2006 Ends with a Whimper As 2007 Promises Struggles
January 10, 2007

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

This column is being written as this issue goes to press in the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. It’s usually a mixed bag week with people often preoccupied by the holiday season, winter vacations, visiting relatives and, depending on where you live, bad weather.

There’s usually a mix of bad news, too, if you get to read a paper or watch TV.

To paraphrase the poet TS Eliot, 2006 is ending with a whimper of sorts.

Everyone is sort of gearing up for the start of a busy and surprising 2007. However, these recent days point to what we can expect in the new year.

As the year neared an end, Washington and the media that covers the Capitol Hill beat were in a dither. With the Democrats maintaining the narrowest possible margin of control in the Senate as the new Congress is about to be convened, Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, suffered a stroke and was rushed to a hospital.

Before the ambulance even reached the emergency room, the media was speculating that the Democrats would lose the majority control they won on Nov. 7. Everyone expected Vice President Dick Cheney to be rushed into daily service breaking ties in the Senate.

However, following emergency brain surgery, Johnson was reported to be recovering nicely and was expected to go back to work soon. The event, however, provided a quick lesson on how fast things can change and power shift. Johnson’s sudden illness raised questions about the Democrats’ one-vote majority in the upcoming Senate session. South Dakota’s Republican governor, Mike Rounds, would appoint a replacement if Johnson’s seat were vacated by his death or resignation.

That’s just one story that illustrates how events change the political environment and how some people are quick to take advantage of those changes to advance their own agendas.

Another end of the year story provided anti-gunners new music for their old songs.

Reuters news service reported that murders, robberies and other violent crimes reported in the United States jumped 3.7% in the first half of 2006, continuing a troubling upswing that began in 2005, based on an FBI report released Dec. 18.

The FBI said law enforcement agencies reported that robberies soared by a startling 9.7%, followed by an increase in murders of 1.4% and aggravated assaults of 1.2%.

Last year, the number of violent crimes increased by 2.5%, the largest percentage gain in 15 years. The increase came after years of declines.

The U.S. Justice Department then announced that it would conduct a study of why the crime numbers are increasing, a study that has yet to be completed.

Department officials have cited as possible reasons a surge in gang-related violence, spreading use of the illegal drug methamphetamine and demographics, with children of the baby-boom generation entering the years when individuals are most likely to commit crimes.

The officials have rejected any suggestion that an emphasis on preventing terrorism since the September 11 attacks and funding cuts for federal programs to put more police officers on the street were to blame for the increase.

While violent crimes increased, so-called property crimes went down by 2.6%, mainly reflecting a decline in motor vehicle theft of 2.3%. But burglaries showed an increase of 1.2% and arsons also went up by 6.8% nationwide.

The ink was still wet on the newspapers which printed this news when the leaders of major anti-gun groups were spinning the information for their own purposes.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the former three-term mayor of Fort Wayne, IN, issued the following statement about the FBI’s crime data:

“The statistics released by the FBI yesterday are very troubling, particularly to a former mayor of a mid-sized city like me. We have all heard how the police are struggling in America’s largest cities, but the FBI report also shows that we are seeing a tremendous surge in violent crime—of more than five percent—in cities with populations from 25,000 to half a million. Such small to mid-sized cities represent the heart of America.

“When I served as Mayor during the 1990’s, the Administration and Congress helped local communities fight crime by providing funds to hire more police, and making it harder for criminals to get guns. As a result, crime decreased. Over the past few years, however, the approach seems to have been switched. Now cities are often seeing less police but more guns on their streets. These new crime statistics indicate that we’re doing things backwards.

“Violent crime is up in America for a number of reasons, but one very likely cause is that it has become easier for criminals to arm themselves, and with ever more deadly weapons.

“For almost six years, many have systematically made it easier for criminals to have access to firearms by weakening enforcement of laws that cut illegal gun trafficking, supporting policies that encourage more firearms on the streets of American cities, putting AK-47s and other military-style semiautomatic weapons back onto our streets and even placing huge restraints on the ability of governments and individuals to hold the gun pushers accountable through the civil court system.

“These policies and rollbacks of laws have helped increase violent crime in our country. I urge the new Congress to take a more sensible approach to restoring the safety net that the gun pushers have gutted.”

Not to be upstaged in the rush to push an anti-gun agenda on the back of the briefest report, Josh Sugarman of the Violence Policy Center, on Dec. 19, climbed on the same dead horse.

“The shouts from police, mayors, and scholars are getting louder, but is anyone listening?” Sugarman began. “The latest evidence that America is facing a coming tide of violent crime can be found in data released this week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to the FBI, violent crime continued to rise with a 3.7 percent jump in the first half of 2006 compared to same period in 2005 (which showed similar increases compared to 2004).

The report documented a 9.7 percent jump in robbery, a 1.4 percent increase in murder, and a rise in aggravated assault of 1.2 percent. While murder in cities over one million increased 6.7 percent, the biggest jump—8.4 percent—was seen in cities between 500,000 to 999,999. The data, contained in the FBI’s Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January-June, 2006, compiles the voluntary submissions of 11,535 law enforcement agencies and is the precursor to the agency’s annual Uniform Crime Reports.

According to today’s front-page Washington Post story, “James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston who has been critical of the Bush administration’s crime-fighting strategies, said the overall rise in violent crime should be expected given dramatic cuts in assistance to local police and simultaneous increases in the population of males in their teens and 20s.” The Post quotes Fox as stating, “We have many high-crime areas where gangs have made a comeback, where police resources are down and where whatever resources there are have been shifted to anti-terrorism activity. It’s robbing Peter, and maybe even murdering Peter, to pay Paul.”

So far, the repeated warning signs over the past two years that America’s crime lull is coming to an end have been ignored. On Capitol Hill, all too many Members of Congress—with notable exceptions—find themselves at the same quiescent place: mute on the issue of increasing violent crime. But for different reasons. Some engage in the time-honored tradition of blaming the victim, viewing the issue solely through prisms of race, class, or an equally false urban/rural divide. Others, on both the left and right, fear that talk of violent crime in general, and increasing homicide rates in particular, could lead to talk of gun control. Others simply don’t care and hope that by ignoring the problem it will magically evanesce.

If today’s story in the Post is any indicator, all these hopes, regardless of their origin, are false. Crime is back. And the issue can’t be avoided.
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