A PhD student in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has submitted a report for peer review with some startling findings. In Travis Campbell’s study, the first to make a serious academic attempt to determine the effects of Black Lives Matter on lethal use of force by police, the data yielded an unexpected result: BLM riots embolden criminals. While police killings were reduced by 1 for every 4,000 BLM protestors from 2014-2019 there was a serious downside according to Vox,
“Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests.”
BLM Protests And Calls To Defund Police Embolden Criminals.. Shocker…
The piece from Vox very glibly points out that “there were a few thousand more homicides in the places where there were BLM protests” almost as if it is a small price to pay. The correlation is presented as very tenuous or even flipping it on its head. The author dates to theorize that perhaps “law enforcement officials are the ones voluntarily reducing their interactions with the community and as a result emboldening criminal activity”.
Imagine the mental gymnastics that are necessary to achieve this result. Seeing findings that crime increased concurrently with BLM protests and demands to defund Police and a loss of public trust. Seeing that the BLM protests DID embolden criminals and that the public is at greater risk with just “a few thousand more homicides”, and then turning around and suggesting that the police themselves are to blame. At no other time in human history would this type of Orwellian doublethink be imaginable from a major publication, let alone one of the most prominent liberal websites in the United States.
Yes, BLM riots caused an increase in crime, because weakening and subjecting our police to the hatred of the people they are sworn to protect definitively emboldens criminals. Failure to prosecute crime, emboldens criminals. Reporting violent, destructive riots as “mostly peaceful” emboldens criminals.
