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Commentary By Robert VerBruggen

Biden Is Right: Governments Should Spend Their COVID Windfalls on Cops

Public Safety Policing, Crime Control

Most conservatives have found little to like in President Biden’s agenda. But now, Biden is encouraging cities and states to use their federal COVID-relief funds to buttress policing and public safety. This is the right move — no matter what one thinks of the COVID-relief bill itself, about Biden’s broader goals, or even about Biden’s political motivations in making this push. 

The country confronts a crisis in public safety. Murders and shootings have soared over the past year, and police departments have increasingly failed to solve homicide cases for the past several decades. These crimes do immense harm to victims and their families. They are also strongly concentrated in poor and minority neighborhoods, causing economic damage in the short-term while dampening kids’ later chances of a better life. 

More and better policing is a key part of any solution, and it’s worth spending money on — which is especially easy to do when the federal government has already granted an enormous windfall to states and localities. 

The past year has seen an appalling surge in violence. Murders rose by about a quarter in 2020, costing thousands of lives, and remain elevated this year. In cities that provide data on nonfatal shootings, those are overwhelmingly up since 2019, too.  

And underneath this recent spike is a longer-term trend. As the University of Pennsylvania’s Anthony A. Braga explains in a new Manhattan Institute paper, clearance rates for homicides have been drifting downward for 40 years. In 1979, only about a fifth of these cases weren’t cleared; today, it’s more like two-fifths. Some big cities clear fewer than half of their gun murders, and clearance rates for non-fatal shootings are far lower still. When shootings aren’t cleared, families are denied justice, future offenders get the message that their actions have no consequences, and shooters remain on the streets — where they are ongoing threats to the community and targets for retaliatory violence. 

Both of these problems can be addressed with smart investments in public safety. Three areas in particular need special attention: The raw staffing levels of police departments, the qualifications of officers, and the care given to solving crimes after they are committed. 

The raw numbers matter. Numerous studies show that when police presence increases – thanks to changes such as federal grants or post-9/11 “terror alerts” — crime goes down. Research has also linked crime spikes to the “depolicing” that often follows viral police killings or protests, in which officers remain on duty but simply become less proactive. 

But just as crime is skyrocketing, many police officers are not remaining on duty, as elevated retirements and quitting reduce the ranks of officers in departments across the country. A well-funded hiring push is much needed. 

It is also important for officers to be well-qualified and professional, to gain the respect of the community and to avoid unnecessary use-of-force controversies. Beyond increasing raw numbers, departments should experiment with prioritizing officers with higher levels of education. Here, the military, which offers better pay and promotional opportunities to college graduates, could serve as a model. 

Stopping crime before it happens is a key benefit of policing. It prevents victimization without throwing anyone in prison. But solving the most serious crimes deserves more attention than it often gets.  

As Braga shows in his new paper, a project in Boston proved that it is possible for a city to boost its clearance rates if it puts in the effort. By implementing a series of reforms, including increased staffing and new protocols, the city’s police department increased its homicide clearance rate from 47 percent in the 2007–11 period to 66 percent in 2012–14. Cities should also consider similar investments in nonfatal shootings, which are far less likely to be cleared, but which, when unsolved, pose similar dangers in terms of future offending by, and retaliation against, the shooters. 

Addressing crime isn’t just a benefit to the immediate victims who are protected. It is an investment in the most vulnerable segments of society. 

Crime is not randomly distributed. In surveys, the poorest Americans are more than twice as likely as the richest to report that they’ve suffered a violent crime. Black Americans die of homicide at roughly eight times the rate of whites. Geographically, within a given city, it’s not uncommon to find that half of the crime happens on a small percentage of blocks

One consequence is that businesses avoid the places where crime is concentrated, preventing those places from rising economically and making life even more difficult for the residents of high-crime areas. In Chicago and Los Angeles, according to a detailed 2018 study, neighborhoods with rising crime saw less private investment as a result. Readers may also be familiar with recent reports of business closings in San Francisco thanks to rampant shoplifting. 

Another, even more sobering consequence is that concentrated violence has enormous effects on kids growing up nearby. Kids at a St. Louis daycare are trained to get down when they hear gunshots. Exposure to violence can cause severe psychological harm. And rigorous research by Patrick Sharkey and Gerard Torrats-Espinosa has shown that as places’ crime levels change, so does the upward mobility of kids growing up there. 

recent study by Scott Winship and several coauthors documented that 21.3 percent of black Americans have experienced poverty for three generations running, as compared with 1.2 of white Americans. Neighborhood crime is, obviously, not the prime driver of that historical fact. But it could help to determine whether this country is able to break the cycle moving forward. 

The situation is urgent. Severe violence is elevated in cities throughout the country, threatening not only the immediate victims but entire places full of children and other vulnerable Americans. Governments should not hesitate to put their COVID funds toward improving public safety. 

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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

This piece originally appeared in RealClearPolicy