State competence needs to be demonstrated to citizens

My city has had reasonably steady growth over the past fifty years but in the first three or four of those decades, the growth involved an emptying of the city core as people moved into the suburbs. Corruption and incompetence characterize City government. The schools have had serial embarrassments, city services are a joke, the roads pot-holed, the police are chronically understaffed, and the courts are intent on showing magnanimity to criminals rather than ensuring protection of law-abiding citizens.

In the past decade, the demographic balance has turned. Moving further out entails such long drives that people are beginning to move back in. The city is densifying. The population numbers are inching up. The corruption and incompetence remain inured but there is central city economic dynamism once again. Which of course attracts more crime.

Our property crime commission (theft of mail, theft of deliveries from porches, theft from cars, theft of cars) are all up 20-40% over the past couple of years, as is the population of homeless and urban campers. Staid neighborhoods where cut-through speeders and loose dogs used to be the mainstay of civic complaint now have weekly or monthly incidents of mass theft. More and more armed robberies.

The police are understaffed and overwhelmed. Even when they do catch someone, they inevitably end up being someone with 20 or more earlier run-ins with the law who are immediately released back into the community by the court-system. Everyone is trying to do their job as they understand it and the result is near anarchy as seen through the eyes of citizens.

And of course there are ethnic patterns to this which are incendiary on their own. Violent crime is down in all parts of the City of Atlanta but it is still highest in the African-American locations. It is next highest in immigrant Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods. It is lowest in upper middle class and white neighborhoods. Much, but by no means all, of the property crime is being committed by African-American gangs against the upper middle class and white neighborhoods and Hispanic immigrants.

There is a degree of tragic inevitability to this. We know, as seen in New Orleans ten years ago and in other locales since, that there will be an incident in which an Asian, Hispanic, or White home owner will shoot an African-American intruder. There will be hysteria and all sorts of calls for a national conversation on race and stereotypes, etc. And it will be all much ado about nothing. Because it is not about race. It is about crime, policing and justice and the failure of the state to protect is citizens from the former through the latter.

As with the national numbers, violent crime is way down from the peaks of the seventies through the nineties. That should not be discounted as an achievement. But people quickly adjust to pleasant new normals and then turn their aspirations towards the next tier of improvement. Fixed violent crime. Now let's focus on property crime is the natural evolution.

In response to the earlier violent crime wave of the 1970s-1990s, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling came up with the Broken Windows Theory, explaining crime as a product of norms and signals.

In an anonymous urban environment, with few or no other people around, social norms and monitoring are not clearly known. Individuals thus look for signals within the environment as to the social norms in the setting and the risk of getting caught violating those norms; one of the signals is the area's general appearance.

Under the broken windows theory, an ordered and clean environment, one that is maintained, sends the signal that the area is monitored and that criminal behavior is not tolerated. Conversely, a disordered environment, one that is not maintained (broken windows, graffiti, excessive litter), sends the signal that the area is not monitored and that criminal behavior has little risk of detection.

While hotly debated and vilified on the left, sophisticated Broken Windows policing has been effective across diverse environments in the US for over thirty years. Just how effective was illustrated post Ferguson when many cities backed away from active policing and immediately saw a spike in violent crime.

We have not, so far, had an equally effective breakthrough on the social dynamics of property crime. But some of the same dynamics are likely at issue.

But whether property crime or violent crime, both are marks that the State is unable to perform its fundamental role of policing and criminal justice. Both signal to citizens that they cannot rely on the State to perform its function. Both are signals that citizens need to self-organize to provide the core services which the State should be but is not providing.

This Christmas, or more pertinently, Hanukah, has seen a rash of violent crimes in the New York area by African-Americans against Hasidic Jews. By its very particularity though, there are reasons to question how much can be generalized from these attacks.

Locally, there are weak signals about this erosion of State integrity and trust. I wake up this morning and do my news scan. On NextDoor there is a long thread of comments and discussions about the newest fashion in crime. For the past couple of years, the City has displayed its incompetence and corruption around electronic scooters - Bird, Lime, Lyft, etc. People are waking to find scooters in their front lawns, blocking their sidewalk, cluttering the streets. There have been multiple deaths from scooter involved traffic accidents. The City is still trying to figure out which way is up.

Showing the natural human capacity for innovation, it was probably inevitable that crime and technology would piggyback. There are now a couple of reports of industrial-style car break-ins. Instead of walking down a street between 8pm and 6am, peering in cars, riffling through the open ones and window-breaking the locked ones, instead of wandering up driveways to find what is parked in the back of homes, the new criminal approach is far more efficient.

They get a scooter and drive down a street breaking all the windows of cars parked there. They are followed by a vehicle with a riffling man. He runs from car to car whose windows have already been broken and quickly does a visual check for contents and tries the glove compartment. They can do twenty cars on a street in less than five minutes and be on their way long before the police arrive.

The scarce police resources are appropriately allocated to those neighborhoods where there are still high levels of violent crime. Their capacity and ability to deal with non-violent property crime is limited. Especially faced with scooter-enabled industrial-scale thievery.

And the citizen's regard for and trust in the State declines further. And we get closer to that moment when it will take a tragic turn.

Also this morning, in Texas we see the next iteration of citizenry response to declining State capability. Details are not all in but it appears some homeless person brought a shotgun to church and killed two parishioners before being in turn shot by armed congregants. A video of the event is here.

The New York Times's account is here.

Mr. Cummings said the gunman was “acting suspiciously” before the shooting and drew the attention of the church’s security team. The team, he said, has existed for at least 10 years and is made up of members of the church’s congregation who are licensed to carry firearms and practice shooting regularly.

“They saved a lot of lives today,” Mr. Cummings said. “Because this thing would have been a massacre otherwise.”

A member of the security team was killed in the attack, he said.

Mike Tinius, an elder at the church, said he had known that victim for more than 20 years. “He was trying to do what he needed to do to protect the rest of us,” Mr. Tinius said, adding, “It’s extremely upsetting to see anyone committing violence.”

The shooting, which the authorities said lasted six seconds, was captured on video because the church regularly posts its services online.

In the video, the gunman stands up during a quiet moment and briefly talks with someone standing against a wall. He then begins firing. Congregants crouch down in their pews. After a third loud bang, the gunman slumps to the ground as people scream.

“He was immediately hit by one of our marksmen,” Mr. Cummings said. “The next thing I know, he was lying on the floor.”

Why on earth did a church have an armed congregation? Because most mass shootings occur at places which restrict firearms. Schools, churches, public spaces. There has been a movement in many states to rectify this.

A Texas bill that took effect in September allows licensed handgun owners to carry those weapons in churches, synagogues and other places of worship.

No single event is representative of all but this tragic shooting does have at least one common element.

The gunman had a previous arrest record but was not on a watch list, said Mr. DeSarno, who declined to elaborate on the nature of the arrests.

There are a couple of things striking to me.

This all occurred in the space of six seconds.

The shooting, which the authorities said lasted six seconds, was captured on video because the church regularly posts its services online.

In the video, the gunman stands up during a quiet moment and briefly talks with someone standing against a wall. He then begins firing. Congregants crouch down in their pews. After a third loud bang, the gunman slumps to the ground as people scream.

Even a fully staffed police department would have been unlikely to be able to protect the parishioners without prior knowledge. The people were their only resource. And as almost always happens, selfless and courageous citizens stepped forwards to defend their family, friends and community at the very real threat to their own lives.

This picture from the first article is what is most striking. Maybe two or three seconds into the shooting there are at least six trained parishioners (marked with yellow arrows) immediately and effectively responding.

Click to enlarge.

This is impressive, alarming, heartening, striking, and concerning. It is impressive training. It is alarming that the congregation felt they needed to prepare themselves. It is heartening to see the self-reliance and resolution which has always been an American trait. It is striking to see emergent order in action. Ultimately it is concerning.

In this particular circumstance, the police were not at any fault. It was over in six seconds. But that groups of citizens are taking on the role and function of the State? We need that. But we also need reliable and competent State services so that citizens do not feel the need to take on these roles themselves.