We're Number One!!

Well, if we can't be number one in education, at least we can top another significant list. The Charleston Post and Courier delivers the goods.

South Carolina was fourth in killings, but according to the FBI report, what makes us so hospitable is our number of aggravated assaults.

The good stuff:

What pushed South Carolina higher than other states was the number of aggravated assaults, which includes everything from a non-fatal shooting to a beating. Its total of 597 per 100,000 people last year was an increase of 2.9 percent over the year before, the highest anywhere outside Washington, D.C. (Emphasis by Warpiper)

In other words, we'll give you a good old fashioned butt-whoopin down here. To be fair, the Uniform Crime Report publishes aggravated assaults that are listed under the guidelines of the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) which defines aggravated assaults by a number of factors, including whether an object was used in the assault. In other words, if I whack you with a feather duster, then that's an aggravated assault under NIBRS.

At the time of this writing, there are about 150 comments on the P&C online article. Without looking at them, I can be sure that there is a healthy debate between the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" folks, and the "we don't give people enough opportunities and counseling/treatment" folks.

Most cops will tell you that there is another factor, although this one is obviously not the sole cause. Pressure is continually on police administrators to reduce crime. Those chiefs and sheriffs pass this pressure on to their troops, and it ultimately turns into a numbers game. Make arrests! Couple this with ever increasing accountability, where even the most frivolous complaint of rudeness or misconduct can cause weeks, months, or years of hardship for an officer, and eventually that officer comes to the age old realization that the way you get in trouble is to actually do your job. This leads to the secondary realization that nobody ever got in trouble in law enforcement for doing nothing. It is called de-policing, and it as real as whacking your wife with the feather duster.