That is the old style reporting worth paying for.

And as if to prove me marginally wrong. Yesterday I posted Pleading for a business sector that died a long time ago pointing out that local papers hardly provide any accurate, revealing, or useful local news anymore. I used our local paper, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution as an example of a storied paper that once did investigative journalism, once advocated for citizens, once published revealing information without fear or favor.

And now coasting along on the fumes of a near empty brand. Press release journalism, failure to report or hold politicians and commercial interests accountable. Barely able to report facts, and usually reluctantly.

And all that remains true.

The one light in the dismal miasma is a surviving journalist, Bill Torpy of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, still playing the role of the old intrepid journalist reporting the facts from the street. Today's column is Why no outrage? Atlanta shootings surge, but it’s not the cops by Bill Torpy.

The exchange was surreal, a sign that the wheels may be falling off public safety in Atlanta.

Fittingly, it happened Monday during the City Council’s Public Safety Committee hearing as council members and interim Police Chief Rodney Bryant were grappling with the unrest plaguing the city.

Councilman Antonio Brown, who represents the district just west of downtown, was getting ready to speak in the virtual meeting when he told the chief: “I was just notified there was a young man who was just shot and killed at 377 Westchester Boulevard. Can you get a unit out there? He’s been on the ground and there’s no police who have come. He’s dead already, he’s on the ground and the residents have put a sheet over him and the police still haven’t arrived.”

It sounds like Afghanistan: Can you please come and pick up the body?

But there’s more.

On June 13, as angry protesters milled around the south Atlanta Wendy’s the day after Rayshard Brooks was shot in the parking lot by a cop — and hours before the restaurant was burned down — there was a wild shootout in the Edgewood neighborhood in east Atlanta. Five people were wounded and two were killed. Residents reported hearing perhaps 40 gunshots.

Earlier this month, the owners of a bar in the popular Edgewood Avenue nightlife district posted a photo online of the business’s window smashed by a bullet. They said they felt unsafe and were closing “until the city gets its #@&! together.”

What caused this? Eight people were shot nearby in six days.

Friday in south Atlanta, police found the body of 80-year-old Clarence Knox inside his home. Residents reported at least 20 shots the night before, and cops think he was the unintended victim of a drive-by shooting.

And over the weekend there was this headline: “6 injured in 3 overnight drive-by shootings in Atlanta.” One of the victims is a 10-year-old boy.

Violence is off the chain in Atlanta.

And like a good traditional journalist, Torpy provides the empirical evidence, the context. This is not a matter of perceived increase in violence. It is an actual increase.

During the first three weeks of this month — May 31 to June 20 — 75 people have been shot in Atlanta. Last year during that period, 35 people were shot in the city.

At this rate it’ll be 100 shot by July.

Eleven people have been killed during that three-week period. Last year? Five.

So violent crime is up 100%. Sounds right based on reports from friends around the city and from reports on NextDoor.

But it is not what you would know from our Mayor.

In a statement, the mayor’s office said overall crime is down 17% in Atlanta. “But like some major cities, we have seen an increase among certain crimes as more people resumed activity outside their homes since the end of May. Now that bandwidth is less strained following weeks of demonstrations, APD resources are freed up to increase patrols on the streets and curb illicit activity,” the mayor’s office said.

Talk about blowing smoke. That's simply Simpson's Paradox. It is a typical politician's untruth. Property crime has been rising for the past 3-4 years in most neighborhoods. But violent crime has been declining.

As a consequence of a statewide Covid-19 lockdown, more people are remaining at home. Property crime has declined and property crime is in absolute terms the largest form of crime. Also, with fewer cars on the road, road crime is down sharply. But violent crime has shot up. On any given day in any given year there are few to no murders but there are dozens of car thefts. In absolute terms, when you average all categories of crime, all crime is down.

And violent crime, the most feared crime, is up 100%. This is how politicians lie, by telling technical truths that belie the reality people are seeing and experiencing.

And this is entirely predictable. In 2014, after the Ferguson riots, many cities instructed their police to stop doing proactive policing and reduce their presence in troubled neighborhoods. For those cities, crime increased sharply. Less policing almost always results in more crime. It is one of the most replicated findings in sociology.

After 2014 it was known as the Ferguson Effect. Many in the mainstream media and academia rejected the hypothesis but over the years more and more rigorous studies confirmed its existence. Since the suspension of proactive policing tended to occur in our largest cities, New York and Chicago being notable, the Ferguson Effect even showed up in national numbers. Violent crime which had been declining since the 1990s, popped back up. The rise only lasted a couple of years as police departments once again began practicing proactive policing and the national crime rates resumed their steady decline to historical lows.

Amidst all the polemical arguments about defunding the police, real numbers keep clocking up.

In Atlanta, the City Council members seriously discussed defunding the police. The clarity that this was a class issue rather than a race issue was made clear in the final vote. The proposal was defeated 8 to 7 with the votes for maintaining funding coming from those representing the poorest and blackest neighborhoods of the city. Those most likely to suffer from crime.

The council people more concerned with signaling their moral virtue and purity all came from the richest and whitest neighborhoods, the neighborhoods with well-armed residents, lots of gun-training, neighborhoods with private security patrols.

It sickens me to see this sort of hypocrisy where upper income council people, while playing with the symbolism of Black Lives Matter, disregard and dismiss the lives of our poorest residents who tend also to be black.

“Crime doesn’t take a holiday,” said Councilman Michael Bond. “Crime doesn’t care about activists or protests. Crime doesn’t care about black men getting shot down in the streets. The criminals know the police are diverted. They are taking advantage of the situation.”

Bond was part of a council majority (8-7) that voted against withholding funding from the Atlanta Police Department budget as a way to force reforms.“

The irony about defunding to reform police is that residents in those areas are begging for more police,” he said. Many residents, especially those who are older, are frightened about crime and “don’t want the police to go away,” he said.

And regardless of the outcome of that vote, the members of the police force are paying attention. They are doing a dangerous job. And what they are observing is that if they make a mistake, and more pertinently, if they simply appear to make a mistake, they will be suspended and/or fire without any due process. The Mayor has defenestrated them along with the representatives of the wealthiest neighborhoods.

The Mayor and City Council have been praising the police department for several years as they have had to manage through underfunding and understaffing. The Mayor and City Council have praised the police department for its improved policies, and training, and results. And all that praise was clearly empty words. When the appearance of a mistake was made, the politicians threw the police department under the bus.

It is all well and good for the residents to take gifts to police stations and thank the individual officers. But if the officers know that the Mayor and Council will actively punish the police without evidence or due process, what happens? Something immensely predictable.

Then there’s this: Many cops have taken a more hands-off approach to policing following the arrests of six officers for using Tasers on two college students this month, and the arrests of two officers in the killing of Brooks. Cops are reticent to get out and deal with angry people in the streets.

A video shot after a shooting near the burned-out Wendy’s shows cops being forced back into their cars by a threatening crowd. In the third week of June, Atlanta cops made 50 traffic stops. In the corresponding period a year ago, they made 3,000. (Yes, those numbers are right.)

Scores of cops have called in sick, and the so-called “proactive” policing — which is investigating situations to try to stop crime before it occurs — is now largely nonexistent.“

Officers will respond to high-level calls and protecting each other,” said Jason Segura, a cop who heads the department’s union. He said the recent firings and quick arrests of officers without detailed investigations has police thinking the city does not have their backs.

He took issue with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who until now has had a good relationship with cops, having pushed through a long-awaited pay raise.

“She’s going to listen to the mob” in calling for arrests of and sanctions against police, Segura said. “This is politics and the citizens are suffering. Being proactive will probably get you indicted under the current state of affairs.”

Rich or poor, black or white, citizens are sitting on the sidelines watching politicians throw honest hardworking public servants to the mob. They are watching the Mayor cede the streets to the mob. They are watching appalled at the establishment hypocrisy when eleven African-Americans are murdered by criminals while the political leadership cower in fear.

And the press and academia and mainline priests are prancing around declaring that Black Lives Matter and committing themselves to social justice, and declaring that this is all about the racism inherent in a city which is majority black, a Mayor who is black, a police force which is majority black, an acting police chief who is black, a City Council which is majority black.

What nonsense. And good for Bill Torpy calling them on it. That is the old style reporting worth paying for.