Redirecting from a Cleveland development thread to keep it focused. Some background....

 

56 minutes ago, dastler said:

https://www.facebook.com/CityofCleveland/posts/10158032321331962

 

When do these federal dollars get allocated? Can the next mayor introduce new legislation to direct the funds elsewhere? I don't have any faith that the current administration will use the money effectively.

 

49 minutes ago, KJP said:

 

I was going to write an article offering some personal suggestions on how to use the money. But when I did some research about my ideas and to look for new ones, I learned the city and the feds were pretty much proposing to use these and proposed federal funds as I would. That would be to address chronic poverty and heath conditions, such as targeting lead poisoning, helping people buy homes, renovating homes with more efficient heating/cooling, insulating, etc. that will help people save money and reduce emissions, and more. So I didn't write the article.

 

4 minutes ago, dastler said:

Whelp, I've only been half listening, but like I thought Cleveland mayor is bungling this. The top priority is to buy more police equipment.

 

OK, here we go with the more police vs. less poverty debate. My belief is more police equals more poverty. Less poverty equals less police.

Yep, agreed.

 

Can the next mayor overrule or reallocate whatever the current mayor does with the ARPA funding?

7 minutes ago, KJP said:

Redirecting from a Cleveland development thread to keep it focused. Some background....

 

 

 

 

OK, here we go with the more police vs. less poverty debate. My belief is more police equals more poverty. Less poverty equals less police.

It's the chicken and the egg argument, but generally that's a true statement. More poverty equals more crime which requires more police to investigate and respond to crime. But to truly pull areas out of poverty you need to convince people with means to move into an area, to open businesses, to hire people, to create a truly mixed income area. But they need to feel safe to move in in the first place, bla bla bla. Though safety for my generation is more akin to people not getting blown away on the street, petty crime is whatever. 

There is an old saying "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.".  I believe to pull areas out of poverty, we need to do more teaching. 

Generally, more police means more investigations and more arrests, but not less crime.  Because, as KFM44107 said, crime follows poverty not the number of police on the beat.

19 minutes ago, Foraker said:

Generally, more police means more investigations and more arrests, but not less crime.  Because, as KFM44107 said, crime follows poverty not the number of police on the beat.

Yes and no. More police can deter violent crime for quite some time. We pretty much cut the amount of aggravated robbery of motor vehicles in half in our district by putting resources to catch the two gangs of kids stealing cars. But it starts up again with a new group about every eight months or so. 

Edited September 23, 20213 yr by KFM44107

3 minutes ago, KFM44107 said:

Yes and no. More police can deter violent crime for quite some time. We pretty much cut the amount of aggravated robbery of motor vehicles in half in our district by putting resources to catch the two gangs of kids stealing cars. But it starts up again with a new group about every right months or so. 

That's why I said "generally" and every general rule has exceptions.  I think we agree -- as you noted some crimes, like aggravated robbery of motor vehicles, can be greatly reduced and even eliminated with more police presence -- at least for a while.  But even then, new groups of knuckleheads come up that think they can get away with it even after the police have been successful in incarcerating previous groups of knuckleheads.  More police means more deterrence, but police don't solve the underlying problems.  So the police are helpful but only one part of the solution.

 

If we had a neighborhood with a lot of crime and high poverty we could coordinate police action to tamp down the crime, make infrastructure investments to improve the public space, and provide intensive job training and job creation in the neighborhood to change its trajectory.  This is very difficult and expensive.  We don't often do it well.

Just now, Foraker said:

That's why I said "generally" and every general rule has exceptions.  I think we agree -- as you noted some crimes, like aggravated robbery of motor vehicles, can be greatly reduced and even eliminated with more police presence -- at least for a while.  But even then, new groups of knuckleheads come up that think they can get away with it even after the police have been successful in incarcerating previous groups of knuckleheads.  More police means more deterrence, but police don't solve the underlying problems.  So the police are helpful but only one part of the solution.

 

If we had a neighborhood with a lot of crime and high poverty we could coordinate police action to tamp down the crime, make infrastructure investments to improve the public space, and provide intensive job training and job creation in the neighborhood to change its trajectory.  This is very difficult and expensive.  We don't often do it well.

Ya. Definitely. More police isn't a solution, it's merely one piece of a broader solution. One in which if it is successful, less police would be required in the long run. 

1 hour ago, KJP said:

Redirecting from a Cleveland development thread to keep it focused. Some background....

 

 

 

 

OK, here we go with the more police vs. less poverty debate. My belief is more police equals more poverty. Less poverty equals less police.

 

Ever been to Walton Hills?   :)

Correlation does not equal causation.

I think the whole idea of more police vs less poverty is incorrect. You need both. And what nobody on either side wants to hear is that this is complicated. There is no doubt that poverty leads to more crime. You can look at almost any study of this issue and it’s clear that more poverty equals more crime, less poverty equals less crime. As a black man from the hood, there are some poor places in Appalachia that are just as bad as any ghetto in America. Poverty is a very very strong contributor to the conditions that create crime. The most consistent sources of crime citywide are in the poorest neighborhoods of the city. That’s not an accident.
 

However, you do need a police presence to deal with the immediacy of the moment. You can’t deal with the root causes in an effective way if there’s bodies dropping on the street. You have to do both. But we also have a problem here of not having enough officers that reflect the neighborhoods that they police. We don’t have much community policing anymore, especially in the areas that really need it. The neighborhood ministations are gone. The PAL leagues are almost nonexistent, if not completely nonexistent. The police department needs to be a part of the community. We’ve seen this done in other places. It’s doable. People in these areas want to be able to call the police too. They just don’t want to get cracked in the head unjustly when they show up. So you need both.

 

And back on the poverty issue, the problem that I have with the conversation is a lot of the things being put on the table to address it are either not effective or sustainable in my view. We’re not talking about increasing real wealth and putting actual wealth in the hands of the people. We’re not talking about the fact that the city has a $1.8 billion budget and spend very little of it with black owned businesses, who typically hire more black people than other businesses. (We don’t spend enough with Cleveland based businesses period. Let alone minority ones). We’re not talking about the fact that our school system is not preparing people for not just jobs but trades either. In other places you can be a welder or a plumber making 6 figures.
 

We have neighborhoods with half of the residents or more living in poverty. That’s an atrocity. But the only way to bring a neighborhood up without forcing people out is to make sure that your policies encourage wealth building among that population. If not, you’ll just have new people moving in, pricing out and displacing the ones that were there. I think everybody around here who have seen any post I’ve made know that I’m not anti-development. I’m very very pro development. But if we don’t have policies to make sure that residents have the opportunity to get access to wealth, we’re gonna either be stuck in this or we’re going to just move folks out, which perpetuates inequity.

Edited September 23, 20213 yr by inlovewithCLE

3 hours ago, inlovewithCLE said:

I think the whole idea of more police vs less poverty is incorrect. You need both. And what nobody on either side wants to hear is that this is complicated. There is no doubt that poverty leads to more crime. You can look at almost any study of this issue and it’s clear that more poverty equals more crime, less poverty equals less crime. As a black man from the hood, there are some poor places in Appalachia that are just as bad as any ghetto in America. Poverty is a very very strong contributor to the conditions that create crime. The most consistent sources of crime citywide are in the poorest neighborhoods of the city. That’s not an accident.
 

However, you do need a police presence to deal with the immediacy of the moment. You can’t deal with the root causes in an effective way if there’s bodies dropping on the street. You have to do both. But we also have a problem here of not having enough officers that reflect the neighborhoods that they police. We don’t have much community policing anymore, especially in the areas that really need it. The neighborhood ministations are gone. The PAL leagues are almost nonexistent, if not completely nonexistent. The police department needs to be a part of the community. We’ve seen this done in other places. It’s doable. People in these areas want to be able to call the police too. They just don’t want to get cracked in the head unjustly when they show up. So you need both.

 

And back on the poverty issue, the problem that I have with the conversation is a lot of the things being put on the table to address it are either not effective or sustainable in my view. We’re not talking about increasing real wealth and putting actual wealth in the hands of the people. We’re not talking about the fact that the city has a $1.8 billion budget and spend very little of it with black owned businesses, who typically hire more black people than other businesses. (We don’t spend enough with Cleveland based businesses period. Let alone minority ones). We’re not talking about the fact that our school system is not preparing people for not just jobs but trades either. In other places you can be a welder or a plumber making 6 figures.
 

We have neighborhoods with half of the residents or more living in poverty. That’s an atrocity. But the only way to bring a neighborhood up without forcing people out is to make sure that your policies encourage wealth building among that population. If not, you’ll just have new people moving in, pricing out and displacing the ones that were there. I think everybody around here who have seen any post I’ve made know that I’m not anti-development. I’m very very pro development. But if we don’t have policies to make sure that residents have the opportunity to get access to wealth, we’re gonna either be stuck in this or we’re going to just move folks out, which perpetuates inequity.

 

You have to establish the type of surroundings where people aren't just going to leave as soon as they obtain some wealth, and a big part of that is restraining those who would prey upon them.  That's the police's job.