Justice Matters: A Police Officer’s View on Reducing Crime

So I'm a police officer in the US.

The agency I work for is in a Republican state, and a Democratic county. I say that because as I've learned, the county is extremely important when it comes to dealing with crime. My intention with this letter is to just share with you my perspective on how we could reduce crime in a significant way. This is not intended to be a "political" letter. This is just the way I see things as a police officer. With that said, let's get into it.

The reason I say the county you live in is extremely important when it comes to crime, is because of the judges in that county.

In my opinion, the judges have the power to heavily reduce or increase crime. The judges decide the sentencing and bail amounts for individuals. These judges are elected and work in their respective counties.

You might be thinking … why are the judges going to determine how much crime is being committed in a given city? Let's start with this, if I respond to 100 calls for service (911 calls),

80-95 of them are going to involve a suspect that has been to jail at least 1 time.
70-80 of them are going to involve a suspect that has been to jail at least 2 times.
50-70 of them are going to involve a suspect that has been to jail at least 3 times.

If these numbers seem high to you, you're not alone. I did not think it would be like this before I joined the department. I did not know that these crimes were, in a sense, only committed by a "handful of people". Am I crazy to suggest that we should give harsher consequences to repeat offenders? How many of those 100 calls for service would be eliminated if we did this? The problem is we have people that are not touched by this crime that are giving the consequences.

Democratic majority counties elect Democrat judges, and these judges give very, very soft consequences for crime.

Look, I am just giving you my perspective. I do not care about political parties. I am just telling you what I see. I don't care if you call yourself a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, etc. I truly want to make my city a safer place to live and enjoy. Our political discourse has gotten so tribal that it's hard to have conversations like this without automatically dismissing them because they're from "the other side". I promise you, I don't care about "sides". I just want to make cities, mine in particular, safer. That's it. That's my intention with sharing this. Please don't place an ulterior motive where there is not one.

Now look, I get how these judges have come to operating this way. Yes, there are multiple factors that contribute to a person ultimately committing a crime. I agree that some people are born into hellish environments and have objectively "bad" upbringings. My argument is that this is not something that should be placed on our judges to rectify. I get the desire, but in my opinion, the judges are not the correct mechanism for this.

Our judges should be unbiased in their consequences, in my opinion.

They should review the laws broken and sentence based on that. If they handed out sentencing in a truly unbiased manner, crime would be heavily reduced in our major cities. I say major cities because they are by and large located in Democrat leaning counties with majority Democrat judges. Counties without a majority of Democratic judges typically don't experience this problem to the same degree.

This might sound unbelievable to some of you, but I have lost track of how many times I've seen someone commit a violent crime like Aggravated Robbery, get out on a $100 bond, and then commit another violent crime a week or two later. Then, this person is only in prison for like 7 months, and back on the street. It might not be this bad in your city/county, but I am just sharing with you my experience in the city I work for. I'll respond to a 'stolen vehicle' call involving juveniles who have stolen their fifth car that month. I've had juveniles tell me "I know how soft the system is" and then hold up their hand and smack the back of it, like our system is just a smack on this wrist. I find myself saying 'This all seems so preventable' far more often than I should.

You might be reading this thinking "but these people have had an unfair life", "they need more education, they need more resources", "throwing them in jail is not the answer".

I hear you. Trust me, I do. But there comes a point in which people need consequences, no matter their upbringing. When we start to care more about the people committing these crimes than we do the victims of these crimes, we've lost our way. The strongest pushback I get overwhelmingly comes from people that are insulated from this crime. They live in homes far away or buildings high above this crime.

If you were a business owner and you were looking for an area to expand your business into, would you want to place your business in an area not only with high crime, but an area where crime seems to go unpunished? How much money would you lose if you did this? Would you want people to feel safe in your establishment?The answers to these questions are pretty obvious, but some don't think about it this way and wonder why businesses stay out of these areas. Do you see who suffers the most when we don't take crime seriously enough? The residents in these areas. Not only do they have limited businesses in their area, but they are also the most victimized by crime, and continue to be because of the soft consequences. But the ones ultimately giving these soft consequences & the ones advocating for these soft consequences live somewhere where the crime does not touch them. Would they still be doing this if they were constantly being victimized like the residents in these areas?

I don't care what your political affiliation is, if you actually want to reduce crime in your city, you have to stop electing Democratic judges, in my opinion.

Harsh consequences are a deterrent in and of itself. Read that again. This is a win-win. You deter a lot of people from committing crime in your county in the first place if they know that your county is hard on crime. But you are also going to keep the more violent and brazen individuals off of the streets, because they will be in prison a lot longer for committing crimes in your county.

"We can't just lock people up"

You know what's funny. I never hear this from people that live in the thick of it. The people that actually see day to day how evil human beings can be. If you say "we can't just lock people up", I do not mean to offend when I say this, but I don't think you've seen enough. Or you don't understand or don't want to accept human nature. Maybe you haven't had sufficient exposure to people who would rob and kill without hesitation. "Suicidal empathy" is a good way to put it. Some people are so empathetic that they end up being taken advantage of in the worst way. True evil will take advantage of your empathy and kill you. Obviously I do not see all people this way, but there are individuals that are like this. Pretending otherwise, in an attempt to be "loving", will bite you. I'm not saying we shouldn't have any empathy at all. But we must not be naive in our empathy. Also, if something isn't working, it isn't working. This soft on crime approach we've taken in major cities like mine, is clearly not working.

Like I've said, I understand some people have had an absolutely horrible upbringing in the worst of environments. I do think we should aim to fix these issues, but my argument is, it should be addressed far before these individuals end up in front of a judge. The judges trying to fix these issues are making our cities far less safe.

When we start caring more about the victims of these crimes instead of caring more about the suspects, we can start to heavily reduce crime in our cities.

Thanks for reading

- Savaghn

The views expressed represent my personal observations, not those of my department.