Lowest crime rate – highest lock-up rate. It’s plain to see what the trouble is. If you hire 5 people to look for problems you will have 5 people finding a bunch of problems. If you hire 10 people to find problems, amazingly enough, twice as many problems will be found. The day your employees stop finding problems is the day they are no longer needed. The police in WV MUST find crime to fight or they would lose their jobs. It follows that if there were fewer police, in statistical terms, the crime rate would go down. More police means more arrests=higher crime rate. Less police means less arrests=lower crime rate. This is VERY SIMPLE MATH, and it’s all relative anyhow.
Obviously, the rural counties of WV simply have too many police.
How did that happen?
The history of the WV State police is pretty interesting. They were formed right after WW1. WV was one of the first 4 states to form a State Police organization. It was felt that West Virginians were particularly violent and socially unacceptable folk. There were labor wars going on, coal miners wars, feuds, and all the rest. The WV State Police were spawned by fear of the population and formed with the creative use of lies and propaganda. Altho most citizens opposed the formation of a State authority, the governor at the time was determined to get what he wanted, no matter what. They formed the State Police to take the place of the National Guard and the militias, with their duties generally being MILITARY in nature. (They even started out wearing WW1 uniforms) The fear of communism was a starting point…
In due time there was quite a large number of State Police and with the labor wars under control, they needed to find something else for them to do. The roads were getting better, so they were mostly used as highway patrol for a long time. Years went by, and they found that no matter how many State Police were patrolling the highways, the accident and highway death rates did not improve, so they simply hired more. Which did not help still. So they started giving them more power and more jobs to do. It seems that many times local police “would not” enforce unpopular laws and of course us violent and ignorant West Virginians MUST be controlled…
Well, there are no longer any wars going on among the citizens. The highway accident rate only improved when they lowered the speed limit. The State Police have been given too much power for their necessity. They are a monster that was created to control the violent masses and their time for usefullness in such matters is over. It’s far past time to begin reducing numbers to a more reasonable level.
Of course too many police is only one aspect of the problem. WV actually has fewer police per capita than alot of states, due to it being such a rural area. Epidemic inhumanity, corruption, and lack of compassion by prosecuting attorneys and judges who insist on doing everything “by the book” and not making allowances for the individuality of each case, refusal to take responsibility for mistakes, coupled with the fact that the citizens of this state tend to be particularly poor which makes it very difficult for many “offenders” to make bail, and WV having one of the WORST systems for handling MENTAL ILLNESS and DRUG ADDICTION, makes WV truely a “jailbird state”. These issues MUST be delt with or the entire state will not only go bankrupt from trying to keep so many people locked up, but anyone thinking about moving here or coming here for a vacation would probably think twice due to our reputation of locking everyone up.
What can be done? Not much, as I am convinced that IDIOTS and criminals are running the show. That is the only logical explaination…
Calhoun Underground 