Crime reporting in some parts of the United States is increasingly resembling reporting in European countries. In Europe, concealing facts about crime obscures the consequences of the migrant crisis. Serious crime has been rising in Europe since 2015, when Third Worlders began entering Europe in mass. We are now seeing the practice here in the United States.
The Los Angeles Police Department has declined to release its crime-mapping data. According to LAist, when journalists requested the department’s COMPSTAT data under California’s Public Records Act, the LAPD refused, arguing that releasing the information could lead to “misguided public policy discussions or unjustified public panic.”
In other words, the public might react the wrong way if it knows too much. What would the public know if the LAPD released the data? They would know about the drastic overrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in serious criminal offending, where that crime was occurring in the city, and the failure of progressive policy to protect the residents of Los Angeles from crime and violence. For many, it would confirm what they already know.
Police departments do not get to decide how much information the public can handle. They do not get to gatekeep data because they fear criticism or policy debates they can’t control. Democracy and public safety demand transparency.
freedom and reason 