I was perusing local news sources this morning, and an article caught my attention:
Oh wait- not that one- that was looking up some load data for an old black powder revolver I recently acquired- This is the one:
Bay Area Homicide Rates Drop to Historic Lows
Some pretty heartening statistics for the first half of the year, and it mirrors the long term trends in the rest of the country, that despite what people may otherwise think, homicides (and all violent crime) is substantially down over the last 30 years- down by about 50%, and homicides are at the lowest rate since the 1950’s.
So what do the police credit for the massive drop here in the SF Bay Area in the first half of the year? More gun laws? (We certainly got a whole rash of those) Nope.
McEachern attributed the drop in killings in part to recent measures by the police force, including shifting resources to centralized investigative units, increasing community engagement, forming a new unit focused on seizing guns, and solving more homicides.
So community policing, enforcing existing laws, going after prohibited persons, and solving old homicides to take repeat offenders off the street. That sounds a bit familiar. Oh and here too.
As we’ve said here before, enforcing the laws we already have on the books and utilizing programs to enhance community policing will actually do something without the need to create all new regulatory schemes and going after passing a new gun ban law ad nauseum.