Crime, violent and not

[nwhiker]

Anne-Chloe had her car window bashed in. She'll have to replace it, $500 she really doesn't have to spare (yeah, we'll help).

I've been walking at the same location since the mid-90s, on and off the first few years, but pretty regularly for years. Some years almost every day, some years just a few times a week, some years just a few times a month, but many many many times. My car has been broken into twice. Both times in the past 3 or so years. Someone tried to steal our catalytic converter from our Prius while it was parked in our driveway.

Many people have stories like this. The porch pirates, the decoration in front of their house, the tool box they didn't bring in because they'd been leaving it in the bed of the truck for the past 25 years.

Petty crime has gotten a lot worse. Things that leave you feeling helpless and enraged. Violent crime is down, the serious stuff.

Still the Republicans ran on crime, and I'm pretty sure it was successful in at least helping them in many places. Because, again, most of us when confronted with crime (and this is not a bad thing) are confronted not with a dead body on the sidewalk, but with a broken car window and nothing stolen. This creates a perception that crime is worse than it is.

I'll add, in these random thoughts about crime, that despite running on it, the Rs managed to focus on "crime in cities" and completely elided the fact that gun violence, something they support via their reflexive devotion to the 2nd Amendment, is also crime.