It’s more complicated

In his Aug. 21 opinion piece, Mike Masterson stated he was “a ‘thingsare-far-out-of-sync-and-not-addingup’ theorist who, like many adult Americans with common sense, can easily recognize.” One of the things he recognizes is, “murder and other serious crime rates soar out of control mostly in Democrat-controlled cities, some of which willfully slice their budgets for law enforcement.”

Some Americans with common sense can recognize when an opinion writer makes a statement that is out of sync and not adding up.

On Nov. 23, 2020, Jeff Asher of AH Datalytics released an analysis of murders in 51 major cities. The study compared the number of murders for the first nine months of 2019 to the number of murders for the same period in 2020. The Democratic-led cities showed an average murder-rate increase of 36.2 percent, while the Republican-led cities showed an average increase of 35.6 percent. It appears that the political party in control of a city has no statistical effect on the murder rate.

In 2020, Houston defunded law enforcement about 2 percent, with the murder rate increasing 42.7 percent over the first nine months from 2019. Meanwhile, Tulsa increased law enforcement funding about 8 percent, with the murder rate increasing 47.6 percent over the first nine months from 2019. The murder rate was also not affected by an increase or slight decrease in law enforcement funding.

Things are out of sync and not adding up, which can make it easy to lay the blame for an increasing murder rate on the slight defunding of law enforcement or which political party is in control of a city, but it is more complicated than that. Some individuals with common sense think that factors such as the effects of the pandemic, events of social unrest that have occurred in the U.S. over the last few years, the divisive political climate, etc., could have created a “perfect storm” that erupted into a wave of violent crime and murder throughout this country.

KENNETH WEBER

Greenbrier