A homocide rate falling THAT quickly? That cannot a reflection of increased safety. That would be an unnatural change so fast.
Although, I guess in reading, it sounds like if you just suspend rights, maybe it's easier to deal with.
It seems crazy to me. But it IS nice to read about people being able to live in less fear and travel in neighbourhood and just feel safer...whether the numbers are TECHNICALLY as low as that, or not.
There is speculation that there may be some under-reporting happening, but it would have to be an epic conspiracy to cover up a false undercount of that degree.
I suspect that the strict quasi police state measures are part of it.
Per the AP:
Under the special emergency powers granted to that administration (which suspended the need for things like warrants, and gave police something of a "try me and watch what happens" level of power), they did rid the streets of a lot of gang members (and send several others into hiding)
In a matter of months, 83,000 gang members were thrown into prisons down there (or executed). In a country of 6.9 million people, you can see how that would have a swift impact on the numbers.
To kind of overlay that on US-equivalent numbers.
Los Angeles county is home to about 9 million people, and according to the DOJ, an estimated 110,000 gang members (or gang associates)
So ratio-wise, very similar.
Imagine that a new governor of Cali comes in, magically got sweeping powers, and says "I'm tired of all this warrant/having to wait catch them in the act/court stuff...we know who the gang members are, we know where they live, we're squashing this now", and in a matter of 2 months, 90,000 of those gang members got raided, scooped up and sent to jail (or died in shootouts with national guard)
LA's murder rate would probably plummet as well, just not in an ethical way because the El Salvador approach has been to basically negate warrants and suspend all due process.
It was VERY easy to not chew gum or cuss. I'm not sure why that would be so hard...and these days, I cuss like a SAILOR.
I just used those as an example...
There's a litany of other draconian laws Singapore has that gives me 0 interest in spending any of my money over there.
Executing people for marijuana infractions, fining people hefty amounts if they happen to forget to flush a public toilet (they go as far as installing urine sensors to help enforce that), getting arrested for PDA under their "Miscellaneous Decency Offenses" law, etc. (pretty sure they were still arresting people for "homosexual acts" as recently as 2-3 years ago)
Obviously, I could behave myself while in another country, but the point is that I don't want to give them any of my money if those are the kinds of things they're doing.
www.msnbc.com
