BLM vs. Black Lives

Michael Barone considers trends in crime in the wake of the "Black Lives Matter" movement and finds a problem that should give its supporters pause:

[T]he most important BLM demand is the first: "end 'broken windows' policing." The evidence is that this is already happening -- at the cost of black lives.

Even The New York Times has noticed. So far this year, murders are up 76 percent in Milwaukee, 60 percent in St. Louis, 56 percent in Baltimore and 44 percent in Washington, D.C.

While murders are up, arrests are down. There is, as Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald writes, a "reluctance to act (that) is affecting police departments across the country, as virtually every tool in an officer's tool chest -- from traffic stops to public-order maintenance -- is vilified as racist." [format edits]

These murder victims are disproportionately black. It is interesting to see which "reforms" BLM wants as opposed to which would actually be improvements. For example, not using traffic laws as excuse to steal from random motorists would be a great start. But such a demand is part of equality under individual rights-respecting law. Does that sound like something a group that shouts down anyone who says "All lives matter," would concern itself with? I don't think so. And somehow, that doesn't surprise me.

-- CAV