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In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

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Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#131

Post by em500 »

watwut wrote: post #107
strenholme wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility, discussed at depth in Freakonomics , is that reducing unwanted children reduced crime rates. There is some controversy about this, but it may be one of the factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...

Yeah, but given choice, I will go for scientific explanation and for what sociologists say then for pop book that was not even peer reviewed.

Here are the peer reviewed papers from one the authors of the pop book:

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/116/2/379/1904...

https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalize...

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#132

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
Melting_Harps wrote: post #6

Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too. This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in fr…

> many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin. Alta California was first colonized in 1769, not long before a bunch of British colonies on the other side of the continent that had been settled for quite a while broke off to form the USA; Baja was colonized from 1683. Neither predates British colonization o…

[deleted]

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#133

Post by africanboy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
Melting_Harps wrote: post #6

Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too. This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in fr…

> many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin. Alta California was first colonized in 1769, not long before a bunch of British colonies on the other side of the continent that had been settled for quite a while broke off to form the USA; Baja was colonized from 1683. Neither predates British colonization o…

AFAIK Spanish arrived in California around 16th Century, Cortés, Ulloa and Cabrillo led expeditions and created small settlements between 1530 and 1550.

Sir Francis Drake declared English sovereignty over the area of SF bay in 1579 and named it New Albion (New Britain, from Albion, the old Greek name for Britain).

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#134

Post by npunt »

dionidium wrote: post #93
npunt wrote: post #65

Whenever the high crime rates in the 70s-90s is brought up I like to remind folks this was likely an aberration with a specific environmental cause (lead), rather than representative of human nature. This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective…

Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs. As I often do, I’ll use St. Louis as an example here, because it’s the city I happen to be most familiar with, but this is happening all over. I completely bought the story you’re telling and never thought we’d ever see homicide rates matching the gang-war carnage of early 90s St. Louis, but we’re blowin…

My point was that if you baselined how good or bad you thought humans were by the crime rates in the 80s, you'd come away thinking humans were way more violent than they are. I think the same holds for 2020 - if you assess human nature by how people act when they're in the midst of a global pandemic, you'd come to the same incorrect conclusion.

Another way to put it is that much of our behavior is dictated by our environment, and if we create an environment where extreme chemical, biological, psychological, and economic stressors are kept at bay, then humans are just not prone to a great deal of violence.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#135

Post by npunt »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #114
npunt wrote: post #65

Whenever the high crime rates in the 70s-90s is brought up I like to remind folks this was likely an aberration with a specific environmental cause (lead), rather than representative of human nature. This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective…

Now consider the lead politics hypothesis. If lead exposure lead to brain damage that resulted in the murder rate tripling, what is that doing to civic politics? Because while that generation has mostly aged out of the higher crime demographic. It's smack in the middle of the voter demographic.

Yep, this is a worrisome thought.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#136

Post by dragonwriter »

africanboy wrote: post #133
dragonwriter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin. Alta California was first colonized in 1769, not long before a bunch of British colonies on the other side of the continent that had been settled for quite a while broke off to form the USA; Baja was colonized from 1683. Neither predates British colonization o…

AFAIK Spanish arrived in California around 16th Century, Cortés, Ulloa and Cabrillo led expeditions and created small settlements between 1530 and 1550. Sir Francis Drake declared English sovereignty over the area of SF bay in 1579 and named it New Albion (New Britain, from Albion, the old Greek name for Britain).

> AFAIK Spanish arrived in California around 16th Century,

Arrived in? Sure, mostly sailing around the coast and transitory land expeditions. So did the British in North America, on both coasts.

But as for establishing any kind of durable colonies (e.g., “California” as more than a name on a map), that came later, and well after British colonies like Virginia were established, especially in the case of Alta California.

The idea that California was some kind of established European colony earlier than British colonization of North America is what I was taking issue with.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#137

Post by adwww »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #6

Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too. This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in fr…

I grew up in a leafy village in rural UK. But at one point in the early 90s my dad got an offer to move to SoCal and we went out, I remember visiting schools and stuff, but we never actually went ahead with the move.

Apparently while we were there my dad witnessed the car in front of him being robbed at gunpoint, but decided perhaps that was a one off, don't tell the family, perhaps it's fine... then the exact same thing happened the next night at nearly the same spot.

So that was the end of my potential US childhood.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#138

Post by varjag »

pault wrote: post #85
momokoko wrote: post #47

It’s interesting as an older person to realize that Americans born in the 90s and later have no real concept of the amount of crime and violence that was widespread in US.

Also interesting that as a kid born in 1980 at the start of the drug violence epidemic, we were allowed to roam as we pleased as long as we were home for dinner. Contrast that to today's vastly safer world, and kids are not allowed to walk the neighborhood unsupervised.

Is there a chance for causal relationship?

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#139

Post by 01100011 »

asveikau wrote: post #63
Melting_Harps wrote: post #6

Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too. This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in fr…

> Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban I always heard it was events in California (and Diane Feinstein being a key player) that created the ban, but I never heard a specific event in SoCal being the catalyst. Wikipedia cites a school shooting in Stockton in 1989 and an office shooting in San Francisco in 1993. Outside of the state, Wikipedia also cites…

IIRC, the reason the LA heist in the early 90s was so important was that it showed how poorly the police were armed compared to the robbers. That led to a lot of policy changes, I believe.

Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)

#140

Post by cowsandmilk »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #89
asveikau wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked at data in a while, but I am pretty sure those places are safer than they were in the 80s.

Thats entirely possible and it probably wouldn't be seen to rebut the right-wing narrative that "cities are dangerous" to tell them "you should see how dangerous cities used to be."

You don’t have to compare urban to urban. In the early 90s, rate of violent crime in rural and suburban areas were far higher than what you now see in Chicago and Milwaukee. Not a surprise when you look at figure 1 of https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf
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