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Could it have anything to do with the frequency we strap convivted murders down on a gurney , putting a needle in their arm and shooting them full of pentothal and then a load of Potassiun chloride?
Death Penalty as a deterrent is definetly something that was lacking from the conversation until right now, and probably belongs in a murder rate discussion in general, especially in Texas,, but to put it all together, it's murder rates in Texas in '95 which dropped sharply from previous years. Why would it suddenly become a deterrent in '95? As opposed to other years? They didn't start the death penalty in '95 in Texas, it's been around for ages. I assume you mean the DP is a deterrent since the number of people actually executed in Texas is something like 477 since 1976. The murders those 477 people would later commit probably wouldn't have been 1000 a year for over a decade unless they were on some serious meth. Also they weren't all executed in '95.
The detterent effect of the death penalty in '76 making newborns who turned 20 year olds in '96 not commit murder is highly unlikely unless they absorbed the information in utero and actually understood it. The Death penalty as a deterrent would have deterred people in '76 from commiting murder immediatley, not 20 years later, since the fear of being convicted and sentenced to death would be more or less immediate. If it took a few examples to make it real then in '79 you'd have three years of hearing about people getting the chair and seeing it in the media. Why not see a decline there? As it is in '79 the number of murders started to rise.
Also, just in general, the death penalty states have a slightly higher murder rate than non death penalty states so it's effect as a deterrent is not proven to begin with, let alone somehow highly significant to a single year. Maybe if they changed the death penalty to being fed to alligators slowly live on texas news stations starting in '95 it would have a some kind of noticeable deterrent effect. But the needle is actually comfier than the chair, so if anything the method of execution was less scary in '95 than in the 70's.
Plus, the death penalty stops convicted murderers from murdering again. I dont' think too many people outside of prison go on to get murdered by peopel already convicted of murder who are behind bars,, it DOES happen (murdered guards, murdering other inmates) but I dont' think it was happening 1000 times per year and then dropped off in '95 for some reason.
Last edited by Slunkmonky; 12-30-2011 at 01:59 PM..
Reason: misspellings
When the population exploded at that time, it was primarily due to people moving from other states for work, and a lower cost of living. These were not people that typically commit murders. Therefore as the poplulatin goes up the murder "rate" will therefore go do wn.
I can't find any reason why they would suddenly be off the radar by about a thousand murders per year staring in '95 unless something came along to make dissappearing bodies reallllly easy to do compared to other years. And if it did you have to consider that more technology also came around to detect crimes that would have passed as accidents or foulplay with lesser forensic technology of the past to rely on.
On the one had science has exhonerated people over the years who were convicted on junk science in the 80's or because of more prevalent racism in the past. But also, more people have been succesfully incarcerated because of new technology. It's not one-sided. There would have to be some greater conspiracy to suddenly have 1000 murders a year go away by it just being 'unofficial'. Not saying that's impossible. But there's 254 counties in texas whose books you'd have to cook.
By using "Unexplained Death", i'm not saying this was a murder, but it's easier to hide a murder then most people think.
But yes thousands would be hard to hide, but murders can still be hidden and this is only one way to do it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoPro
Better policing
If anything policing has gotten worse is bigger cities, more focus on fighting numbers then crime and coming up with things for show like putting detectives that haven't been in a patrol car for probably a decade back on calls. The morale for some of these larger departments is at an embarrassing low, but hey if you don't take a report for a certain number of crimes a day then your doing a good job, at making the city look safer and that's all that matters.
I found a scholarly book called "The Crime Drop in America".
In it they mention that one of Bill Clintons campaign promises was to hire 100,000 more police in America during his term and he put that into action around 1995 however the funds weren't actually dispensed until more like 1999. The crime had already dropped by 1995 in Texas so that in itself doesn't seem to explain it. Also, in Dallas Texas there was a 3% drop in the number of officers which coincides with that city's 39% violent crime drop (The nation's average drop was 40% for the largest 25 cities). So extra police doesn't seem to be a huge deterrent since something else dropped the crime years ahead of the new cops. When all the new cadets hit the streets as patrolmen there wasn't an additional drop in the violent crimes seperate from whatever happened in '95 either. Usually with violent crimes arrests are reactive and not proactive so unless police are stationed inside of peoples homes I can't see how more police would effect violent crime except for those who commit other crimes and are caught and incarcerated before they have a chance to kill.
I'm not finished reading it but it seems like they are relying heavily on demographics with the theory being that how many murders there are is tied to how many young people there are. Abortion isn't ruled out by the book but it does make mention that the number of live births may have increased because of abortion because it migth have given people the feeling of safety that they had options if they had a baby unintended, then there is more sexual activity as a result but that doesn't necesarily mean that all the unintended pregnancies end in abortions (women who can't go through with it, who change their mind about not wanting to keep the pregnancy, or men who don't take as much precautions about protection because they know the woman can choose an abortion but the woman doesn't actually see abortion as an option herself).
The book didn't have statistics to back any of that though and just throws it out with no numbers while everthing else they write on is meticulously well researched.
They also mention the decline of crack, but like I said a while back, the decline of crack still leaves the question, why the decline of crack? So far what I've found on that is in 1985 it was cool to get into crack. There was a lot of money to be made, the harsh penalties weren't in place yet, and the term 'crackhead' wasn't in place yet because the first wave of users didn't have a chance to become Tyrone Biggums yet, but once they did and people saw it the new 'recruits' for crack in 1995 had a lot more information to work with. Yes money was still to be made, but also lengthy prison sentences and less potential users since "Hey, wanna try smoking crack cocaine?" was now met with people running away in terror instead of asking "What's crack cocaine?"
Last edited by Slunkmonky; 01-03-2012 at 07:50 AM..
By using "Unexplained Death", i'm not saying this was a murder, but it's easier to hide a murder then most people think.
But yes thousands would be hard to hide, but murders can still be hidden and this is only one way to do it.
If anything policing has gotten worse is bigger cities, more focus on fighting numbers then crime and coming up with things for show like putting detectives that haven't been in a patrol car for probably a decade back on calls. The morale for some of these larger departments is at an embarrassing low, but hey if you don't take a report for a certain number of crimes a day then your doing a good job, at making the city look safer and that's all that matters.
// end rant
Not saying that your points are without validity, but typically if there is any sign of trauma not likely to have been self inflicted, in a death like this, it will more than likely be classified as a homicide. Otherwise, the numbers of people dropping dead from things like cardiac arrest, hypothermia, heart attacks, stroke, drug overdose, aneurisms and so forth on a daily basis totally eclipses the number of folks who end up as homicide victims.
Not saying that your points are without validity, but typically if there is any sign of trauma not likely to have been self inflicted, in a death like this, it will more than likely be classified as a homicide. Otherwise, the numbers of people dropping dead from things like cardiac arrest, hypothermia, heart attacks, stroke, drug overdose, aneurisms and so forth on a daily basis totally eclipses the number of folks who end up as homicide victims.
What the medical examiner reports and the police report are totally independent, they don't have to match unless a murder charged is actually taken to trial, and the quote below shows that
Also remember Homicides and Murders are two different things, no large department counts Homicides into it's final statistics.
Quote:
Since November 4, when the woman's body was found in her car parked behind a strip mall in the 16000 block of Preston Road, police have been stumped by the events leading to her death.
Dallas Fire-Rescue arson investigators have said gasoline may have been poured on the car, leading police to believe the hairdresser may have been murdered.
But sources say the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were brought in to examine the evidence, and investigators determined Lightfoot crashed her car, and that led to the fire.
The medical examiner also ruled that Lightfoot's blood alcohol level was nearly 0.36 — more than four times the legal limit, and a dangerous level for anyone.
Her family disagrees with the official findings. "I think we continue to believe there's a murder," Lewis said. "There are too many unanswered questions. The cause of the fire in the vehicle is only but one piece of the broader situation."
Dallas police say they will maintain an open mind about this still-unsolved case.
"The Medical Examiner's findings are one component of a comprehensive investigation," police spokesman Lt. Scott Walton said in a statement. "Dallas Police Department homicide investigators in consultation with DFR's arson investigators continue to treat Ms. Lightfoot's death as a homicide."
Plus we're talking about a department who's solution for fighting crime was to come up with it's own definitions for crimes. I can show you a handful of shootings, rapes, robberies and almost any other crime that was incorrectly reported but that would drag this post on way too long.
Quote:
The Dallas Morning News reported in 2009 that the city deviates from the national guidelines in some reporting areas. In particular, Dallas police do not follow Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines when recording aggravated assaults and burglaries.
Dallas began counting aggravated assaults differently in 2007 as part of policy changes sold to the public as a way to make the city's crime-counting procedures more accurate.
Under the changed rules, only when assaults using weapons such as bottles, bricks, pipes and other objects actually cause serious injury are they classified as aggravated assaults when reported as part of the crime rate to the FBI. But FBI guidelines say that any time such an object is used in an assault, the incident should be classified as an aggravated assault, regardless of whether there is an injury.
After the change took effect, the department's aggravated assault tally dropped more than 30 percent in 2007. As part of the 2009 investigation, the newspaper examined a week's worth of assault reports and found that, had they been classified correctly according to FBI guidelines, the number of aggravated assaults would have been at least 50 percent higher that week.
City and police officials have defended the current way of reporting assaults, saying it better reflects how prosecutors would be likely to charge a person under the Texas penal code. But the FBI says reporting under UCR standards should be independent of prosecutorial decisions.
"That is, in a word, cheating, if they are basing it on whether a prosecutor will bring charges," said Mike Maltz, a senior researcher at the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State University.
In 2010, the change in the number of aggravated assaults was slight - down 1.2 percent. "The aggravated assault changes have been baked into the figures, and so year-to-year changes won't show false reductions in crime," Brown said.
Simple vs. aggravated
A recent sampling of police records by The News found that the department continues to classify victims beaten with objects including a clothes iron, canes and bottles as "simple" assaults rather than aggravated assaults, as they should be under national guidelines. Those assaults effectively vanish from the city's violent-crime rate.
The Police Department has classified some attacks in which serious injuries occurred as "simple," too.
At Fair Park, a woman struck a man above the lip with her hand as she was holding a cellphone and wearing a large University of Oklahoma ring. The man suffered a gash that required five stitches to close, and a police report said he would possibly need "plastic surgery." But the incident was not recorded as an aggravated assault.
In another incident the same day, a man underwent surgery after suffering a broken jaw during a gang-related incident, but the attack was not classified as an aggravated assault.
Each year, Dallas police also classify hundreds of break-ins as vandalism, a lesser crime that is not factored into the overall crime rate reported to the FBI. As long as the intruders leave empty-handed, such incidents are often not labeled burglaries.
Dallas police do this even though federal guidelines instruct police to report such break-ins as burglaries unless the "investigation clearly established that the unlawful entry was for a purpose other than to commit a felony or theft."
Police officials have said that officers report burglaries only when there is solid evidence of what an intruder intended to do.
In 2009, a one-week sample of cases examined by The News estimated that the city's reported burglary rate that week was 10 percent lower because of the way the department was counting crime.
"That's a 30-year-old practice and so there's no benefit to the crime-reduction numbers" now, Brown said.
The practice continues. In July, intruders pried open the door to an empty building that once housed a Kroger's grocery store near Walnut Hill Lane and Central Expressway. A security guard spotted the open door and the intruders fled, leaving behind a bag of tools including crowbars and electric saws, said Dean Taylor, who oversees the property.
Taylor was surprised to learn that police didn't count the break-in as a burglary. The department recorded the incident as criminal mischief.
'It's ridiculous'
"It's ridiculous," Taylor said. "They had all the tools to tear the copper out with. They were there to steal the copper, I have no doubt."
Other major cities, including St. Louis, Philadelphia and Baltimore, previously have been caught underreporting crime. This week, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly appointed three former federal prosecutors to review his department's crime reporting system amid accusations that police officials have gamed the system to their benefit.
Staff writer Rudloph Bush contributed to this report.
Remember these UCR numbers the FBI receives are never audited.
Other cities like Detroit has said on record that they have under-counted murders before.
Quote:
]Rod Liggons, Detroit police spokesman, said Barren acknowledged at a January town hall meeting that the homicide numbers reported to the FBI last year were erroneous, mostly because of misclassifications. For example, if a person is shot and dies three days later, that shooting may not be upgraded from assault with a weapon to a homicide. Barren said the number of homicides was likely 339.
"This is a chief who has an agenda to make the city safer," Liggons said of Barren. "If we have to take our lumps -- or take our praise -- we are not going to falsify our numbers because we don't gain anything from it."
Worthy said Detroit and other cities naturally are tempted to cook crime figures, especially because the numbers are self-reported. No city wants to be known as a murder capital or ranked in the top 10 for violent crimes, she said.
"But the only way we can solve our crime problem is to face our numbers, face reality and deal with it honestly," she said.
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