Now My Hair Hurts

Yesterday, I belatedly posted a comment by Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn. His comment was about the absurdity of talk radio.

In what I'm sure is pure coincidence (*wink, wink*), Kevin Fischer posts on the same subject.

But Fischer, who is infamous for his copying entire articles, fails to manage copying the entire quote.

Then to add to his folly, Fischer includes this tough guy bit of posturing:

Chief, people pay high taxes around here and expect something in return,
including safe streets. You were hired to arrest bad guys and reduce crime. You
do that, and maybe your hair won’t feel so bad.

Well, golly gee, Fischer sure told him. But someone should tell Fischer that under Flynn's watch the murder rate is lower than it has been in two decades.

But what can one expect from a guy who makes his living on tax payer dollars, but abuses the state's vacation policy and may be blogging on the tax payer's dime.

What Happened To The Crisis?

Remember earlier in the year, when TMJ showed McBride to the door? She was on her way out anyway, but expedited her departure by doing a parody on the death of a little girl, who was tragically killed in a drive-by shooting. McBride tried to justify herself by pointing out that the city of Milwaukee was in a "crisis." For a while, every murder was further proof of the "crisis." It was also a chance for her to join in the squawk brigade chorus raging against Mayor Tom Barrett, Police Chief Nan Hagerty, and every black politician (except Sheriff Clarke).

Now, as she goes about berating Joel McNally about a column he wrote about the Jude cops, she writes:

...Just put in the variables, and you will see for yourself that it's true. The pattern is clear. The crime heyday was in the early 1990s.

Some people think crime is ticking back up over the past couple years - in SOME categories only, not in others (like aggravated assault in Milwaukee) - because some of those 1990s-era prisoners are now getting back out. To be sure, crime is affected by many other variables. But we're still nowhere near the crime problem in the early 1990s, which occurred during the initial influx of crack cocaine into the state.

If the crime was worse in the early 1990's than it was in 2007, why does this suddenly constitute a crisis? I guess it was just a crisis of convenience.

If this is failure, we could use a dose

How easy it is, if you're Jessica McBride, to throw away a one-liner like this:

Looks like that handgun ban in England did a lot of good

over a story about some recent gang killings in England. In McBride World, that qualifies as an in-depth investigation.

A few things she didn't mention:

There were a total of 50 homicides involving firearms in England and Wales in their reporting year 2005-06.

There were 8,478 homicides involving handguns and 2868 involving other firearms in the US in 2005, according to DOJ reports.

Milwaukee had 122 homicides in 2005 and 103 in 2006. More than 75% of the homicides in 2005-06 were committed with a firearm. Source: Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission.

Milwaukee has more gun homicides than all of England and Wales. If that's a failed gun policy in Britain, maybe we could stand a little of that kind of failure.