) gun ownership effectively, you have to do both things:
* Make the neighborhood safer
* Reduce police brutality, and reduce the systemic harms of policing.

This has worked in every city it's been tried in, except Baltimore, New Orleans, and Chicago (Let me know when you see it). In those cities, at least historically, the cops Just. Don't. Care.🤷🏿‍♂️

Once you understand how these systems interact, you see that police brutality *creates* gun violence.🙂🙃

Getting guns out of the hands of young Black men is important not because they don't deserve the right to defend themselves. If anyone in the US should have the right to defend themselves with a gun, it's the demographic most likely to be shot and killed. 🤷🏿‍♂️

But the problem is, simply having a gun escalates confrontations. It *increases* the chance that you will get into a shootout with a multiple killer that just does not care about you, himself, or anything. You will lose, and you will die.

Most homicide victims in major US cities fall into the category of "Young Black man, got into a confrontation with a known shooter. Lost."

So yes, it's important to reduce gun ownership. But no, you can't get there by "cracking down" on illegal gun ownership, or putting long jail sentences on people who legitimately fear for their lives.

To reduce illegal gun ownership, you need to reduce / end police brutality and exploitation. You need to remove the violent killers from the neighborhood.

Gen X-Wing Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke Not to mention that the police are effectively acting as expendable enforcers for others. They kill, and they get killed. It’s not in their best interest. It doesn’t benefit them.

The modus operandi of your average US LEO seems to be to escalate. I don’t know if it’s confirmation bios from seeing videos, but I keep seeing visibly scared officers shouting like crazy.

Is it so bad if someone runs away? The LEO isn’t Judge Dredd…

Saren42 Apr 7, 2023

@breadbin @mekkaokereke the only problem with your statement, cops aren't getting killed. It is one of the safer jobs in the US. Most cops that die "in the line of duty" are in car crashes and illnesses (such as COVID). Also, I would not be shocked if cops were more likely to shoot each other than be shot by so-called "criminals". But, at least in my digging, I've not found any actual studies done in that statistic, but I did find a fair few news stories about it happening.

Piers Cawley Apr 8, 2023

@breadbin @mekkaokereke I dunno about that. Dredd is the villain, after all.

Gen X-Wing Apr 8, 2023

@pdcawley @mekkaokereke Dredd is judge, jury, and executioner. A LEO isn’t any of that and quite honestly are tasked to protect *everyone* and leave the rest to the court. The mentality that everyone is guilty, everyone must be caught now, and force is the only hammer in the tool chest, is killing people:(

And Dread is British humor, meant to be dark. Same as Warhammer 40k, an everybody is bad and the world is bad take on things.

Aviva Gary Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke So in theory we disarm the cops and stop the problem? 🤔

Honestly, that works!

Most of the calls that police respond to, don't require an armed person to respond.

More and more cities are moving away from "policing" and towards "public safety." By offloading more of these contacts to unarmed folks, the harm of policing is lessened.

School resource officers have not stopped a single mass shooting, but have arrested thousands of Black kids and destroyed their faith in cops. Most Black folks' distrust of cops comes from lived experience.

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke @Aviva_Gary the cops here have their problems (particularly in London, where they can be as corrupt as those in USA and have actively pushed back against and destroyed attempts to make them better from 30-40 years ago), but only 5% of them are armed.

I'm in my early 50s, and have only seen police openly carrying firearms a handful of times (usually only at airports during times of elevated terrorist threats), and I was born in and spent a lot of time in London in my youth..

Aviva Gary Apr 7, 2023

@vfrmedia @mekkaokereke Honestly this is great and we should do it but I wonder what might stop it (or one of the things) 🤑

@mekkaokereke Baltimore is my hometown, and my uncle was a BPD detective for two decades.

It's so much worse than people think.

The police in major cities are the primary instigators of crime. They expressly terrorize specific communities because they know that's what will get them funding.

Sujit Pal Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke to some extent it seems like a chicken and egg problem. As you mention, there is general distrust of police because policing is violent. On the other hand, policing is probably violent because they fear for their lives in populations with free access to guns (all of US) and their solution is to shoot first? I am surprised why police are not the most vocal proponents of gun control, it would make their lives easier (others too because chances are they wont be as violent)

Cynthia loves masks Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke @danlyke especially in Oakland

rlb Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke ugh, absolutely this. I grew up in Chicago. The two gangs you avoid are the Latin Kings and the CPD.

Jeffy 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦 ❤️🇱🇺Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke
1. Saying "making possession illegal just makes more illegal possession” is the non-humorous retelling of the the joke:

Patient: Doc, it hurts when i do that.
Doc: Don't do that.

and what's the statistic on ARMED non-criminals who avoided becoming victims because they had and used the gun they possessed?

Geoff Hing Apr 7, 2023

@mekkaokereke You might be interested in this story that my colleague and I published recently. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/03/23/gun-violence-possession-police-chicago

In Chicago, Shootings Go Unsolved as Gun Possession Arrests Rise

In the failed war on gun violence, Black men are paying the price.

The Marshall Project

Geoff Hing Apr 7, 2023

This report also has some interesting examples of policing strategies where they recovered guns without making arrests. https://nnscommunities.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Gun-violence-discretion-white-paper_final-1.pdf

@geoffhing Cool!

John Jay College does good work in this area. Bonus: The paper has 3 citations of David Kennedy, who knows a lot about this stuff.

The paper also describes why gun buyback programs feel cathartic, but don't really work: they don't address either of the 2 dynamics that lead people to carry illegal firearms in the first place.

Will read more deeply this weekend. Thanks!

ShadSterling Apr 8, 2023

@mekkaokereke why the hell are there arrest quotas?

“Can’t make the city too safe or we won’t be able to make our quotas” is entirely contrary to improving public safety