Beat Cops.... Not Coppers on the beat
Beat Cops.... Not Coppers on the beat
Has the never ending pandemic brought out the worse in us?
Runaway shoplifting. Runaway gun ownership. Runaway crime. And that's just American civilians. Pandemic fatigued, locked down to hell (will I lock down!). At the same time, look to Britain's shores and the government motto seems to be"Party all the time".
2020 and 2021 have seen enormous increases in crime. Violent murders in US cities are increasing year by year. Cook County, home to Chicago - over 1,000 murders for the past year by December 2021 - its streets likened to a war zone. Most of those 927 homicides are gun related. It’s a 40% increase on 2019. That doesn't include deaths caused by self defense or drug overdoses.
And over 4,000 have been shot and wounded this year just in Cook County. Their mayor, elected to straighten things out faces road block after road block meaning she can't get the guns off the street. While Trudeau wishes he could get them off - truckers that is.
New York is facing the same troubling violent crimes. 500 gun related homicides in 2021. Philadelphia, 551. Even small cities are seeing a 30% rise in violent murders.
But it doesn't stop at violent crime. Apparently even shoplifting has reached epidemic levels. In New York shoplifters just walk in the shops fill up bin bags and leave unchallenged. [Have you seen the price of a Waitrose bag?] It's a multi-day occurrence in some shops. Cost of living crunch - what crunch? Maybe Bezos should feed the hungry and not a cosmos meltdown.
Cops are being shot at unheard of rates too. Talk to a beat cop and they attribute it to the same factor. So many guns. Guns are everywhere in the US now. Because well the Second Amendment and.... well people are reacting to Covid lock downs. The pandemic has made Americans hit a nihilist edge.
While in Britain - the British people have been sober and responsible and so polite following the austere lock down rules imposed by the government. They could, though, win a gold medal for straight line queuing. Mikaela Shiffrin might want to take a page out of that book.
But that same government isn't just drunk on their new authoritarian bent. Apparently they are just drunk.
It's BYOB. Party Marty. Wine fridges, wine suitcases, cake ambushes. Downing Street seems to be full of alcoholics playing drinking games. Those jogs you always see Boris on. Maybe he's just sweating out the gin. Or wine. Perhaps it depends on the weather. Because balmy spring breezes, hot summer days, Christmas and birthdays, even funerals trigger No. 10 to raise their glass over and over while dancing to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”.
Whether it's the general public having an emotional breakdown after months of seeing no one but themselves or government workers with no decorum and out of control, Covid has pushed us all to the limits of our endurance.
As the pandemic enters its third year and becomes endemic. Really? Its imperative to look at the societal damage in its wake. And hope endemic isn't just a cop out to a world too exhausted and mentally frazzled to care anymore.
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