Montgomery County police officers responded to the scene of an armed carjacking in the Grosvenor area of Bethesda early Monday morning, October 25, 2021. The carjacking was reported in the 10400 block of Montrose Avenue at the Parkside Condominiums at 12:58 AM, according to crime data.
16 comments:
The hits just keep coming thanks to Democrats like Brian Frosh who's retiring so he won't be there when the effects of his bail reform efforts come to full blossom.
Nationally the Democrats plan to eliminate cash bail which is in their "Gender Equity" plan. Along with the border crisis, they're wrecking what they can't control.
This is fine. No really, this is completely normal.
MoCo is a Permissive Crime Environment. The Woke Leftist MoCo Politicians who run everything in MoCo and the Woke Leftists who voted for them created and now tolerate the conditions and policies which enabled this horrible crime to occur. Someone could have been killed.
You Leftists have completely failed and betrayed the MoCo community, and your failure and betrayal puts people in danger. Shame on you.
@6:37 ICYMI - which in this case your are a day late, and a dollar and a few braincells short, "Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot of Takoma Park, who is running for governor, announced Wednesday morning that Monique Anderson-Walker is his running mate.' Sorry to burst your bubble, but he just may well be your next governor. This should really flare up your Democratically irritated speed bumps.
@8:32 AM: "Democratically irritated speed bumps." Spoken like a True Woke Leftist Narcissist. It's all about maintaining your power no matter what. No matter how much your Party officials or Party policies fail the community and put folks in danger, the most important thing for you is that you're in power, even if the failure is empirically clear on its face. If you had any sense of shame, you'd admit it, but you don't.... so you don't.
Here's a simple solution for the fragile snowflakes to take heed to: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/28/airtags-theft/
I wonder how large the intersection is on the Venn diagram showing (A) all Robert Dyer readers who inveigh against [True Woke Leftist Narcissist etc, etc ad infinitum] for the area's crime and (B) all Robert Dyer readers who support higher taxes to pay for increased police to fight said crime.
@9:23 AM: Spoken from a place of indifference and privilege. That's not a very equitable solution. Not everyone can afford or wants an Apple device. Figures you'd suggest this elitist "solution" instead of something that would benefit everyone in the community like more police and harsher penalties for criminals.
@1:36 - If you can't afford an iPhone, you can't afford a car good enough for thieves to want to steal and you *sure* can't afford to live in this area. Problem solved.
@1:28 PM: The very premise of your inquiry is flawed. You're conflating "higher taxes" with "higher tax revenues". You can actually have a lower tax rate which results in higher tax revenues. This is an important distinction that many people intentionally lump together to obfuscate a discussion about it. I'm not sure if you meant to do that intentionally, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't since you're talking about Venn Diagrams. So, taking that forward, you can have more funds available for police to fight crime with a lower tax rate.
If you don't have safety for all in a community, you don't have anything else. It doesn't matter if you have a nice business. People won't want to patronize your business if they don't feel safe getting there or staying there. That applies to everything in a community. People won't want to live/work/play there.
Fighting crime with more police and justice resources is an investment that pays for itself and then some. Crime is incredibly costly for the community, both directly and indirectly. Unfortunately, convincing a Woke Left Narcissist that this is an investment worth making is an affront to their entire world view and value system because it forces them to confront that their policies and values have failed the community. That's a lot for them to accept and their narcissism and peer pressure from others won't let them do it.
@6:21 AM: Amazing. Well done.
@6:31, when you say "you can have more funds available for police to fight crime with a lower tax rate," I assume that means currently allocated funds for other programs would be cut to provide the increased financing for law enforcement. Two questions:
1. Does that mean lowering tax rates from their current levels, or simply not needing to raise rates beyond our current levels? Either is fine, I'm just not clear if you are advocating reductions from current levels or not.
2. Which are the programs you would select for cuts or de-funding, funds from which would, (I assume,) be your suggested method for financing increased to law enforcement.
My impression of crime and community is the problem is more complex than simply having more handcuffs and the deputized personnel to use them. @6:31, I agree entirely, that a community's flourishing depends in good part on the safety with which residents, businesses, and visitors are able to conduct their affairs. But as ample studies have reported, it costs more in the long term for jurisdictions to lock 'em up and throw away the key than it does to try to keep people from choosing crime in the first place, (or to try earnestly to rehabilitate them in prison --GED and college education, teaching trade, blah, blah, blah tree-hugger cant.) It's nowhere NEAR as satisfying, I'll grant you. Personally, I like watching Court Cam and First 48 and seeing those [b*st*rds] getting sentenced to loooooong prison time. But, again, my impression is the actual data suggest it's better for the community's purse to try to get criminals into the productive, law-abiding side of the group, rather than just having lots and lots and lots more cops around to clean up the mess. No, I didn't bother clicking through any of the links when I Googled "economics of locking up criminals or rehabilitating them?" to offer chapter and verse, but I have browsed the topic over the years, and the above is the picture that browsing left.
Given all that, what is the answer? Do we shuffle funds and hire more police while cutting other services? Do we invest more in other services and cut funding to the police? Raise taxes and split increased revenues between social and law enforcement? Raise taxes and everything goes into one or the other tracks?
I get being angry about the crime. I live here, too, and it angers me this formerly quiet, staid, elegant suburban community is getting not only the big-city high-rises but the concomitant big-city crime, too. I'm just not convinced, and the data seem to be similarly disposed, that --economically speaking, at least-- the most efficient, cost-effective path to take is reactive, with more cops, more jail, longer sentences, rather than trying to reduce the number of people who become involved in crime at the outset, or trying *better* to push back onto society's law-abiding track the people who do commit crimes.
Like I say, I love the catharsis of watching the guilty get their just desserts, but I don't know that it isn't more costly to pursue that way of dealing with the problem than it would be to try to see the other aspects that created the problem to begin with.
Okay, lunch break's over. Back to my boring job. Thanks for reading, though.
@9:23 AM: Your assumption is incorrect. When I said "you can have more funds available for police to fight crime with a lower tax rate," that does not mean that currently allocated funds for other programs would be cut to provide the increased financing for law enforcement.
With higher tax revenues (which I believe come from lower tax rates), the pie is actually bigger so there's more for everything, including those other programs you mentioned.
Now, we can have a conversation about whether those other programs work. I don't believe they deliver the results they claim or promise they do, but that can be a reasonable discussion based on facts and empirical evidence instead of aspirational woke leftism and narcissism.
There are substantial direct and indirect costs to a community from an underinvestment in police and safety. The return on investment from having a safe community is substantial. Everything springs from that. People will come to live, work and play in the community. An unsafe community won't support or encourage that and it won't encourage additional investment in the community, which in turn provides tax revenues to further support public safety and other programs that you mentioned.
In response to your two questions:
1. Does that mean lowering tax rates from their current levels, or simply not needing to raise rates beyond our current levels? Either is fine, I'm just not clear if you are advocating reductions from current levels or not.
--> I believe the tax rates could be lowered from their current levels and that greater overall revenues would result from that. This would also encourage new folks to move into the community who pay in and current residents to stay. There's an inflection point at which higher tax rates actually stifle community investment and development. I believe MoCo is well above that point and that these tax rates could be lower with higher revenues realized.
2. Which are the programs you would select for cuts or de-funding, funds from which would, (I assume,) be your suggested method for financing increased to law enforcement.
--> I believe that lower tax rates would actually mean more money would be available for law enforcement, even before we get to discussing spending cuts for other programs. But if you were to ask me what programs I would cut spending for, it would be programs that fail to deliver on the results that MoCo officials promised they would. There are underperforming programs all across MoCo Government that have taken vast sums of money for undelivered results or which don't have accountability to deliver results. (Robert would be able to speak about this in great detail and I hope he does.) But if you want to ask me what I'd cut first, I'd start with Ms. Ward: https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Item_ID=23898&Dept=1
That's right. Her. Her return on investment (her salary) to the community is nothing. She doesn't prevent carjackings or other crime. Her job depends on her continuing to say that there's systemic racism and inequity in a community/government that's exclusively run by her woke leftist colleagues on the County Council, which is pretty incredible when you think about it... and which she'll have to say in order to keep her job. Defund her office. Her position isn't needed. Hire another police officer or two from that who will actually provide a valuable return on their salaries to the community. It starts from there. Montgomery County is currently experiencing what an underinvestment in police and justice resources looks like.
@9:50 AM: The armed carjacker who committed this crime wasn't born a criminal, but he/she became one. We have to ask how that happened. Who or what failed this person along the way in their life so that they committed an armed carjacking, which could have resulted in someone being seriously hurt or killed. In MoCo, that system which failed is run entirely by Leftist Democrats.
I genuinely believe there's redemption for those who commit crimes. People get led astray in life or they go down the wrong path because of peer pressure or broken families. Homeboy Bakery is an incredible example of a redemption opportunity: https://homeboyindustries.org/social-enterprises/bakery/
However, until these criminals are able to appreciate what they've done wrong, prison is meant to keep them separate from the rest of society, for the safety of society. Now, I would fully support a step down/work program of sorts based on good behavior, but the justice system needs to function as a deterrent to crime. People need to know that the punishment for crime means that they will be incarcerated.
The anti/pre-crime programs you're talking about just don't deliver on the results they promised they would. I don't believe it's because they're underfunded. I believe it's because they don't actually work as structured.
You take any person, whatever race or gender they happen to be. You have a parent or other authority figure in their family tell them to either be home, at school or at work and the chances that they'll engage in criminal activity will drop substantially. That's actual crime prevention, just like I also believe that "Stop and Frisk" is actual and effective gun control. And if there's not a parent or figure there at home, then the problem is bigger than just crime and we can talk about why that is, but it's an uncomfortable topic for many folks on the Left side of the dial....
HUZZAH! I just learned something more substantial about where "the other side" stands, for which I thank both @1:21 and @12:55 for those more expansive, nuanced replies. That sounds snarky, but it isn't meant to be. Each side, liberal and conservative, is quick to dash off a quick note to re-affirm their respective position --"Next time, vote Republican." "What about the children? Think of the children."-- but that last set of posts actually communicated a lot of information that helps this reader better understand where and what other people's views are, so thank you.
@4:05 PM: That's very kind of you to say. So now that you know where "the other side" stands, where do you come down on this?
I believe that well-meaning people can find common ground and find solutions, even when they come from different points of view. Both sides of this conversation hopefully agree on the common goal of having a community safe from crime. Unfortunately, what I believe we're seeing now is a difference between these sides in terms of a tolerance for what's considered "a community safe from crime" and what's considered a policy failure.
There needs to be a fair mindedness on this from both sides. However, the side in power owes a duty to the entire community to hear an alternate perspective on solving the problem, especially if a reasonable mind could see that the current policies have failed to deliver acceptable results. In the face of unabashed woke leftist narcissism that intentionally doesn't give any reasonable consideration to or effort to understand other points and perspectives just for the sake of flaunting its power, I will definitely say "Next Time, Vote Republican" or "I hope your car is stolen". In that case, problems have a way of solving themselves and I would hope to engage with someone more reasonable in a future conversation.
Unless realizing and accomplishing a solution is more important than having power/control, you aren't serving the interest of the community as an official or resident.
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