A police state is always relatively crime-free (except for the crimes committed by the state), I suppose if ICE agents, national guard members, and armed (with guns) forces actually flooded all areas of Chicago (I bet they do not), crimes by residents would decrease, Then the mayor could say "Thanks, but ..." followed shortly by "...why are you arresting me?"
You are most kind, but I have been getting up early for 80 years or so it's just a habit. Cup of tea, scan the NYtimes, the Guardian, and the weather channel, then it's on to e.mail--the online comics and then PS on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
An excellent point. I have related a number of times that MAGAs will be thrilled with the orange stain until something he does affects them. Let's see how thrilled they are when one of them is arrested or their movements are limited.
I may be a week late with this but here's my take on soldiers in cities. I was CPD for 26 years and in the army for 3. At no time in my army training were we instructed regarding law enforcement (LE) matters nor in my police training in matters relating to fighting battles. Yes, the police department is a para-military organization but only in matters like organization, uniforms, ranks and obeying orders. There are nuances to both jobs that either group is not aware of. Putting soldiers into LE situations is unfair to them, just as putting the average cop into a battle situation would be. Is a couple of soldiers walking around a deterrant? Possibly. Do those same soldiers know how to make an arrest? Give Miranda warnings? Do they know use of force guidelines? They do not. It's just not right to put soldiers into those situations. Let the police do the policing. Let the national guard respond to disasters like floods and hurricanes, because that's what they're trained to do.
I was reminded of an old movie called "The Siege", a Denzel Washington political thriller from 1998, where they decide to deploy the army into US cities to prevent terrorist attacks. Bruce Willis was playing a general, his character saying "The Army is a broadsword, not a scalpel. Trust me, senator, you do not want the Army in an American city."
Separately, there were photos of the military personnel being forced to do landscaping and pick up litter, which reminded me of Soviet times, where it was routine to send conscripts doing their mandatory service to do these kinds of things.
Agreed! And also, it seems the National Guard deployed in DC (as was the case in LA earlier) are mostly idling or doing menial tasks like picking up litter (which was the only ‘policing’ we did when I was in the army).
We have to determine if deploying the guard (or any other action) is just ‘squeezing a balloon’. Where a reduction somewhere just causes an increase elsewhere.
Nonetheless, as statistics have indicated, crime in DC has dropped substantially since the NG was deployed. Democrats need to be careful in their response or they will look like fools.
To me it’s no surprise that flooding an area with troops will deter crime. However, it’s not a solution to eliminating crime, and it is unsustainable because of the cost. What’s going to happen when the Guard is withdrawn? Crime will return, and all that money spent to put the guard in place will have been waisted.
There are better ways to fight crime. Democrats, city mayors and state governors would be wise to keep their responses focused on that.
Deploying troops to combat crime is the equivalent of using a hammer to swat a fly -- the wrong tool that can potentially do a lot of damage while not solving the problem.
Do we still have military police? My late father in law was an MP in Germany. We still have the letter he wrote to his parents in 1955 excitedly describing seeing his first dead body. (A US soldier had struck and killed a German with a car).
I concur with you. Does it matter? The troops are mostly not being put in areas where the crime is. Federal buildings, central train stations, cultural points are not where the major problems are. I believe this to be part of the strategy. The orange stain can crow about no major issues where the troops are. If they hit Chicago, it would be interesting to see the reaction if they patrol the big drug dealing sections of the city.
What the demented, deranged, incompetent, fascist traitor should do, is send a couple of dozen extra assistant US attorneys to Chicago so they can take over & prosecute every single moron & gang member that has obtained a Glock with the 3D printed switch that converts to a machine gun & take them down on federal machine gun possession violations. The feds would send them away for a solid ten years, unlike Illinois's disastrous, one day off for every day served idiocy, which means a ten year sentence is actually a five year one, with credit for time served in the county jail before trial. Appalling to read of criminals sentenced to years in prison, get sent to Joliet for processing after conviction, only to be released a day or two later because of time served at county & the one for one day crap!
Plus one mistake about Smollett: It didn't happen during the Polar Vortex that winter, it was the night before that. It was a cold night, almost zero, but not the 20 below zero of the Polar Vortex.
And he definitely made it all up, even the reviewer in The Guardian, which is extremely left wing called the entire thing a flat out lie after lie from him!
I think anyone who has been outside in a Chicago winter when the temperature is 0° F or below knew Smollett’s story was bologna. People don’t go out in that weather if they don’t have to, and the idea that people would freeze their asses off to terrorize a gay person in the early morning hours in weather like that didn’t pass the smell test.
Garry - Excellent points and once again presented with your-always thoroughly entertaining descriptive adjectives - nobody will ever have to say to you, please tell us how you really feel! 😁
But you really nailed it that a critical piece of the puzzle of our rampant violent street crime is a learned absence of certain or feared consequences. In Cook County, Kim Foxx had an agenda of decreasing the black jail population out of a misguided social justice ideology. Word on the street travels very quickly, and juveniles apprehended for repeat carjackings thought it was a joke to be apprehended as they knew they would quickly be released over and over again. Violent crimes are overwhelmingly committed by serial repeat offenders, and these predators are all too quickly released from the too-short incarceration they do receive to find new victims. (The new Cook County prosecutor Burke is doing a much better job of charging Criminal behavior, but the Cook County Judiciary under the leadership of Tim Evans continues to display a perverse greater concern for criminals than their victims and society in general.)
People's behavior flows very consistently from reinforcement theory in that behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and behavior that receives punishment will decrease or be extinguished. Despite the outcry about "gun violence", punks routinely apprehended illegally possessing and carrying guns on the street face very little consequences. Certainty of strong consequences - mandatory incarceration for illegal gun carrying and especially for straw gun purchasing, with significantly enhanced incarceration for use of firearms in crime and repeat offenders, will have an effect on people's behavior if it is consistently done.
But because crime, particularly violent crime is disproportionately committed by black offenders, it is liberal orthodoxy that it is racist to aggressively charge and punish lawbreakers. And somehow white liberals manage to assert that in the face of the fact that the victims of violent crime are disproportionately black. And so in Chicagoland on it goes...
The statistics on gun crime are skewed because people can be charged and convicted of unlawful use of a weapon and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon when the gun is not actually used.
I am so tired of reading about Smollett and his publicity seeking bs. What I would really like to find out is how and why did he ever get that sweetheart deal from Cook County’s prosecutors. To me that’s as big of an issue as Smollet’s phony story.
Actually at the time she was an ex Obama chief of Staff, working for the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was a career advocate for black people, especially women, gays and other minorities. It sure sounds like she got the ball rolling between Foxx and the Smollet family. Poor judgement by Foxx at the least for sure.
That MI football 'much ado about not much' proves to me how little I understand about college sports when a fine of $30 MILLION is a nothing burger. Would $30 mil mean nothing to the humanities departments, or student groups always needing creative ways to raise funds? When I consider that less than 1% of that amount would've saved my nonprofit from being gutted by the pandemic, but it's pocket change to some, I need whiskey for breakfast.
Our priorities and values as a society are so out of whack, it's mind boggling. There was this classic skit from Key&Peele, both hilarious and sad, to illustrate the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYOg8EON29Y
I love that sketch too, but, as an actual teacher, I have a couple of confessions/reality checks:
1. Teaching is a hard job, no question -- hardest job I've ever had, also the most fun -- but the skills necessary to be a good one are probably not that rare. They're also vague, as in, it's not super obvious what makes a good one. In pro sports, there are just a handful of top spots, and performance metrics are rigorously objective. Neither can be said for teachers.
2. If performance metrics were to be rigorously objective, as posited in the sketch, where teachers land big paydays for test scores, teachers wouldn't like it because they would perceive it -- rightly in my view -- as unfair except in the broadest strokes. Teachers are not magicians and schools aren't magic factories and can only ever move the needle a little bit on such measures as test scores. It would be akin to judging pro sports coaches or managers based on the performance on the field of teams comprising random selections of the population. In such a scenario, the overwhelming factor would be the talent that happens to reside in the random sample.
Yes, it's coming out of the athletic department budget, but a good point. Maybe the "fine" should be that the AD must shift $30 million (or so) to scientific research at the school.
Well, because the athletic department keeps ALL THE MONEY none of that $30 Million would go to the University in any case. So I suspect that one of the dozens of assistant coaches will get a smaller paycheck from this bagatelle.
Or maybe they have insurance so the athletic dept doesn't have to pay anything. Just like FoxNews and Newsmax were never really penalized for their behavior by those big settlements with Dominion Voting. It was covered by insurance, and any amount not covered they are able to claim as a business loss on their taxes thereby lowering their taxes and then the rest of us taxpayers make up for.
If Trump had any interest in reducing crime, he would work with local jurisdictions to address both short and long term solutions. Of course, the objective of sending troops to cities is to intimidate not to assist.
Serious crime has declined in Washington. However, the occupation has had a serious negative effect on the city. Despite lies from the administration, restaurants are getting less traffic. Areas that are usually heavily used are seeing many fewer people. It’s important, too, to consider the impact of heavily armed troops roaming the capital.
I don’t want to armed troops who have no experience in police work in my city. I don’t want armored vehicles in my city. Even if Trump’s military occupation does temporarily reduce crime, it’s a terrible precedent and normalizing another blow against laws and traditions that are becoming increasingly irrelevant in our country.
BREAKING:A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated federal law by using the US military to help carry out law enforcement activities in and around Los Angeles this summer. Judge Breyer rules that President Trump's deployment of the military to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, says Trump is using military as a "national police force with the president as its chief."
When I first read the name of the shooter ( very early in) it was different and the reference to gender was different. So when I read later I was confused. Did they get it wrong initially ? A bad mistake. Until it mentioned that the person was transgender.
Speaking of journalistic/editorial policies - there is an article in the Trib today about the 55 people shot over the weekend. The story highlighted two incidents with multiple victims. One was at a 'large disturbance' and the other was at a 'large number of people standing on the street. Both were late at night. I think this is an example of intentionally avoiding describing the common street takeover type of mayhem. City policy seems to be showing up to take statements after shootings rather than preventing the mayhem.
It also mentioned that one of the shootings occurred a couple of blocks away from where police were investigating an earlier shooting. Which demonstrates just how concerned the perps are with regard to the police.
Interesting take. It also illustrates how little most of us know about the thinking going on in the streets. I rely on readings I did while pursuing my masters degree and reading I have done since. A lot of the reasoning on the streets makes little sense to those of us who grew up in a saner environment. There are gang initiations, where applicants simply need to "off" a member of the opposition, whether or not there was an actual reason. Sometimes the young simply challenge each other to shoot innocents, to show how bad they are. Getting back at someone for supposed insults or violations of honor is a virtual requirement. Someone can be shot simply for wearing the wrong colors in certain neighborhoods, even if inadvertent. Think about all the carjacking we have read about in recent years. In a high number of them, the cars are often soon found abandoned somewhere. So why bother- the thrill of the crime? Your take on the police? Yes, there is some of that with the constant claims of bias in the judicial system and the relative softness of the system towards juvenile offenders. But a lot of it simply indifference toward the police. Life in the ghetto has certain rules whether or not law enforcement is present.
In regard to the Minnesota shooter, I think it is more nuanced and is justified to point out the gender status of the shooter. The shooter did legally change her name and identity. She is described as a "woman" in this story. When discussing the "why" or cause of mass shootings one thing that is often pointed out is that the shooters are overwhelmingly young males. In this case, per the story, the shooter is a woman. A woman shooting up a school is certainly out of the ordinary and newsworthy. BUT, to report this story in that way would clearly be misleading. This does not mean that being Trans is the cause of this shooting, just part of the identity to consider.
Searching for a pattern in the identities and circumstances of the shooters is a fool's errand, it will not help identify a solution to the problem. The fundamental cause of these shootings is that guns are plentiful and easily obtainable in our country. A solution to this problem needs to be stricter gun control laws or stricter enforcement of the existing ones.
A person deciding to go on a shooting spree is disturbed by definition. Instead of focusing on the specifics of that disturbance, journalists should focus on the ways the perpetrator obtained the guns so that lawmakers can implement ways to close off that kind of access to them.
Eric, your disdain for class action suits based on the small amount recovered by users versus the lawyers is, I think, misplaced. The very reason 90% of class actions exist is to remedy small harms that impact large numbers of people. Think about the bank that wrongly adds a “$2.00 transaction fee” every month. What person has the time, money, or energy to file a suit against the bank for such a small amount? Yes, lawyers make a lot of money with class action suits but the work is often complex and time consuming. But even it this were not true, the real benefit of class actions is holding accountable that bank who profits from small harms to lots of people or which holds airlines accountable to give their passengers what they promised. Your suggested alternative remedies are, in practice, impossible and really naive. Can you cite me one example where anyone was able to remedy the kind of volume level small harms seen here via any way other than class actions? There’s a reason why companies routinely and increasingly put arbitration and no-class action provisions in their contracts with consumers—because they hate being held accountable.
Inspired by an email from the Washington Post that it was renewing my digital subscription for about $100/year I finally got mad enough to call the Tribune about my $56/MONTH digital subscription. Oddly enough, you get put through to a real person very quickly when you say you're calling to cancel. Now my rate is $3.50/week. Still more than the much better Washington Post but something I can live with without steam coming out of my ears--at least for now.
By canceling one promotional subscription when it was about to renew, and signing up for a new promotional subscription, I was able to take advantage of a 2-year digital subscription for $1.00 per year. The Trib's circulation "strategy" is effin' bonkers.
I agree with what you (EZ) said about personal details and the relevance test, except for your last sentence.
Investigators will spend hundreds of hours poring over EVERY detail of the personal life of the latest mass shooter. By the time the investigation is finished and it is possible to make an evidence-based judgement as to whether gender dysphoria or being transgender was or was not part of the motivation, ten more mass shootings will have occurred and the media will have minimal interest in the Minneapolis incident. While the event is “breaking news” (and a few days thereafter), it is reasonable to mention any personal details about the shooter which MIGHT be motivational.
Although (to be devil’s advocate), that is how we got a lot of anti Muslim attacks after 9/11. Reporting about an offender impacts the groups that they are associated with.
Exactly right, just like Trump and his cronies riled up xenophobic sentiment using Laken Riley, a college student killed by an illegal immigrant, I fully expect them to start using this shooting to promote their discriminatory anti-trans policies.
Can anyone give me an example of a news story about a mass shooting where the story reported that the shooter was cis-gender? Even one? If you can’t, and you’re attempting to justify the reporting in the Minnesota case about the shooter being transgender, that sort of illustrates what I said about living in a culture awash with anti-transgender bigotry. Or are you saying that a person’s transgender status might be related to their motivation for the mass shooting, but that a person’s cis-gender status is never related to their motivation motivation for the mass shooting? The fact of the matter is that any time a criminal is transgender, that fact is almost always reported, but that it is never reported that a criminal is cis-gender.
When I was growing up, newspapers frequently reported the race of suspected offenders. As the article below states, “[R]eporters frequently described offenders in terms of age, gender, racial membership, and employment status, and used these descriptions to situate individuals within the social world. Often, the mode of explanation used implied that male youths, nonwhites, and under- or unemployed persons were members of illegitimate social categories.”
I don’t remember where I read the details (probably in the Tribune the next day), but I watched the day of coverage on BBC and PBS Newshour, and it wasn’t mentioned there.
Joanie, I still love you. But I'm with Steven on this one. I read the news pretty closely. It was several days before I had any idea that transgender was involved. That was the story I previously related to you, the first one I read about his supposed doctrines of hate.
Kudos to EZ on another well-articulated and sensible journalistic standard. I wish that it was more broadly adopted.
About 1% of all murders are the result of mass shooters. There are three kinds of mass shootings/murders.
The most common by far (59%) are domestic violence related. The shooters are angry and try to get away or are suicidal and kill themselves. My impression is that these stories follow the EZ rules.
The next most common (40%) is the criminal type of shooters that populate our local reporting. The shooters are street gang members or affiliates. The victims are bystanders and other gang members. 95% of shooters and victims are black or Hispanic and the news stories intentionally avoid mentioning this fact.
The least common (11-15%) is the mass public shooting of innocents by a stranger. The vast majority of these perpetrators are mentally ill with no rational motives. A small percentage are rational and ideologically driven with racist, political, or terrorist motives. An FBI review of cases stated that 25% of shooters had diagnosed mental illness, 62% appeared to be struggling with mental health issues in the year before their attack, and that 13% were rational. It seems to me that news and commentary lean heavily toward assigning rational motivation or assigning cause to some societal issue.
I agree with you. But let's be fair. The media is rarely at the scene of crimes when they occur. They rely on police reports, eyewitness when they can find them, and too often on reports reported by others. It's not an easy job reporting on crimes they didn't actually see. It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that sensationalism and newsworthiness often takes priority over reality. Take a look at your own statistics. How many of your shootings never even make it to the news? The public is never going to learn about crimes not reported and it definitely skews the statistics for them. Few do the kind of research you did. For entertainment value watch the movie "The Front Page" with Walter Matthou and Jack Lemmom. I find it as funny as it can get. But it's also an indictment of journalism at its worst.
A letter to the Chicago Tribune opined that withholding Illinois tax/revenue monies from the Fed would be a good response to trump. Stated that Illinois sends 1.36 and gets back 1.00. Have to wonder if more states did this, how trump would fund his fiascos?
While the proposal that Illinois not send tax monies to the US Treasury is a rousing slogan, the state does not send the money. The money comes from individual taxpayers through the withholding of income taxes by employers as required by US law. The state doesn't touch the funds.
Can anyone give me an example of a news story about a mass shooting where the story reported that the shooter was cis-gender? Even one? If you can’t, and you’re attempting to justify the reporting in the Minnesota case about the shooter being transgender, that sort of illustrates what I said about living in a culture awash with anti-transgender bigotry. Or are you saying that a person’s transgender status might be related to their motivation for the mass shooting, but that a person’s cis-gender status is never related to their motivation motivation for the mass shooting? The fact of the matter is that any time a criminal is transgender, that fact is almost always reported, but that it is never reported that a criminal is cis-gender.
When I was growing up, newspapers frequently reported the race of suspected offenders. As the article below states, “[R]eporters frequently described offenders in terms of age, gender, racial membership, and employment status, and used these descriptions to situate individuals within the social world. Often, the mode of explanation used implied that male youths, nonwhites, and under- or unemployed persons were members of illegitimate social categories.”
A police state is always relatively crime-free (except for the crimes committed by the state), I suppose if ICE agents, national guard members, and armed (with guns) forces actually flooded all areas of Chicago (I bet they do not), crimes by residents would decrease, Then the mayor could say "Thanks, but ..." followed shortly by "...why are you arresting me?"
The quote by Ben Franklin about those who trade liberty for temporary safety comes to mind (even if that ignores his original meaning).
congratulations, M - you're always the 1st to post an opinion to the PS.
You are most kind, but I have been getting up early for 80 years or so it's just a habit. Cup of tea, scan the NYtimes, the Guardian, and the weather channel, then it's on to e.mail--the online comics and then PS on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I am fully aware that early does not = good!
An excellent point. I have related a number of times that MAGAs will be thrilled with the orange stain until something he does affects them. Let's see how thrilled they are when one of them is arrested or their movements are limited.
I may be a week late with this but here's my take on soldiers in cities. I was CPD for 26 years and in the army for 3. At no time in my army training were we instructed regarding law enforcement (LE) matters nor in my police training in matters relating to fighting battles. Yes, the police department is a para-military organization but only in matters like organization, uniforms, ranks and obeying orders. There are nuances to both jobs that either group is not aware of. Putting soldiers into LE situations is unfair to them, just as putting the average cop into a battle situation would be. Is a couple of soldiers walking around a deterrant? Possibly. Do those same soldiers know how to make an arrest? Give Miranda warnings? Do they know use of force guidelines? They do not. It's just not right to put soldiers into those situations. Let the police do the policing. Let the national guard respond to disasters like floods and hurricanes, because that's what they're trained to do.
I was reminded of an old movie called "The Siege", a Denzel Washington political thriller from 1998, where they decide to deploy the army into US cities to prevent terrorist attacks. Bruce Willis was playing a general, his character saying "The Army is a broadsword, not a scalpel. Trust me, senator, you do not want the Army in an American city."
Separately, there were photos of the military personnel being forced to do landscaping and pick up litter, which reminded me of Soviet times, where it was routine to send conscripts doing their mandatory service to do these kinds of things.
Agreed! And also, it seems the National Guard deployed in DC (as was the case in LA earlier) are mostly idling or doing menial tasks like picking up litter (which was the only ‘policing’ we did when I was in the army).
https://youtu.be/gdDyG_A-O2w?si=He4OoQ_exNqg3wo1
"Police the area!" There's a memory!
We have to determine if deploying the guard (or any other action) is just ‘squeezing a balloon’. Where a reduction somewhere just causes an increase elsewhere.
And what is the cost of these deployments?
And now a federal court says Trump's use of the military in LA was illegal. https://apnews.com/article/trump-newsom-los-angeles-national-guard-d6c8450a3ac2de34e669ef0836d22cbc?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share
Nonetheless, as statistics have indicated, crime in DC has dropped substantially since the NG was deployed. Democrats need to be careful in their response or they will look like fools.
To me it’s no surprise that flooding an area with troops will deter crime. However, it’s not a solution to eliminating crime, and it is unsustainable because of the cost. What’s going to happen when the Guard is withdrawn? Crime will return, and all that money spent to put the guard in place will have been waisted.
There are better ways to fight crime. Democrats, city mayors and state governors would be wise to keep their responses focused on that.
Deploying troops to combat crime is the equivalent of using a hammer to swat a fly -- the wrong tool that can potentially do a lot of damage while not solving the problem.
Of course it's reduced. People aren't going to restaurants in DC like they used to, so fewer people to be victims of crimes!
Do we still have military police? My late father in law was an MP in Germany. We still have the letter he wrote to his parents in 1955 excitedly describing seeing his first dead body. (A US soldier had struck and killed a German with a car).
I concur with you. Does it matter? The troops are mostly not being put in areas where the crime is. Federal buildings, central train stations, cultural points are not where the major problems are. I believe this to be part of the strategy. The orange stain can crow about no major issues where the troops are. If they hit Chicago, it would be interesting to see the reaction if they patrol the big drug dealing sections of the city.
We already have a bunch of Homeland Security cops wandering around Union Station because Amtrak owns it, so it's federal property.
What the demented, deranged, incompetent, fascist traitor should do, is send a couple of dozen extra assistant US attorneys to Chicago so they can take over & prosecute every single moron & gang member that has obtained a Glock with the 3D printed switch that converts to a machine gun & take them down on federal machine gun possession violations. The feds would send them away for a solid ten years, unlike Illinois's disastrous, one day off for every day served idiocy, which means a ten year sentence is actually a five year one, with credit for time served in the county jail before trial. Appalling to read of criminals sentenced to years in prison, get sent to Joliet for processing after conviction, only to be released a day or two later because of time served at county & the one for one day crap!
Plus one mistake about Smollett: It didn't happen during the Polar Vortex that winter, it was the night before that. It was a cold night, almost zero, but not the 20 below zero of the Polar Vortex.
And he definitely made it all up, even the reviewer in The Guardian, which is extremely left wing called the entire thing a flat out lie after lie from him!
I think anyone who has been outside in a Chicago winter when the temperature is 0° F or below knew Smollett’s story was bologna. People don’t go out in that weather if they don’t have to, and the idea that people would freeze their asses off to terrorize a gay person in the early morning hours in weather like that didn’t pass the smell test.
Dave Chapelle did a very funny standup comedy bit saying the same thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=wZXoErL2124&t=210s
Garry - Excellent points and once again presented with your-always thoroughly entertaining descriptive adjectives - nobody will ever have to say to you, please tell us how you really feel! 😁
But you really nailed it that a critical piece of the puzzle of our rampant violent street crime is a learned absence of certain or feared consequences. In Cook County, Kim Foxx had an agenda of decreasing the black jail population out of a misguided social justice ideology. Word on the street travels very quickly, and juveniles apprehended for repeat carjackings thought it was a joke to be apprehended as they knew they would quickly be released over and over again. Violent crimes are overwhelmingly committed by serial repeat offenders, and these predators are all too quickly released from the too-short incarceration they do receive to find new victims. (The new Cook County prosecutor Burke is doing a much better job of charging Criminal behavior, but the Cook County Judiciary under the leadership of Tim Evans continues to display a perverse greater concern for criminals than their victims and society in general.)
People's behavior flows very consistently from reinforcement theory in that behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and behavior that receives punishment will decrease or be extinguished. Despite the outcry about "gun violence", punks routinely apprehended illegally possessing and carrying guns on the street face very little consequences. Certainty of strong consequences - mandatory incarceration for illegal gun carrying and especially for straw gun purchasing, with significantly enhanced incarceration for use of firearms in crime and repeat offenders, will have an effect on people's behavior if it is consistently done.
But because crime, particularly violent crime is disproportionately committed by black offenders, it is liberal orthodoxy that it is racist to aggressively charge and punish lawbreakers. And somehow white liberals manage to assert that in the face of the fact that the victims of violent crime are disproportionately black. And so in Chicagoland on it goes...
The statistics on gun crime are skewed because people can be charged and convicted of unlawful use of a weapon and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon when the gun is not actually used.
https://www.injusticewatch.org/project/2022/gun-possession-grand-jury/#:~:text=The%20effect%20has%20been%20clear,carry%20a%20gun%20in%20Illinois.
I agree, Tim Evans & most Cook County judges are just worthless, useless political hacks!
Evens was originally a Chicago alderman & we all know what garbage they are!
I am so tired of reading about Smollett and his publicity seeking bs. What I would really like to find out is how and why did he ever get that sweetheart deal from Cook County’s prosecutors. To me that’s as big of an issue as Smollet’s phony story.
And we heard that it was a call from Mrs. Obama at the time that caused the ball to be dropped.
I never heard that. Where did you here it?
I double checked. It was a Michelle Obama aide. Apologies.
Actually at the time she was an ex Obama chief of Staff, working for the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was a career advocate for black people, especially women, gays and other minorities. It sure sounds like she got the ball rolling between Foxx and the Smollet family. Poor judgement by Foxx at the least for sure.
That MI football 'much ado about not much' proves to me how little I understand about college sports when a fine of $30 MILLION is a nothing burger. Would $30 mil mean nothing to the humanities departments, or student groups always needing creative ways to raise funds? When I consider that less than 1% of that amount would've saved my nonprofit from being gutted by the pandemic, but it's pocket change to some, I need whiskey for breakfast.
Our priorities and values as a society are so out of whack, it's mind boggling. There was this classic skit from Key&Peele, both hilarious and sad, to illustrate the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYOg8EON29Y
Hilarious. Going to use this in Land of Linkin' on Thursdayt.
And just like a football team, a bad school system can ruin a top draft choice.
I love that sketch too, but, as an actual teacher, I have a couple of confessions/reality checks:
1. Teaching is a hard job, no question -- hardest job I've ever had, also the most fun -- but the skills necessary to be a good one are probably not that rare. They're also vague, as in, it's not super obvious what makes a good one. In pro sports, there are just a handful of top spots, and performance metrics are rigorously objective. Neither can be said for teachers.
2. If performance metrics were to be rigorously objective, as posited in the sketch, where teachers land big paydays for test scores, teachers wouldn't like it because they would perceive it -- rightly in my view -- as unfair except in the broadest strokes. Teachers are not magicians and schools aren't magic factories and can only ever move the needle a little bit on such measures as test scores. It would be akin to judging pro sports coaches or managers based on the performance on the field of teams comprising random selections of the population. In such a scenario, the overwhelming factor would be the talent that happens to reside in the random sample.
It ostensibly hits the football program in the wallet, but believing that would be naïve...
Also, just half of this fine could have funded a retirement and disability policy research program, cut by DOGE earlier this year:
https://gandernewsroom.com/2025/03/04/university-of-michigan-braces-for-funding-cuts-as-feds-terminate-social-security-project/
Yes, it's coming out of the athletic department budget, but a good point. Maybe the "fine" should be that the AD must shift $30 million (or so) to scientific research at the school.
Better yet - the humanities or social studies (Blue History major here) . . . .
Well, because the athletic department keeps ALL THE MONEY none of that $30 Million would go to the University in any case. So I suspect that one of the dozens of assistant coaches will get a smaller paycheck from this bagatelle.
Or maybe they have insurance so the athletic dept doesn't have to pay anything. Just like FoxNews and Newsmax were never really penalized for their behavior by those big settlements with Dominion Voting. It was covered by insurance, and any amount not covered they are able to claim as a business loss on their taxes thereby lowering their taxes and then the rest of us taxpayers make up for.
If Trump had any interest in reducing crime, he would work with local jurisdictions to address both short and long term solutions. Of course, the objective of sending troops to cities is to intimidate not to assist.
Serious crime has declined in Washington. However, the occupation has had a serious negative effect on the city. Despite lies from the administration, restaurants are getting less traffic. Areas that are usually heavily used are seeing many fewer people. It’s important, too, to consider the impact of heavily armed troops roaming the capital.
I don’t want to armed troops who have no experience in police work in my city. I don’t want armored vehicles in my city. Even if Trump’s military occupation does temporarily reduce crime, it’s a terrible precedent and normalizing another blow against laws and traditions that are becoming increasingly irrelevant in our country.
BREAKING:A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated federal law by using the US military to help carry out law enforcement activities in and around Los Angeles this summer. Judge Breyer rules that President Trump's deployment of the military to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, says Trump is using military as a "national police force with the president as its chief."
When I first read the name of the shooter ( very early in) it was different and the reference to gender was different. So when I read later I was confused. Did they get it wrong initially ? A bad mistake. Until it mentioned that the person was transgender.
Another opportunity for people to learn the difference between correlation and causation.
Speaking of journalistic/editorial policies - there is an article in the Trib today about the 55 people shot over the weekend. The story highlighted two incidents with multiple victims. One was at a 'large disturbance' and the other was at a 'large number of people standing on the street. Both were late at night. I think this is an example of intentionally avoiding describing the common street takeover type of mayhem. City policy seems to be showing up to take statements after shootings rather than preventing the mayhem.
It also mentioned that one of the shootings occurred a couple of blocks away from where police were investigating an earlier shooting. Which demonstrates just how concerned the perps are with regard to the police.
Interesting take. It also illustrates how little most of us know about the thinking going on in the streets. I rely on readings I did while pursuing my masters degree and reading I have done since. A lot of the reasoning on the streets makes little sense to those of us who grew up in a saner environment. There are gang initiations, where applicants simply need to "off" a member of the opposition, whether or not there was an actual reason. Sometimes the young simply challenge each other to shoot innocents, to show how bad they are. Getting back at someone for supposed insults or violations of honor is a virtual requirement. Someone can be shot simply for wearing the wrong colors in certain neighborhoods, even if inadvertent. Think about all the carjacking we have read about in recent years. In a high number of them, the cars are often soon found abandoned somewhere. So why bother- the thrill of the crime? Your take on the police? Yes, there is some of that with the constant claims of bias in the judicial system and the relative softness of the system towards juvenile offenders. But a lot of it simply indifference toward the police. Life in the ghetto has certain rules whether or not law enforcement is present.
In regard to the Minnesota shooter, I think it is more nuanced and is justified to point out the gender status of the shooter. The shooter did legally change her name and identity. She is described as a "woman" in this story. When discussing the "why" or cause of mass shootings one thing that is often pointed out is that the shooters are overwhelmingly young males. In this case, per the story, the shooter is a woman. A woman shooting up a school is certainly out of the ordinary and newsworthy. BUT, to report this story in that way would clearly be misleading. This does not mean that being Trans is the cause of this shooting, just part of the identity to consider.
Just like when reporting the religion in other cases it helps to let us know if it’s a convert or not.
Searching for a pattern in the identities and circumstances of the shooters is a fool's errand, it will not help identify a solution to the problem. The fundamental cause of these shootings is that guns are plentiful and easily obtainable in our country. A solution to this problem needs to be stricter gun control laws or stricter enforcement of the existing ones.
A person deciding to go on a shooting spree is disturbed by definition. Instead of focusing on the specifics of that disturbance, journalists should focus on the ways the perpetrator obtained the guns so that lawmakers can implement ways to close off that kind of access to them.
Eric, your disdain for class action suits based on the small amount recovered by users versus the lawyers is, I think, misplaced. The very reason 90% of class actions exist is to remedy small harms that impact large numbers of people. Think about the bank that wrongly adds a “$2.00 transaction fee” every month. What person has the time, money, or energy to file a suit against the bank for such a small amount? Yes, lawyers make a lot of money with class action suits but the work is often complex and time consuming. But even it this were not true, the real benefit of class actions is holding accountable that bank who profits from small harms to lots of people or which holds airlines accountable to give their passengers what they promised. Your suggested alternative remedies are, in practice, impossible and really naive. Can you cite me one example where anyone was able to remedy the kind of volume level small harms seen here via any way other than class actions? There’s a reason why companies routinely and increasingly put arbitration and no-class action provisions in their contracts with consumers—because they hate being held accountable.
Inspired by an email from the Washington Post that it was renewing my digital subscription for about $100/year I finally got mad enough to call the Tribune about my $56/MONTH digital subscription. Oddly enough, you get put through to a real person very quickly when you say you're calling to cancel. Now my rate is $3.50/week. Still more than the much better Washington Post but something I can live with without steam coming out of my ears--at least for now.
By canceling one promotional subscription when it was about to renew, and signing up for a new promotional subscription, I was able to take advantage of a 2-year digital subscription for $1.00 per year. The Trib's circulation "strategy" is effin' bonkers.
I agree with what you (EZ) said about personal details and the relevance test, except for your last sentence.
Investigators will spend hundreds of hours poring over EVERY detail of the personal life of the latest mass shooter. By the time the investigation is finished and it is possible to make an evidence-based judgement as to whether gender dysphoria or being transgender was or was not part of the motivation, ten more mass shootings will have occurred and the media will have minimal interest in the Minneapolis incident. While the event is “breaking news” (and a few days thereafter), it is reasonable to mention any personal details about the shooter which MIGHT be motivational.
Although (to be devil’s advocate), that is how we got a lot of anti Muslim attacks after 9/11. Reporting about an offender impacts the groups that they are associated with.
Exactly right, just like Trump and his cronies riled up xenophobic sentiment using Laken Riley, a college student killed by an illegal immigrant, I fully expect them to start using this shooting to promote their discriminatory anti-trans policies.
Can anyone give me an example of a news story about a mass shooting where the story reported that the shooter was cis-gender? Even one? If you can’t, and you’re attempting to justify the reporting in the Minnesota case about the shooter being transgender, that sort of illustrates what I said about living in a culture awash with anti-transgender bigotry. Or are you saying that a person’s transgender status might be related to their motivation for the mass shooting, but that a person’s cis-gender status is never related to their motivation motivation for the mass shooting? The fact of the matter is that any time a criminal is transgender, that fact is almost always reported, but that it is never reported that a criminal is cis-gender.
When I was growing up, newspapers frequently reported the race of suspected offenders. As the article below states, “[R]eporters frequently described offenders in terms of age, gender, racial membership, and employment status, and used these descriptions to situate individuals within the social world. Often, the mode of explanation used implied that male youths, nonwhites, and under- or unemployed persons were members of illegitimate social categories.”
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/serious-crime-news-coverage-and-ideology-content-analysis-crime#:~:text=Study%20findings%20revealed%20that%20approximately,of%2050%20footnotes%20are%20provided.%20(
I hadn’t read anywhere that the shooter was transgender. The first I’ve heard about it is your bringing it up.
You must not read a lot of news stories.
I don’t remember where I read the details (probably in the Tribune the next day), but I watched the day of coverage on BBC and PBS Newshour, and it wasn’t mentioned there.
It was in every news story I read.
Joanie, I still love you. But I'm with Steven on this one. I read the news pretty closely. It was several days before I had any idea that transgender was involved. That was the story I previously related to you, the first one I read about his supposed doctrines of hate.
Kudos to EZ on another well-articulated and sensible journalistic standard. I wish that it was more broadly adopted.
About 1% of all murders are the result of mass shooters. There are three kinds of mass shootings/murders.
The most common by far (59%) are domestic violence related. The shooters are angry and try to get away or are suicidal and kill themselves. My impression is that these stories follow the EZ rules.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8165999/
The next most common (40%) is the criminal type of shooters that populate our local reporting. The shooters are street gang members or affiliates. The victims are bystanders and other gang members. 95% of shooters and victims are black or Hispanic and the news stories intentionally avoid mentioning this fact.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/press-releases/black-hispanic-chicagoans-made-up-95-of-homicide-victims/
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/mass-shootings.html
The least common (11-15%) is the mass public shooting of innocents by a stranger. The vast majority of these perpetrators are mentally ill with no rational motives. A small percentage are rational and ideologically driven with racist, political, or terrorist motives. An FBI review of cases stated that 25% of shooters had diagnosed mental illness, 62% appeared to be struggling with mental health issues in the year before their attack, and that 13% were rational. It seems to me that news and commentary lean heavily toward assigning rational motivation or assigning cause to some societal issue.
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/the-facts-on-mental-illness-and-mass-shootings/
I think the media does a poor job of reporting on these crimes in a way that is useful in informing the public and supporting discussion.
I agree with you. But let's be fair. The media is rarely at the scene of crimes when they occur. They rely on police reports, eyewitness when they can find them, and too often on reports reported by others. It's not an easy job reporting on crimes they didn't actually see. It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that sensationalism and newsworthiness often takes priority over reality. Take a look at your own statistics. How many of your shootings never even make it to the news? The public is never going to learn about crimes not reported and it definitely skews the statistics for them. Few do the kind of research you did. For entertainment value watch the movie "The Front Page" with Walter Matthou and Jack Lemmom. I find it as funny as it can get. But it's also an indictment of journalism at its worst.
A letter to the Chicago Tribune opined that withholding Illinois tax/revenue monies from the Fed would be a good response to trump. Stated that Illinois sends 1.36 and gets back 1.00. Have to wonder if more states did this, how trump would fund his fiascos?
While the proposal that Illinois not send tax monies to the US Treasury is a rousing slogan, the state does not send the money. The money comes from individual taxpayers through the withholding of income taxes by employers as required by US law. The state doesn't touch the funds.
Can anyone give me an example of a news story about a mass shooting where the story reported that the shooter was cis-gender? Even one? If you can’t, and you’re attempting to justify the reporting in the Minnesota case about the shooter being transgender, that sort of illustrates what I said about living in a culture awash with anti-transgender bigotry. Or are you saying that a person’s transgender status might be related to their motivation for the mass shooting, but that a person’s cis-gender status is never related to their motivation motivation for the mass shooting? The fact of the matter is that any time a criminal is transgender, that fact is almost always reported, but that it is never reported that a criminal is cis-gender.
When I was growing up, newspapers frequently reported the race of suspected offenders. As the article below states, “[R]eporters frequently described offenders in terms of age, gender, racial membership, and employment status, and used these descriptions to situate individuals within the social world. Often, the mode of explanation used implied that male youths, nonwhites, and under- or unemployed persons were members of illegitimate social categories.”
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/serious-crime-news-coverage-and-ideology-content-analysis-crime#:~:text=Study%20findings%20revealed%20that%20approximately,of%2050%20footnotes%20are%20provided.%20(