Hey Mr. President: What about rural crime in red states?

So Donald Trump says crime in the nation s capital is out of control Roving gangs of youth and the like After declaring a populace safety exigency he invoked Section of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act which allows the president to take control of the city s police force during an crisis for up to days He also deployed National Guard troops and then ordered them to be armed just to increase tensions in a city where the crime rate has been dramatically dropping for the past couple of years Now more than Guard members are picking up trash on the heavily-touristed streets of Washington D C proving for the umpteenth time that everything Trump does is for show including debasing the military Related We need a new theory of democracy because this version has failed Despite Trump s baseless declares and th-century rhetoric about bloodshed bedlam squalor and worse the last big violent criminal activity in Washington that the greater part of us recall occurred on Jan The six Republican governors who have sent additional National Guard troops to stand around and do little in the nicer parts of Washington have cities in their states with far higher crime rates than the nation s capital Ohio West Virginia Louisiana Mississippi South Carolina and Tennessee each have at least one metropolitan area with more crime than D C Republicans would no doubt respond that those are blue cities with Democratic mayors Multiple are Over the last years between and of the top U S cities have had Democratic mayors OK then but it s also true that seven of the states with the highest murder rates are governed by Republicans But if we re talking about a crime obstacle Mr President let s talk about crime in rural America Various of the U S population lives in urban areas and the crime rates in those places broadly speaking are higher But crime in rural areas ain t nothing and much of it goes unreported for various reasons e g more people know each other the deputy sheriff is friends with the family of the alleged perpetrator and so on A friend of mine I ll call him Mel because that s his name and he s a devoted fighter of authoritarianism in recent weeks posted various intriguing statistics about crime in America Yeah I know The fascists among us don t trust the numbers Mel is a educator and former wrestling coach who spent his career in rural schools So let s talk briefly about rural versus urban crime Mel-style We need your help to stay independent Subscribe this day to patronage Salon s original political commentary According to the nonpartisan USAFacts crime rates are as anyone would expect significantly higher in urban than in rural areas In out of people above the age of and living in urban areas disclosed being casualties of violent crime and out of were casualties of property crimes In rural areas those numbers were much lower and respectively The number of informed crimes in suburban areas fell right in between But and there s a pretty big but According to a paper published in JAMA Surgery the majority of rural areas in this country have higher rates of death by firearm than the most of urban areas It should be noted and then underlined that suicide is by far more prevalent than homicide in both areas If guns are present suicide attempts are much more likely to be fatal People in rural America yes it s a stereotype but it s true entirely have a lot more guns According to a paper published in JAMA Surgery the the bulk rural areas in this country have higher rates of death by firearm than the majority urban areas and suicide is by far more prevalent than homicide in both areas Still the main takeaway is that overall rates of stated crime victimization across America in both urban and rural areas have been dropping for decades They are lower in than in This may qualify as the the majority misunderstood or disbelieved fact in modern-day America No matter what cable TV and social media may tell you crime is a lot lower now than in decades past Then there s the issue that absent an actual crisis no city should see members of the National Guard on its streets All citizens need a non-militarized well-trained well-paid proportional police force to continue their work making the population feel safer And Republican leaders should remember that they like plenty of of us are fathers and mothers and grandparents and rethink their hardline stance about the ludicrous antiquated Second Amendment No other developed country in the world has to deal with its population being awash in guns Parents should not have to worry about sending their children to school Police officers should not invariably be on edge because at any moment they are likely to encounter an armed person Apart from Donald Trump himself and the cowards in Congress and ideologues on the Supreme Court supporting his moves to dismantle our democracy guns and homelessness are the true emergencies in this country Getting back to our less-discussed kind of crime several people in rural areas for cultural reasons touched on earlier choose not to analysis being a victim Social services such as safe houses for abused women and their children are often scarce or nonexistent in rural areas So how plenty of sexual assaults and rapes go unreported in rural America How a multitude of cases of domestic abuse Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Class Authentically we have a few idea In percent of people in urban areas who experienced rape or sexual assault informed it to police but only percent of folks in rural areas did so The fact that only one in five women in urban areas description such crimes is pretty darn bad that only two women in do in rural areas is abysmal As Mel noted Underreporting is a substantial issue in small communities Mel s post about crimes going unreported and thus unpunished in rural communities reminded me of Arthur Conan Doyle s short story The Adventure of the Copper Beeches published in in which Sherlock Holmes after solving a event in the countryside remarks to Dr Watson that he feels more calm in London than in rural England where the bucolic may hide the horrendous a declaration that of curriculum astonishes Watson Holmes case as reliably explains But the reason is very obvious The pressure of population opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child or the thud of a drunkard s blow does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going and there is but a step between the crime and the dock But look at these lonely houses each in its own fields filled for the largest part part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty the hidden wickedness which may go on year in year out in such places and none the wiser The poor ignorant folk in Holmes mind were the undereducated country people of th-century England But how several smart educated people living in small communities in rural America really know their rights and have access to legal help Donald Trump spews nothing but self-serving nonsense often encouraging violence with a wink and a smirk and he s done that all his life To think that this man with felony convictions for fraud as well as civil judgments for sexual assault and defamation has the nerve to talking about cracking down on crime is beyond absurd It would be like Trump s old friend Jeffrey Epstein they shared wonderful secrets Trump allegedly wrote counseling us on the dangers of pedophiles And consider what an immense waste of taxpayers money this deployment of the National Guard is Somehow we are not hearing Republican outrage about that The so-called red states so-called governors who have curried favor with Trump by sending their part-time soldiers to D C should be ashamed of themselves So far they re not which makes it even more disgraceful Read more about the current political wars Why Donald Trump keeps talking about heaven Don t buy the Cracker Barrel fallacy Republicans thought they could escape the Big Beautiful Bill It s not working The post Hey Mr President What about rural crime in red states appeared first on Salon com