President Trump went to El Paso, Texas, this week to promote a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. He made the wall the centerpiece of his presidential campaign and for the past two years, has continued his pledge to build the wall to stem the tide of illegal immigrants entering the country.
Monday evening in El Paso, he renewed his pledge to build the wall and claimed that the wall along the border in El Paso had helped make the city safer and caused the crime rate to drop in the city. El Paso officials noted that even though the wall had helped, much of the decline in crime happened before that.
We don’t doubt the need for a wall at the border to curb illegal immigration, which is out of hand. Too many illegal immigrants are crossing the border, and Americans are rewarding them with handouts from the government. Perhaps if we stopped the long-time aide, the illegal border crossings would stop.
But, if walls can curb crime, why not build them in Washington, D.C., New York City, Detroit, Mich., Chicago, Ill., and other places where crime is rampant, and where murders, robberies, and gangs rule on a daily basis.
Violent crime has reportedly been rising in the U.S. since 2014. The data shows New Orleans, La., Detroit, Mich., Cleveland, Ohio, Baltimore, Md., and St. Louis, Mo., had the highest murder rate of American cities in 2017.
The FBI reported this week that violent crime increased by 4 percent nationally between 2014 and 2015, driven in large part by increases in gun violence in some major U.S. cities.
Even the Tri-Cities area is not immune from shootings and burglaries. Earlier this month, two Kingsport men were charged with the murder of two people at a Kingsport apartment complex.
Statistics show in 2017 that 10 murders were committed in the Tri-Cities area.
In 2018, the FBI reports that 144 law enforcement officers were shot and killed in the line of duty. A young Virginia Highway Patrolman was laid to rest Sunday after being shot when he tried to serve a warrant.
Texas, Florida, California and New York had the highest number of officer fatalities with 11 each. North Carolina had seven deaths; South Carolina, Georgia and Indiana each had five. Two territorial officers and 10 federal officers also died in 2018.
Walls can stop illegal entries into the United States, but they can’t stop crime. If so, we need to build walls in every cities.
This congress and our president need to start talking about building a safe America, stopping hate crimes, taking drugs off our streets and out of our communities.
Big crimes start with small crimes, such as shoplifting, theft, drug use, assault, etc.
In one day recently, there were 23 cases of shoplifting in the General Sessions Court of Carter County. Most were fined and placed on probation. Some were repeat offenders, others will try it again.
Yes, shoplifters must be punished. But, we must go deeper and ask the hard questions: Why are these people stealing and what can be done to turn them to honest living? When we answer these questions and begin to deal with the reasons for crimes, only then can we rid our communities of crime and we won’t need walls.