AOC dismisses concerns about rising violent crime as 'hysteria'
By: Andrew Mark Miller (MSN)
Do they think we aren't looking?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to outrage over violent crime spikes across the country as "hysteria."
"We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases," the New York Democrat told her colleague, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, during a Zoom meeting. "Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much, but I also want to make sure that this hysteria, you know, that this doesn't drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context."
Violent crime is on the rise in the nation's largest cities, including New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, which Republicans and some local officials have argued is a result of liberal efforts to defund police departments and lower penalties and bail for non-violent crimes.
Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez urged authorities to stop building prisons and instead divert attention to public health issues, arguing that it is "not acceptable" to use jails as "garbage bins."
"If we want to reduce violent crime, if we want to reduce the number of people in our jails, the answer is to stop building more of them," Ocasio-Cortez stated. "The answer is to make sure that we actually build more hospitals, we pay organizers, we get people mental healthcare, and overall healthcare, employment, etc. It's to support communities, not throw them away."
Ocasio-Cortez's comment drew harsh criticism on social media, including from journalist Glenn Greenwald, who suggested she was "mocking" ordinary people who are concerned about violence in their cities while demanding protection for herself at the same time.
"AOC is mocking ordinary people as 'hysterical' who are afraid of violent crime in their neighborhood: people who, unlike her, don't have reams of private security," Greenwald tweeted. "Yet she just acted to ensure $2 billion more in spending on the police that protects her."
AOC is mocking ordinary people as "hysterical" who are afraid of violent crime in their neighborhood: people who, unlike her, don't have reams of private security.
Yet she just acted to ensure $2 billion more in spending on the police that protects her: https://t.co/Kc1BDwd5O2
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 27, 2021
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eeeeeeek! a 30ish latina congresswoman kicking GOPer asses. call out the oath keepers, that aren't in jail...
then why the rwnj obsession with her? quick, go delete your last aoc seed first...
She is at least as smart as the average congressperson and likely smarter than many of them.
...never listened to louie gohmert, huh?
""If we want to reduce violent crime, if we want to reduce the number of people in our jails, the answer is to stop building more of them," she said. "The answer is to make sure that we actually build more hospitals, we pay organizers, we get people mental healthcare and overall healthcare, employment, etc. It's to support communities, not throw them away."
Describing rising crime, or any type of statistic in terms of an increase in percentages is prone to an hysterical interpretation, she is right about that.
Lets say you have a population of 100 people. Last year the crime rate was 3% , meaning that 3 of those 100 people were victims of crime and 97 of the 100 were not. Now, this year the crime rate has skyrocketed, "doubled" , and is now 6%. The sky is falling. Except that now 6 of the 100 people are victims of crime and 94 are not.
The crime rate has doubled. Gone up 200%! People are pulling their hair out, but almost the same number of people are crime free as was the case before the rate doubled.
This applies to many uses of "percentages" as misleading statistics.
Fact is it doubled and did not fall. Perhaps it's time for an evaluation.
Your math aside, (the rate went up 100%. It was three and now it is 6. The three additional are 100% of the three original) yes doubled does point to a shitty trend. And there is need for concern. And I doubt you'd poo poo it had you or a relative been directly affected by that rise.
But it's okay to increase funding for the police that are charged with protecting your (meaning AOC"s) elitist butt.
I am the farthest thing on earth from an elitist. My problem is I just have too much common sense.
Sorry but I see someone driven by emotion with maybe a little common sense in there. I've been wrong before but don't think so this time.
I have too many facts for you. Still, you may come around eventually.
Except you often make an even sillier argument, where you take a single crime and use it to make a generalized claim about racism or such. Funny how I've never seen you make this argument when the topic is about hate crimes or other rare crimes. Pretty much every complaint you have can be dismissed just as casually if you apply your argument to it.
When the murder rate goes up a couple of percent, thousands more people did. Just in your city, the murder rate increased by 50% over 2019. That meant 300 extra people were killed in one city alone. Why don't those 300 extra deaths in your town bother you? Why don't the thousands of additional people murdered matter?
Let's look at murder rates. Murder rates in the US are listed by the DOJ per 100,000, so a murder rate of 15, which is considered high, means 15 people murdered, per year, for every 100,000 in population. Which means that 99, 985 of those 100, 000 were not murdered that year.
Now lets double that murder rate to 30. MURDER RATE DOUBLES ! the headlines scream. Ok, fine. Now instead of 99, 985 people that were not murdered, we now have only 99,970. With a murder rate of 15 the percentage of the 100,000 population that had been a murder victim was .00015, with the doubling of the murder rate the percentage of the population that has been murdered becomes .00030.
Is it tragic?, of course and it should be immediately addressed by tighter law enforcement etc. . Is it a cause for hysteria? Of course not.
Democrats are still stuck in "defund the police" mode. Which is why there is hysteria; because the main thing that can be used to lower the crime rate continues to be diminished!
What makes it “hysteria?” Blaming a Democrat maybe? Voting for a Republican? I think that’s what AOC (and you, it seems) is really afraid of. That’s why she’s trying to downplay and dismissively shame anyone who cares about it by calling them “hysterical.”
Hysteria is taking what are essentially marginal increases in crime and getting outraged over it every day in social media.
Yes...marginal.
I can’t imagine why anyone would care about social media outrage unless they were afraid of it impacting elections. That’s her real concern.
AOC is certainly not one to shy away from expressing outrage on social media.
AOC is the one being hysterical
yep. "Nothing to see here folks. Just move along enjoy your day."
Is she downplaying a real problem? Something like not taking information seriously and looking for "a cure" before it gets out of hand and we lose 600,000 people?
Let's extrapolate that to say....Chicago. With a population of roughly 2.7 million people that would come out to 406 murders a year. Are you saying that if it jumped to 812 murders a year you wouldn't be concerned?
The murder rate spiked in 2020, were you this concerned about it then?
Why not talk the leaders of the Democrat bastions of stupidity where the crime rates have spiked? Shouldn't they be the ones that are concerned? Why aren't they!
Nice deflection, but expected.
Wasn't a deflection. As another user puts it "Truth" see number 5
Sure it was, Ronin has a hard on for anything that he considers left of Attila.
That's why I ignore most of this stupid shit.
Thank you for another post I can send my friends on the right. This site is a great source of entertainment for them. Anything "left of Attila". They will get a real kick out of that.
Considering I am an atheist (but don't hate religion the way most atheists on the left seem to). The last Establishment Party President I voted for was Bill Clinton second term (before the completely lost it with Trump and I went lesser of two evils). I have voted mostly independent or third party. I was one of the leading voices warning about Governor Snyder using Michigan's Emergency Manager Law to try and fix Democrat bastions of stupidity in Detroit, Flint, and Lansing. You don't try to fix those places; you hunt down and prosecute all of the corruption there to the fullest extent of the law! Oh, and if you haven't followed my posts; I am probably the most anti war person on here; and tt doesn't matter who is CiC at the time.
But yeah, I am a far right extremist./S
You're welcome, I'll keep them coming as long as you keep posting your rants.
Yes because I realized why it was spiking. Liberal policies pre election outcome and the defund, "we can take over a section of the city and call it autonomous" bullshit that was let happen.........Liberal cities.
Murders in NC spiked and mass shootings doubled in 2020..
You might want to address your own state before you point fingers.
You may want to provide a link to that before you tell me what to do.
You might want to do a tiny bit of research before you post or at least know what's going on in the state you live in.
But here it is.
Yep. I live in a red state and the crime rate is increasing....and not just in the Little Rock metro....
Thanks for the links however, using the logic of one of the members, the 31% in NC comes about like this. If you had 3 murders in 2019, a 31% increase would mean you have not quite 4 in 2020.
Other than that,
Add to that we have a pretty large shift in people moving here from the northeast for work and cost of living AND illegals and gangs from the southern border. And a Democrat sheriff in my county who refused to cooperate with 287-g and the feds. And he isn't the only Dem sheriff in NC who chose to do so. Funny thing is, it's what got him elected.
Not that any of that matters I guess but
No, it doesn't at all. I could use many of the same excuses for numerous cities/states throughout the US. Your state has a problem, clean it up before pointing fingers.
I pointed fingers at our problems. They refuse to see the light when it is blaring right in their eyes. I guess ideology has blinded them. Perhaps you can enlighten us with the stats from the state you live in........................
You pointed your finger at what you think are the problems. People from the NE, a sheriff that doesn't work with the feds and gangs from across the southern border. No idealogy on my part I said that your state has a problem so clean it up before you start complaining about other states.
You didn't address the mass shooting, are they part of your list of reasons?
My state, well I sure can.
Property crimes went down but violent crime went up. Murders had a 14.7% increase while domestic violence was up 116%. We had a 50% increase in mass shootings as well. I have a home in Florida so those are the FL states.
Good example of an increase
Perhaps we need another opinion...........and it is an opinion. A fairly good one.
Good read...............
I'm sorry, a murder increase of 14 percent is nothing. At least not in terms of justifying hysteria.
Only when Democrats are in charge. If it were a Republican the left would literally be screaming bloody murder.
It isn't hysteria. 14% May not mean much to you but..............
In Chicago, that’s over 100 extra murders in a year. Very stalinesque of you, 1 death is a tragedy, but 100 is just a statistic.
Get back to me when you no longer want to get hysterical about a rise in crime rates.
So you think the outrage over lynching in the South was just hysteria, right? A couple thousand blacks over 100 years. Think of all the blacks who weren't lynched! The odds of being lynched were tiny, so you must be enraged anytime anyone complains about lynching.
You do know that lynching is a hate crime don't you?
So that makes them more dead?
Phoenix AZ Crime Rate 1999-2018 | MacroTrends
The blue line is the crime rate for Phoenix Arizona, the brown is for Arizona and the green is for the United States.
I imagine the charts for most states would show some ups and downs.
Do you think the people of Phoenix should have gotten hysterical when crime rose in a few of those years?
Well, crime has gone up substantially in the last year, and that’s a fact. It’s normal - not hysterical - to care about that.
But when a politician calls such concern “hysteria” you know there is an agenda. She is trying to play it down, so her party doesn’t get blamed for it all over the country.
And the truth is, there is a real argument to be made that local Democrats have facilitated the rise in crime by turning their back on it. Even members of Congress are culpable for cheering it on.
People have a right to be concerned if crime goes up. But I havent seen any statistics that justify the hysteria some on the right are trying to gin up.
AOC is essentially correct when she says the current situation doesnt justify hysteria, although surely she will be attacked from the right.
Labeling it “hysteria” just means “Don’t blame Democrats next November.”
Do you understand that simply saying "crime has doubled" in and of itself means nothing?
Yes or no.
I would agree to this extent. People have different meanings for "hysteria". But she is not wrong. People on the right are trying to work up hysteria over recent crime statistics. She's not wrong just because you think she is dumb.
How many years of saying "crime has doubled" would it take before you think it means something?
77 people injured, 5 dead this last weekend alone in Chicago. "Nothing to see here. Move along".
Yeah...........right
20 people were shot in just two gang incidents.
What they really need are judges more willing to lock gang members up. Too many of them are not prosecuted or get no jail time.
But should this make people in the suburbs or in their little towns feel unsafe and blame Democrats? lol.
I wonder why they aren't. Is it just so prevalent that it's a SSDD thing? Are jails just that crowded?