January 2023 Warning Bells article

         We can’t fill academy classes.  Retirements and resignations are outpacing new hires.  The homeless increase daily.  Narcotics are used out in the open.  The Police Commission regularly ties the hands of officers trying to address the rising crime rate.  Liberal politicians come and go and conditions continue to decline in Los Angeles.  Officers are despondent and pull back from proactive policing or leave the Department.

         Officers leaving the profession are dwarfed by citizens leaving Los Angeles and California in general.   According to the LA Times, California lost 367,000 people and Los Angeles lost 180,000.  These are people voting with their feet. 

         Politicians line up with solutions and spend billions, but nothing seems to change, in fact it gets worse.  Are they incompetent?  Maybe, but there may be another explanation.  Or, at least, a part of an explanation.  It is called the Curley effect.

         In 2005, two Harvard professors did a study and published a report which they titled “The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate.”  Professors Edward Glaeser and Andrei Schiefer did a comprehensive study of James Michael Curley’s fifty-five-year political career.  This is their bottom line finding: “James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections.” 

         Using mathematic formulas that will make your head hurt, Gaeser and Schiefer examined the political methodology of encouraging your enemies to leave your jurisdiction and leaving only political allies (voters) in place.  In Currey’s case his jurisdiction was Boston.  Boston had a poor Catholic Irish class living among a richer class of Anglo- Saxon protestants.  By constant fiery rhetoric against the Anglo-Saxon protestants and taxing them unfairly, he drove them from Boston.  Being Irish, he strongly identified with the Irish citizens of Boston and used his influence to improve their neighborhoods and hire them into government programs.  He became unbeatable as the Irish population became a larger and larger percentage of the voters that remained in Boston.  Those paying the most taxes fled leaving the city government poorer but Mayor Curley solidly in power.  The professors noted that this methodology is used around the world to maintain political control even though it economically harms the individual jurisdiction.

         One can analyze the Curley effect by ethnicity, race, or religion, but probably the clearest way is by economic class which can include all of the above.  There are the elites, the middle class, and the economically deprived.

         Elites can afford to live in areas where crime is rare.  They can afford to hire personal armed protection and live in neighborhoods surrounded by security and walls.  They do not have to rely on the government. 

         The middle class, largely small business and employees, need government to maintain peace and security to effectively run their businesses and work at their jobs.  These people expect the government to be responsive and hold politicians responsible if it is not. 

         The economically deprived are concerned with the basic problems of existing.  There are many reasons why people are economically deprived.  However, in the homeless community it seems to be largely a narcotics addiction and mental illness problem.  They survive mostly through various forms of government aid.

So, if you are a politician, you can see that the elites don’t need you, the middle class demands results, and the economically deprived are completely dependent on you for their daily needs.  Where is the voting power, especially with mail in ballots?

         So, if you are a politician, you can see that the elites don’t need you, the middle class demands results, and the economically deprived are completely dependent on you for their daily needs.  Where is the voting power, especially with mail in ballots?  The economically deprived, of course.

         Mr. Curley would invite the middle class to leave the jurisdiction and play to the economically deprived.  Does this explain why there are constant attacks on the police?  Why landlords cannot evict anyone?  Why businesses cannot get the sidewalks free and clean in front of the businesses?  And conversely why there are free incentives for the homeless up to and including free narcotics zones.  No bail laws and lack of prosecution for many crimes also cause businesses to close and move out of state as well as causing middle class citizens to leave because of the crime problem.  The economically deprived cannot afford to move.  As a bonus, aid to the economically deprived is big business.  There are many ways to reward your supporters if a politician is so inclined.  So maybe incompetence is not the reason Los Angeles cannot seem to solve its problems.  To James Michael Curley it would be just good politics.

         Officers are caught in the middle of all this.  It may have to get worse before it gets better.  The actions and decisions of individual officers thousands of miles away are imported to Los Angeles and blame comes with it.  Every use of force is examined and criticized.  Officers are always under the microscope.  Career survival means that you must know the rules and follow the rules, even the stupid ones.  Do not go out on a limb, keep safe, and do your best to protect your partner and members of the public.  This too will pass. 

         Be legally careful out there.