You hear it all the time. Every time someone pitches an idea for how to crack down on crime, like the ACT Party with the juvenile detention centre idea yesterday, up pops a critic with a piece of data to tell you that there's nothing to worry about.
You're imagining it, crime's not as bad as you think, ram raids are falling, youth crime and retail crime is down, the cops are winning.
BS. I call BS on any of this stuff.
Critics can cherry pick their data all they want, they can selectively use time frames that tell the story they want to, and they can exclude crime categories to twist the narrative. They can do any number of things that paint a certain picture.
But what they can’t get around is what we’re seeing with our own eyes and hearing with our own ears.
Last week, I went to a furniture shop in Newmarket’s new Westfield mall. Really nice place, nice part of town, the kind of place where you don’t expect rampant crime.
The guy selling me a couch told me they have people walking out of the store with the Dyson vacuum cleaners in their hands, into the mall and they can’t do anything to stop them.
He said the same people will steal things in the morning, then come back in the afternoon and do it again- because there are no consequences.
In the last year, the dairy down the road from me, the clothing store on the same street and the Glengarry nearby were all ram-raided. I can't recall ever seeing a ram-raid before that, and I've lived in this neighbourhood for 8 years on and off.
Michael Hill jeweller has been hit so many times now by guys with hammers, that they've hired security guards for all 34 North Island stores because everything else they’ve done hasn’t worked.
Now I understand that media can whip up a moral panic and I'm wary of being sucked into a false reality. Which is why I've quoted you, not media coverage of crime, but things I've seen and heard and actual concrete steps retailers are being forced to take.
It is getting tiring being told this isn’t happening when it clearly is.
The people telling us it isn’t happening need to get with the page. Because we want something to be done, so this can stop.
And if they don’t like the ideas being pitched, like the juvie detention centres, come up with a different idea.
But stop pretending it isn’t happening.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
5 comments:
I often wonder if kids just have a lack of hope for the future. They are all being taught in school that climate change could mean that the earth is going to end in 20years, that it is adults who are blame. Adults have wrecked the planet, they are told. How would they know any different? They haven't traveled overseas to see for themselves. Adults have locked them down for a flu bug and screens have filled them with anxiety. I am not saying that this is an excuse at all for ram raids and crime. But just look at what we are doing as a society. We need to teach resilience, self responsibilty, and mental strength and cut out all the woke bs.
As Disraeli reputedly said, "Lies, and damned lies, and statistics."
This Govt is soft on crime, period. And a welfare state that incentivise single-parent families is a significant underlying cause of most of our societal ills.
What do we expect when the current P M does not know what a REAL Woman is... Fasten your Safety belts..He does but he is a Wimp...
We now have one of the worst education systems in the developed world. Face it. The nature of a society is dependent on the quality of it's education.
What sort of product can you expect from schools which are failing abysmally in the teaching the basics by methods that are effective ? A student who has failed to achieve in these is left a cripple dependent on welfare or plundering and pillaging from shops. Our schools are outstanding in not encouraging a work ethic and as my lawn mower man said about his sons' school " They are not made to do anything there nor do they learn anything". A very astute bloke with a good grasp of the rotten state our schools are in. Back in the 1940s wise educationalists predicted the changes back then made by the Labour Government namely Fraser and Beeby would destroy NZ's excellent education system and society.It was done ever so slowly but it has come to pass.In a nutshell the aim all along was to downplay the basics
and use schools for training grounds in socialism instead. All along there have been some perceptive people who knew this destruction would be inevitable but they have been heavily censored and silenced.
But the good thing is everyone will be able to speak Te Reo Maori - great international language.
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