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And is that mainly because these people were master criminals who carefully planned the perfect crime and succeeded in their plans? Or is it because when one gang-banger shoots and kills another in the 'hood, the authorities don't put a lot of priority on solving the crime and in any event there is a culture against cooperating with the authorities?
I quoted myself. The point is that when I was referring to "this kind of murder," I was referring to a specific kind of murder; the kind that attracts intense scrutiny from the authorities.
On an absolute basis? I have no idea.
On a percentage basis as to the kind of murders I am talking about? I would guess that a large percentage of the kind of murders I am talking about are resolved purely on circumstantial evidence. I think it depends on whether or not the killer hires a hitman to do it. When the killer hires a hitman, the authorities use circumstantial evidence to nail the hitman, then, if they can, they get the hitman to testify, e.g. the case against Charlie Adelson. If there's no hitman, then the authorities go by circumstantial evidence.
On a percentage basis as to murders in general? I would guess it's relatively low. A very large percentage of murders are just gang-bangers killing eachother in the 'hood. In those cases, the big question is whether witnesses will testify.
Police are very active in hoods all the time. It’s pretty clear to me that you’ve never lived in one.
I guess you answered your own question then? In either case, that doesn’t change my response.
It's correct that I have never lived in a "hood."
Anyway, when you say that "Police are very active in hoods all the time," are you claiming that the police give the same level of attention to the following situations:
(1) a dead body shows up in the hood. It's of a 22-year-old man who's been shot to death. Once he's identified it turns out that he's unemployed and had numerous arrests and convictions for various crime. People in the neighborhood say he was involved in drug dealing.
(2) a dead body shows up in an upper middle class neighborhood. It's of 42-year-old man who's been poisoned. The poisoning victim is an in-house attorney for one of the big banks in the nearby City. He has no criminal record at all.
I'm a bit confused as to what your point is. Do you agree that the second hypothetical I described above would attract far more attention from law enforcement?
You can ask law enforcement how they want to parse a hypothetical. Here in the real world the police apportion their resources as needed on a case by case basis.
I reject your hypothetical entirely on the basis of it being counter factual. I provide concrete realities.
Let me put the question another way:
I make the following claims:
Generally speaking, murders in the 'hood, particularly if they involve gang-bangers shooting each other, get significantly less law enforcement attention than murders in middle or upper class areas.
A large percentage of unsolved homicides are the sort of murders in the 'hood that I mentioned in my previous sentence, namely gang-bangers shooting each other.
Therefore, the fact that a large percentage of homicides remain unsolved does not contradict my claim that I don't think there's much chance of getting away with a planned in advance poisoning (or something equivalent).
Do you disagree with any of (1), (2), or (3)? If so, which?
1, I reject because of how you want to quantify it. I said law enforcement generally allocates resources based on the necessity and viability of each case. Should a random shooting somewhere get as much attention as JonBenet? Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn’t.
2, I don’t know.
3, I find contentious if not reject it outright.
Umm, I'm not asking about what should happen, I'm asking about what happens in practice. With that in mind, do you agree with (1) or disagree with (1)?
Ok, so it sounds like you don't really have the knowledge to say one way or another if my claim is correct or not.
Here's my claim again:
In response, you talk about general rates of homicide closure and activities in the "hood," however you don't know whether or not this is relevant to my claim.
You are asking me to make a judgment in the case of (1) because it presumes cases aren’t getting as much attention as they should. When murders happen in the hood, they get as much attention as the police are capable to showing with the expectation they can do something with it.
And to this I’ve already replied earlier and my reply right now is the same as it was then.
“Provided you know what you’re doing if your goal was to get away with a more or less undetectable murder, that “kind” of murder is among the best ways to do it.”
Not at all. I'm not making any claim whatsoever about what should or should not get attention. I'm making a claim about what happens in practice, and I am asking whether or not you disagree with my claim.
That may very well be the case, but it doesn't contradict my claim. Even if it's the best method, you are still very likely to get caught, at least in the West.
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