What Conn. learned about the politics of crime in 2022
I’ve developed an addiction. I genuinely appreciate any reader who takes the time to send feedback about a column I’ve written (bonus points to the scribes who responded to my typewriter column by crafting notes on vintage keyboards). But a new year is upon us, a good time to come clean.
The notes I like best are the mean ones.
As addictions go, I’ll never draw as much vitriol as when I once wrote about how I have never smoked, never taken an illegal drug or gotten drunk. That really fired up Those Who Shall Not Be Named Because They Won’t Come Out of Hiding (“I’ll bet you drink coffee, doncha’ dummy?” was the most civil reply).
But as I continue my New Year’s tradition of cleaning out the previous year’s mailbox, my theory is proven anew that haters … just can’t spell.
“Your just sturring the pot for the sake of sturring the pot,” was a response to a column I wrote about the fatal backyard shooting of Newtown’s Bobbi the Bear.
At least we agree. Stirring the pot is in my job description.
Another reader took exception to my March column about a wayward “poll” gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski was conducting (“How would you rate Ned Lamont as Governor: 1) OK; 2) Bad; 3) Terrible; 4) Horrible”).
I wasn’t the only one who found the concept of the survey just … 2, 3 and 4.
“You lied about this being a real Stephanowski survey ... never happened. The ‘survey’ you quote never came from the Stephnowski campaign. You are a liar. No respectful journalist lies, so perhaps you should start lessons learning how to be a welder. Your career in journalism is finished.”
In my head I hear it read by Will Ferrell in the tone he used to chastise the faux Santa in “Elf ” (“You sit on a throne of lies”).
And who wouldn’t like to weld? It’s an honorable profession. I wonder if Bob Dylan started his welding side hustle after a folkie called him “Judas” for plugging in back in 1966. Of course, in that case it was Dylan who snarled back, “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.” Or perhaps Bob wrote me the note. He’s never been much of a speller. Handwritten lyrics for his unreleased 1961 song about “Wisconsin” namecheck “Wisconson,” “Milwakee” and “Wow Toaster” (Wauwatosa). Bob, if you need a welding buddy, I’m here for ya. I’ll toss in the editing for free.
Sometimes, readers don’t even limit the insults to me. They go after my subjects too. After I wrote about Bruce Springsteen ticket prices, a reader assessed that “he has a couple decent songs thats it. to me hes terrible.”
I responded with the only logical question: “What are the decent songs?”
“Prove it all Night” and “Born to Run.”
See, it’s all about the conversation.
Not everyone agrees. My wife, my boss and my dog (I know that glare) all favor the “don’t engage” approach when it comes to hate mail. But people can surprise you. After I took shots at Darien’s exclusivity last month, a reader wrote back simply “I grew up in Darien in the fifties. All I have to say to you is that you are really tiresome.”
Her spelling offered a whisper of hope.
“That’s not particularly persuasive about Darien being a welcoming community,” I responded.
I didn’t hear back until my next column was published.
“I liked your column on power outages much better …”
See, now we’re having a conversation.
Spellcheck is already sending me hate mail about this column, but let’s give it a little more to chew on.
Maybe it’s just karma, but I continue to be haunted by versions of my column that have been swiped by murky sites and put through some kind of translator and back into English. Thus, the aforementioned column, “Darien’s tone-deaf decision in wake of Colorado Springs shooting at LGBTQ nightclub” turned into “Darien’s deaf-mute decision …” (like Darien would ever hush) and my observation that “Darien became a sort of unctuous shorthand” was transmogrified into “Darien became a kind of greasy abbreviation.” “Unctuous” wasn’t the only word that challenged the translation app. My reference to “dunderheaded videos” became “Bull!@#$” videos” (sans the grawlix).
It has occurred to me that some of the writers who tell me to “stop being a hopeless hack” could be innocently finding these unreadable versions of my columns. Along the same vein, a piece I wrote about The Voice of the Yankees, Mel Allen, went through some other contraption and wound up on YouTube being narrated by a drunken, mechanical voice. I could only listen through the second paragraph and decided the author sounded like a hack too.
Fortunately, the copyright cops usually catch up with these scoundrels. On one occasion, they snared me as well.
My highlight reel of the past year is topped by an exchange with Stamford resident Michael Raduazzo, who emailed a tribute on a Friday in January after the death of the rock star Meat Loaf. Michael didn’t know him as “Meat,” “Marvin” or “Mr.,” but as “Coach,” in the early 1980s when Meat Loaf was living in Stamford and coaching a Little League team.
At 6:12 that night, Michael mentioned that the team had once been featured in “NBC Sportsworld” on a Saturday afternoon 40 years ago.
“I don’t have video of it,” Michael wrote. “I even asked my neighbor who works now at NBC Universal to try to find it in the archives a few years ago but no luck.”
A bell rang. Our former columnist Kevin McKeever once mentioned the same show, as he was in the lineup for the opposing team when the footage was shot. I texted Kevin. He’s no packrat, so if he had a video, he would probably be able to find it.
His detective work was stunningly efficient, but he then had to hunt for a more elusive working VCR. By 7:25 p.m. he was able to send a copy shot on his phone to his former sandlot rival. It’s a charming clip, though wildly inappropriate, as it uses Coach Loaf ’s lusty “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” as the soundtrack to kids playing baseball.
Kevin gave the footage a brief revival on YouTube before it was tossed from the game for breaking copyright rules. But at least the old lineup got to see it again.
“I was certain (it) was gone forever. Unbelievable!” Michael responded. “No one — and I mean no one — could have expected that it existed. WOW. I am speechless.”
See, good things can come out of a conversation.
What people think about crime doesn’t often mesh with reality.
Polls show majorities believe that it’s rising when it’s falling. They think they’re in danger when they’re not. Most suburbanites in Connecticut do not experience street crime on a regular basis, if ever, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t scared of it.
All that has led to decades of public policy that attempt the same remedies over and over, which we know are of limited value and have devastating side effects. This country locks up its citizens at a rate that would make embarrass authoritarian regimes. Black people are far more likely to be imprisoned, which has nothing to do with who is more or less likely to commit crimes. The effects on families, neighborhoods and entire cities of enmeshing millions of people in the criminal justice system to no discernible purpose has been devastating.
And yet the push from certain quarters whenever crime arises as a political concern is to do more of the same. Longer sentences, less mercy, and forget about second chances. We keep doing what we’ve always done, even as the result of those policies is that crime remains stubbornly high in this country compared to other rich nations, albeit lower than it was a generation ago.
The least we should expect from political leaders is an honest depiction of reality. Don’t tell us crime is rising when it isn’t. Don’t try to make people scared for your personal gain. And don’t pretend to care about places that really are beset with street crime even as you ignore them when it’s not politically advantageous.
All of that, though, is usually too much to ask, and so we had a major push from the ultimately fruitless campaign of state Republicans this year to focus on crime as a major issue. It was part of a national movement, and it wasn’t a purely partisan issue, as one of the major proponents of the idea that everyone is always in danger was the Democratic mayor of New York City (still one of the safest places in America, by many standards).
The fruitlessness of those Connecticut efforts, however, is worth noting.
There are many reasons Republicans keep losing in Connecticut. There are more Democrats here, to start with. The direction of the national parties does not favor the GOP, and Connecticut’s highly educated populace works in favor of the party that’s not pushing weird conspiracy theories all the time.
Crime, then, was sort of a lastditch effort for Republicans in search of an issue. They likely would have lost anyway, but their efforts to scare the state into voting out incumbents didn’t work. That’s an important marker.
Connecticut was something of an outlier in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests in 2020 in that it took real action aimed at police overreach. The accountability enforcement measures it passed were among the few concrete actions nationwide that passed before the inevitable backlash led politicians to shy away from anything that could change the status quo.
As such, the Police Accountability Act could have been ripe for a backlash of its own. As the same time, Connecticut passed its version of a Clean Slate law, which wipes out the criminal histories of people who committed certain nonviolent crimes after a number of years out of prison without any other problems. That could have been a problem for proponents, but it never developed.
The Clean Slate rollout has not been free of problems. Implementation has been slowed by what state leaders say are technology concerns and other issues, leading to what advocates fear could be a lack of trust that the law will ever be put into place as intended. Regular updates from the state on the status of implementation should be expected.
But while there were some hints that Clean Slate would be used against incumbents who voted for it, nothing much developed in that regard. Proponents should take note — supporting policies that help people, rather than continuing the same failed “tough on crime” policies that generate noise year after year, doesn’t have to be electoral poison. There is room, in a place like Connecticut, for policies that try a different approach.
Toward the end of the gubernatorial campaign, with Gov. Ned Lamont seemingly in control of the race, his opponent attempted in a debate to link the police accountability law to the then-recent killings of two Bristol police officers. Lamont had one of the few moments when his affability seemed to falter, calling the attack the “cheapest grandstanding imagined.”
He was right. There was no link, and it was only desperation that led anyone to think otherwise.
So-called “tough on crime” policies don’t reduce crime. If they did, we’d be the safest nation in the world. Rejecting those policies has always seemed electorally dangerous, because fear is such a powerful weapon. Connecticut’s experience in 2022 could show there is a better way.