Recent data indicate that through March, there were almost 300 people shot in New York City, 15 percent more than during the same time period last year. This growing gun violence was one of the reasons that last year the black community overwhelmingly voted for the successful mayoralty candidate Eric Adam rather than the other black candidate Maya Wiley who strongly advocated for limiting policing activities.
Rather than being humbled by their rejection, social justice advocates have simply refashioned their desires to weaken police enforcement. In Philadelphia, despite historical homicide and carjacking levels, the administration is still focused on reducing police efforts, now by eliminating their ability to stop cars that have vehicle violations, and the continued promotion of community violence disruptors, acting independent of the police, as the primary vehicle to combat gun violence.
In New York City, social justice advocates continued to push back against the Adams Administration. They vehemently opposed his reinstitution of the Neighborhood Safety Unit, plainclothes units designed to go after firearms, deployed to roughly 25 neighborhoods officials say represent 80% of the gun violence in the city.
This effort is most apparent in an influential study done by Basaime Spate and Javonta Alexander. It presents interviews with 330 youth to understand why they carry guns. These respondents were overwhelmingly black youth living in housing projects, most of whom already had experiences with the criminal justice system. This study has been featured in the New York Times, NPR, and this year in Vital City. The authors claim that youth carry guns because “cops aren’t there late at night … you’ve got to protect yourself.”
Gun violence is not driven by a lack of policing but by violent responses to personal slights or conflicts: not being invited to a party, a partner’s negative comment, etc. In Las Vegas, 40 percent of 2021 homicides were personal disputes and another 20 percent were related to domestic violence whereas only 10 percent were drug or gang related.
The authors claim, “Participants’ choices over when to carry could also be influenced by frank calculations of the finer operations of structural racism.” Respondents explained,
It's like we're already in the trap, with the system and with the law. Everybody's going to jail, there's no jobs, . . . You do violent things or robberies when you got no other way out. That's all it is now. It's all you know.
Black teen employment rates rose rapidly from 2010 through 2019 and increased still further during the pandemic so that the 2021 rate was almost as high as its peak 1999 rate. Indeed, it rose more rapidly than the white rate. Thus, unsubstantiated claims of structural racist employment barriers may just be a rationale for anti-social behaviors.
Rather than calling out destructive behaviors, the authors embrace youth victimhood. Indeed, the authors reject criminalizing their gun possession or police involvement in solving violent crime:
[R]esponding to the problem of young people and guns with more policing will only increase these young people’s fear, trauma and sense of imminent harm, thereby producing more gun-carrying. Given the wholesale distrust of police—the perception that they are intent on harassing young people of color over minor transgressions but have little interest in protecting them from serious violence—strategies to ensure safety and foster healing must emerge from the community.
Decriminalizing youth gun possession is dangerous. In 2018, New York raised from 16 to 18 years old the age at which youth are treated as adults in the criminal justice system. It requires that 16-year-olds who had committed non-violent felonies, and some violent felonies, to have their cases adjudicated in family court. By the beginning of 2020, 35 percent of these 16-year-olds had been re-arrested for a felony and 27 percent for a violent felony. Of the 135 arrests by Neighborhood Safety Units since their deployment March 14, some 20% involve people with pending felony cases and another 28% are suspects with previous felony convictions.
Social justice advocates refuse to discuss a black youth subculture that valorizes anti-social, confrontational behaviors. Orlando Patterson claims, “There has emerged a remarkable degree of uniformity in the culture of masculinity among all classes and regions of black youth in America.” Many black boys focus on being “cool,” adopting a distinct style of speech, posture, and walk that signals strength, control, a lack of emotion verging on indifference, fearlessness and toughness, and success at fighting when necessary. A survey of students in grades 9-12 found that 15.5% of black but only 6.4% of white students engaged in school fights.
Moreover, there is strong evidence from Oakland, Las Vegas, and Newark that community violence disruptors are only consistently effective when these organizations work with police departments. In addition, police deterrence initiatives and place-based efforts have proven effective in many cities. Thus, rather than embracing the rationales of social justice advocates, we should stop vilifying police and follow the best practices that have proven effective in cities nationwide.
Robert Cherry is a recently retired Brooklyn College economist and an American Enterprise Institute affiliate.