Criminals And Rude People
Deserved or not, populations of different countries have reputations that are generally accepted as being true. Scots are dour, the French are snooty, Americans are simple and the Germans are orderly. Canadians have historically been renowned for an admirable trait; they’re known as being tolerant and nice.
With immigration and travel, populations lose some of their traditional characteristics and stereotypes are harder to maintain.
As existing native populations are proportionally reduced and as old traditions and values get watered down, a certain homogeneity appears across all nations.
One such universal aspect of a watered down culture is crime. No one can claim that any society is without its share of criminal activity of course, but no one can deny the growing level of crime in all western nations. Were this not the case, budgets for policing would be falling, whereas just the opposite is true. According to statistica.com, in American cities, 65 of the 300 largest cities in America spend 40 percent of their general budgets on policing. I won’t go into discussion of how to parse the statistics, that’s fodder for party conversations.
What is interesting is the uniquely Canadian solution to some criminal activity recently proposed by the Toronto police department. In response to the relentless crime wave of stolen cars, many of which were stolen by taking the keys right from people’s homes, the brave constabulary have proposed placing car keys right at the front door of the house to make it easier for the thieves. He may have also advised placing some cookies at the door, but we don’t know. Clearly, this preserves the reputation of niceness on the part of Canadians.
To be fair, the police may have borrowed the idea from the strategy used in New York city in the eighties when cars were left unlocked with a sign on the window stating “no radio”. The idea is the same: crime is going to happen anyway; why make it difficult? While some may think there’s an elegant logic to this way of thinking, it leads us down a road to an undeniable conclusion: Why have any police at all? As a matter of fact, if you keep pulling on that thread of logic, why have any justice apparatus including judges and especially lawyers? If you’re in the locksmith business, you may want to learn to code.
As we have seen in major urban cities, theft, often brazen daylight theft by gangs of ‘youts’ are commonplace, especially in the US. Employees are instructed not to impede the thieves and thus they ransack retail stores with fearless abandon. Any day can be black Friday at the Nike store or the nearest Best Buy or CVS. Actually, it’s better than Black Friday, because you don’t even have to be inconvenienced by paying.
Responses to this have varied from enclosing display cases with plastic or mesh to just closing down retail stores altogether. Flagship stores of big retail chains have completely closed down in cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
As in Canada, the logic behind the acceptance of a bit of petty crime here and there is so that the citizens can be ‘safe’. The mayor of Britain’s London, Sadiq Khan, has stated that violent crime is just something to accept when living in a big city; but without explaining Tokyo or Shanghai. We hear this word invoked a lot these days as a pretext of not doing anything or to follow policies so inane as to be idiotic. As we’ve seen from the very recent Covid debacle, being safe meant policies that were enacted even if they harmed or even killed you.
The idea of a safe society has been severely perverted from its original intent. It’s not supposed to be safe for those who make others unsafe. This is almost the entire point of paying for a police force and a justice apparatus. However, if nations such as Canada determine that they don’t want their citizens to inconvenience criminal behaviour, they should at least change the semantics. Let’s just call them faux pas. If by chance, these perps are caught in the act, the ‘police’ can take them aside, wag a finger and tsk tsk them. Perhaps some will require a scolding. In the most extreme cases, a strongly worded letter would be sent to their address.
This can free up a lot of manpower and resources for other more serious breaches of society’s rules; such as posting rude comments on-line.
Do the police not think making this type of announcement will cause an increase in car thefts? Maybe the police should tell everyone to leave their wallets next to the car keys. Better yet, let the thieves take the police cars. If the police aren’t protecting the public they don’t need cars!
Maybe just leave the cars running with a $50 gift card on the dash.