January 05, 2009
Is It the Guns?
Quote Say Uncle, "North Dakota experienced only two murders in 2008. Both were stabbings."
Yeah. The significance is that North Dakota is thick with guns. My family is from South Dakota, not far from the state line. For cultural distinctions, it's the same sort of place. As an eighth grader there, I had access to a cabinet full of firearms. As I recall, there were three or four shotguns, a couple of deer rifles, a smaller caliber rifle for smaller targets, and a revolver to carry while on horseback (although we rarely used that). My classmates at the time had similar caches at home. As far as I can tell not much has changed there in the intervening years.
I lived in Colombia around the same time. We had no guns while living there, since they are illegal barring lengthy permitting processes or bribing someone. Very few of the Colombians I knew had guns. I did know many Colombians who were murdered, a really astonishing number. Legal gun ownership there is uncommon, and illegal guns are far less common than legal ones here. The Colombian National Police reported 36.53 murders per 100,000 residents in 2005, including a rate of 6.94 non-gun homicides. That's down a bit from the year before. 2005 by comparison was a bad year in North Dakota - the murder rate was 1.89 per 100,000. (That same year South Dakota's rate was 2.32. I think they get more tourists there.)
Having lived in both places, I have some idea of why Colombia's murder rate is roughly 20 times higher than the gun ridden Dakotas. One thing I'm sure of, it's not the difference in firearm ownership.
January 04, 2009
From the Dept of Bad Ideas
Colorado voters with oh-so-best of intentions in 2006 approved an increase in minimum wage. A dumb idea, to be sure, but what's worse is this state constitutional amendment also indexed the wage to inflation, so it increases every year, barring a deflationary cycle.
So here's 2009, and with the economy floundering and unemployment increasing, Colorado is compelled to increase the minimum wage to $7.28 an hour.
Here's hoping that the enevitable job losses which will result will not include yours nor mine.
Cheers!
Denver Police Trend?
According to DP columnist Susan Greene, the Denver PD tends to be a bit shoddy in checking ID's:
Fury tinges Davis' voice when she tells how one officer mused, "This makes no sense to me," presumably after comparing police records about a white woman to the reality of Davis' brown skin."They were questioning me like I wasn't me," she says.
Police found no gun on Davis or her kids, charging her instead with interfering with a police officer and disobeying a lawful order. She pleaded guilty just to go home.
But deputies still wouldn't release her, citing a warrant for which they said she might have to wait 10 more days in jail until Jefferson County would come and haul her off.
That warrant was for a woman named Brandy Hair — whom, as it turns out, Denver police had arrested two days earlier on drug-possession charges. Hair happens to be 13 years younger than Davis. Not to mention white. Which is no minor oversight, given that Davis is black.
"Duh," she says.
[...]
Among those plaintiffs are a Sterling mother the city mistook for a suspect weighing 90 pounds less.The city needlessly locked up a disabled former Denver sanitation worker four times, including once even after the man police really wanted was dead.
And deputies held a Latino construction worker for 26 days in lieu of a man with a discernibly different name, telling his pregnant wife he was lying to her about his identity.
Read the rest to get a sense of the nightmare Ms. Davis went through.
I wonder what punishment these cops get when they make such boneheaded errors?
