Ken Blackwell: Slaughter Of Blacks Is Reality In Democrat Run Cities

[HARDCORE]

7-29-2020

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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured report from Breitbart.com’s Robert Kraychik, Ken Blackwell confronts the “real systemic and deadly reality is that black men and women are being slaughtered in cities and communities of color across the country in numbers that can only be compared to war zones in Iraq and Syria”:

Breitbart

Ken Blackwell: Slaughter of blacks is reality in Democrat-run cities

By Robert Kraychik

Democrats blame the “boogeyman of systemic racism” to avoid responsibility for the volume of violent crime in black communities in cities they run, said Ken Blackwell, former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, who offered his remarks on the Wednesday edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

“The real systemic and deadly reality is that black men and women are being slaughtered in cities and communities of color across the country in numbers that can only be compared to war zones in Iraq and Syria,” said Blackwell, reflecting on a column he wrote with former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik regarding crime in Democrat-run cities, “Every single one of those cities have been run by Democrats, and in some cases, [for] as long as 40 years. [Kerik and I] just took exception to the fact that these mayors were passing the buck. These local officials were passing a buck.”

Blackwell and Kerik wrote:

To be clear, whether they were armed, or unarmed, or in possession of a toy that looked like a real weapon, in every single category, blacks were not killed more often than whites. Given the numbers — 14 unarmed blacks killed out of 10 million arrests, which equates to a rate of 0.00014 percent — this is NOT evidence of systemic racism.

Blackwell remarked, “You can’t paint safety forces with a broad brush saying that they are riddled with systemic racism when the facts don’t bear that out, but what is [borne] out by the facts is that these local leaders have found some comfort in the status quo. They have embraced a narrative that pushes the blame from their incompetence [to] this boogeyman of systemic racism where it doesn’t exist.”

Black and minority communities are being “marginalized and destroyed” by Democrat policies, Blackwell determined.

“Democrats have betrayed the public trust and made our major American cities less safe! Listen to my interview here with my friend @alexmarlow on Breitbart Radio: https://t.co/LDyjt49w30 @BreitbartNews @realDonaldTrump @GOPChairwoman @TimMurtaugh @BernardKerik @larryelder” — Ken Blackwell (@kenblackwell) June 22, 2020

Blackwell recalled the weeks of unrest following the death of George Floyd.

“Fifteen innocent civilians and two police officers were shot and killed,” Blackwell stated. “Hundreds of civilians brutally beaten, and more than 700 police officers were injured nationwide. Hundreds of millions of dollars of property have been destroyed as businesses and places for people to make money and raise their families in 42 states.”

Left-wing and Democrat characterizations of America as a “racist nation” amount to a “false narrative,” said Blackwell.

To view online: https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020...at-run-cities/

[Boats]

Connecting violence and party not reasonable
By: PolitiFact News
Re: https://www.politifact.com/factcheck...s-overreaches/

All of which brings us to the core question: is it reasonable to connect the violence and partisanship?

In short: NO

"I don’t think there’s any data that would allow us to draw a causal conclusion here," said David Weisburd, executive director of the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. "Somehow arguing that Democrats cause crime or something of that sort just doesn’t fit the history of crime prevention in the U.S."

If you interpret the claim as referring to Democratic leadership, Weisburd notes President Bill Clinton had one of the strongest recent administrations in terms of funding the criminal justice system.

But more broadly, linking crime and votes simply doesn’t reflect how crime works.

Studies have repeatedly found that urban crime is not a widespread phenomenon — like voting is — but a product of small groups of people in small areas.

One 2015 study examined crime networks in Chicago and found 70% of nonfatal gun injuries occur within networks that contain just 6% of the city’s population. Another study that year found crime across a number of cities was concentrated in "microgeographic hot spots."

Weisburd said his research revealed a "law of crime concentration": Across an array of large cities, 1% of city streets account for about 25% of the crime, and 5% of streets account for about 50% of the crime.

An array of local socioeconomic and cultural factors play a role in which areas yield that concentrated crime. But it’s a lot more than politics.

A 2018 study from Boston University found racial segregation is a key risk factor for firearm homicide. An array of other local factors skew homicide rates and make a raw ranking a poor tool for understanding what’s happening, said David Kennedy, director of the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for a 2019 series on homicides.

"You get a number. It’s completely accurate. And it’s deeply unrepresentative of what’s going on," Kennedy told the Journal Sentinel. "Many American cities are the product of a long, long historical reality of white supremacy and racial violence and disproportionate action by the criminal justice system."

Our ruling

A viral Facebook post links "America’s deadliest cities" with having a "Democrat majority," implying a causal connection.

The data cited has some fundamental issues, notably that it uses out-of-date FBI data and ranks cities by crime rate when the FBI specifically warns against doing so.

This glosses over the array of intensely local factors that influence crime. Violent crime in particular stems from a limited group of people in a limited area, so assuming that segment has a particular political bent based on the city at large — and that their violence stems from those politics — is a stretch at best.

Large cities do have more crime. And they do have more Democrats — both in terms of general voting and local leadership. But it’s a classic example of correlation without evidence of causality.

We rate this Mostly False.