Do you feel safe, yet?
Not crime, but retribution
Washington, D.C. is America's newest occupied city. According to President Trump, the 1,500 National Guardsmen and hundreds of multi-agency federal police officers will address what he has characterized as a city overrun by crime.
It’s a lie.
Crime is at a 30-year low in the city, with the rest of the country seeing the same downward trends. If you take the claims about the high levels of violent crime in D.C. and elsewhere at face value, then throwing more cops at it isn’t going to help. Sending in the National Guard surely isn’t going to help either.
But what's happening in D.C. and LA isn't about safety. It isn't about crime. Occupying Democratic cities with the military and militarized federal police is part of the right's ongoing project of "owning the libs." It is political retribution, and they're enjoying it.
In a recent video, federal officers in D.C. are seen beating and tasing a delivery driver in the middle of the street. Bystanders yell at the agents to provide their badge numbers and identify themselves, a futile effort on their part.
One bystander finally speaks up, saying, "You guys are ruining this country. You know that, right?”
An agent replies, saying the quiet part out loud, “Liberals already ruined it."
Good vibes only.
Police do not stop crime–they respond to it. The more money dumped into policing, the less money is being spent on things that prevent people from committing crimes. But when all you have is a hammer (cops), every outcome for failing to meet a person’s needs looks like a nail.
The Democrats are guilty of swinging the hammer, too.
The Hill reported the Democrats are struggling to respond to Republican lawmakers' hyperbole about crime and that “some Democrats have expressed frustration with their party’s emphasis on decreasing crime rates instead of focusing on the way voters feel walking the streets of their city.”
Statistics are irrelevant when the public's understanding of crime is based on perception and “vibes.” New outlets feeding people streams of stories about crime waves or right-wing social media aggregators sharing videos of unhoused people have a greater impact on a person than the facts.
Feeling safe and actual safety can be two different things. Putting hordes of cops on the streets doesn’t make people safer. It instead makes certain people feel safer at the expense of other people’s safety.
Are you feeling safe yet? It must be nice if so.
Is it a good sign when Human Rights Watch publishes a report about your city and county’s police force for using excessive force at protests? The newly released report confirms what we all know–the police acted with reckless abandon when it came to using force against people at last month’s protests.
From June 6 to June 14, 2025, researchers found 65 instances of local, state, and federal police using excessive force against protesters and journalists. The report says the acts of deliberate brutality by police caused injuries that included “bruising and lacerations to broken bones, concussions, an amputated finger, and severe eye damage.” The documented 65 cases of excessive force are likely an undercount.
The report comes on the heels of the Los Angeles Press Club/Status Coup filing a contempt motion against the LAPD for violating a recent TRO that ordered them to stop arresting, detaining, and assaulting journalists at protests. It also ordered LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell to appear at the hearing and answer for his department’s behavior.
You can read my previous reporting on it here:
Joey Scott
Speaking of previous reporting, I was anonymously sent a reportback from a group that describes themselves as “a crew of anarchist birdwatchers,” who disabled 75+ Flock cameras in the Bay Area. The birdwatchers said the cameras were “doused with paint, others are totally destroyed and scattered around town.”
Here's my story about the Flock cameras that birdwatchers in Riverside have spotted throughout the county:
Joey Scott
Last week was the 60th anniversary of the Watts Uprising. The predominantly Black neighborhood of Watts erupted into a riot following the violent arrest of Black motorist Marquette Frye. His eventual arrest and the violent police response during it set off six days of rioting in the city.
The uprising wasn't over the police stop. It was about the racist police. It was about a failure to address the needs of the Black communities throughout South Central LA.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an executive order that created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders after a series of uprisings in 1967 took place throughout the country. The goal was to understand what caused the "long, hot summer of 1967" to prevent it from happening again in the future.
The commission released its findings and found, "White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II . . . What white Americans have never fully understood--but what the Black can never forget, is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."
The echoes of Watts reverberate 60 years later, and still, nobody is listening.
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