Swamy Pete, the gypsy scryer, looks into his crystal ball.
With eerie music in the background and an echoey voice, Swamie Pete makes a bold prediction:
In the future, in fact tomorrow at exactly 19:00 hours eastern time, crime will not happen. The crystal ball says that for maybe three hours, somehow people will manage to have fewer problems. The root causes will remain constant, and yet fewer people will dial 911. Yes, I can see it now… for a few hours Sunday night, triggers on guns will be harder to pull and knives will be so dull they will not cut human skin….
But… at around 10:30pm everything will be back to normal.
I never liked that Swamie Pete and his voodoo nonsense, even if back in October he was right about the homicide increase of 2015. How did he know that? Witchcraft, I say!
But by the way, if we accept that blizzards reduce homicide. And the Super Bowl reduces homicide. Why is it so controversial that aggressive police presence focusing on maintaining order in high-crime communities can reduce homicide? I don’t know. I’ll ask Swamie Pete if I ever see him again.
Update (Feb 10): Surprisingly, call volume was only down a little during the Super Bowl. Not the huge dropoff I expected. Crime data isn’t out yet.