Neither party – Democrats nor Republicans – is doing a better job at fixing crime. Carl Ballou – iStock/Getty Images PlusJustin de Benedictis-Kessner, Harvard Kennedy School and Christopher S. Warshaw, George Washington University Following George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis in 2020, the U.S. has undergone a national reckoning over crime prevention and police reform. Across the country, calls went out from activists to rethink the scope and role of the police. Some on the left vowed to “defund” the police. Others on the right promised to instead “back the blue” and maintain or increase police funding. This rhetorical tug-of-war unfolded while many cities across the country grappled with spiking crime rates during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Blaming crime on Democratic city leaders was a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He repeatedly made claims about crime spikes in recent years without evidence or context. More recently, Republican congressional leaders have called several Democratic mayors from across the country to testify before Congress about their sanctuary city policies that are aimed at protecting noncitizens from deportation. These congressional politicians have asserted that these Democratic mayors – Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Mike Johnston of Denver, Michelle Wu of Boston, and Eric Adams of New York – have “created a public safety nightmare” in their cities by allowing immigrants without legal authorization to stay there. Journalists and politicians on both sides of the aisle have claimed that local election results over the past four years in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles reflect a widespread frustration with Democratic policies on crime in cities. Under this argument, Democratic city leaders need to change their approach on crime to satisfy voters. It’s become a political axiom of sorts that policies championed largely by Democratic city leaders over the past half decade have resulted in rising crime levels. As researchers of politics and public policy, we wanted to figure out if that was true.A New York Times headline from June 8, 2022, linking crime rates and the Democratic Party.The New York Times
Neither party does a better job
As any student of introductory statistics learns, correlation doesn’t imply causation. Looking at increases or decreases in crime rates in Republican or Democratic cities and claiming either party is to blame would be making exactly this error: confusing correlation with causation. We put to the test the argument that one side or the other is better at fighting crime in our research published in January 2025. By employing three decades of data on mayoral elections from across the country, we were able to disentangle city leaders’ partisanship from other features of cities. Contrary to much of the political rhetoric and media coverage aimed at most Americans, our results show that neither party is doing a better job at actually causing crime to decrease. In Dallas, Mayor Eric Johnson has claimed that Democratic leaders aren’t taking public safety seriously and that the Democratic Party is “with the criminals.” Johnson switched from being a Democrat to a Republican in 2023 and attributes his decision at least partially to this partisan difference on crime and policing and the seriousness with which he takes this policy issue. But our research shows that Johnson’s and others’ claims about Democratic cities becoming more dangerous just aren’t true: Mayors from the Democratic Party aren’t making cities any more – or less – dangerous than mayors from the Republican Party. Nor, it turns out, is there any support for claims by some progressive Democrats that they would reduce the role – and enormous budgets – of police departments in cities across the country. When we examined the number of sworn police officers in cities and how much money those cities spend on the police, Democratic and Republican mayors alike have had surprisingly little influence on police department budgets or sizes. In other words, Democrats aren’t cutting police budgets, nor are Republicans increasing police budgets. Most cities have increased police budgets in the past few years, possibly due to pressure from police unions.Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson speaks during the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 16, 2024.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
‘Crime is nonpartisan’
It turns out that campaign promises from both sides of the partisan aisle about crime and policing have little bearing on what’s happening on the ground in most cities and police departments across the country. Neither party is doing a better job at reducing crime. Nor is either party actually addressing the ballooning financial cost of local police forces in the U.S., nor the long-term reputational costs from police misconduct for trust in the police and government more broadly. As others have said: crime is nonpartisan. Crime has decreased across the U.S. during the past three decades overall, and the isolated cities where crime has increased recently can reverse these temporary trends. Partisan blame narratives do little to actually lower crime and make neighborhoods safer, though. There are real evidence-backed policies that reduce crime – such as youth jobs programs in Chicago and Boston. Other policies reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system – such as alternative 911 response programs that use unarmed behavioral health workers to respond to some types of emergencies. These policies and interventions might not be as slogan-worthy as “defund the police” or “back the blue.” Nor is implementing these policies as politically convenient as blaming sanctuary city mayors. But research shows that they work and can move cities toward the shared goal of improved public safety for their residents.Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and Christopher S. Warshaw, Professor of Political Science, George Washington University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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What a bear attack in a remote valley in Nepal tells us about the problem of aging rural communities
A 71-year-old in Nepal’s Nubri valley survives repeated bear attacks as youth outmigration and rapid population aging leave fewer people to protect crops and homes—pushing bears closer to villages and raising urgent questions about safety, conservation rules, and rural resilience.
Dorje Dundul recently had his foot gnawed by a brown bear – a member of the species Ursus thibetanus, to be precise.
It wasn’t his first such encounter. Recounting the first of three such violent experiences over the past five years, Dorje told our research team: “My wife came home one evening and reported that a bear had eaten a lot of corn from the maize field behind our house. So, we decided to shoo it away. While my wife was setting up camp, I went to see how much the bear had eaten. The bear was just sitting there; it attacked me.”
Dorje dropped to the ground, but the bear ripped open his shirt and tore at his shoulder. “I started shouting and the bear ran away. My wife came, thinking I was messing with her, but when she saw the wounds, she knew what had happened.”
Researchers Dolma Choekyi Lama, Tsering Tinley and I spoke with Dorje – a 71-year-old resident of Nubri, a Buddhist enclave in the Nepalese highlands – as part of a three-year study of aging and migration.
Now, you may be forgiven for asking what a bear attack on a septuagenarian has to do with demographic change in Nepal. The answer, however, is everything.
In recent years, people across Nepal have witnessed an increase in bear attacks, a phenomenon recorded in news reports and academic studies.
Inhabitants of Nubri are at the forefront of this trend – and one of the main reasons is outmigration. People, especially young people, are leaving for education and employment opportunities elsewhere. It is depleting household labor forces, so much so that over 75% of those who were born in the valley and are now ages 5 to 19 have left and now live outside of Nubri.
It means that many older people, like Dorje and his wife, Tsewang, are left alone in their homes. Two of their daughters live abroad and one is in the capital, Kathmandu. Their only son runs a trekking lodge in another village.
Scarcity of ‘scarebears’
Until recently, when the corn was ripening, parents dispatched young people to the fields to light bonfires and bang pots all night to ward off bears. The lack of young people acting as deterrents, alongside the abandonment of outlying fields, is tempting bears to forage closer to human residences.
Outmigration in Nubri and similar villages is due in large part to a lack of educational and employment opportunities. The problems caused by the removal of younger people have been exacerbated by two other factors driving a rapidly aging population: People are living longer due to improvements in health care and sanitation; and fertility has declined since the early 2000s, from more than six to less than three births per woman.
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These demographic forces have been accelerating population aging for some time, as illustrated by the population pyramid constructed from our 2012 household surveys in Nubri and neighboring Tsum.
A not-so-big surprise, anymore
Nepal is not alone in this phenomenon; similar dynamics are at play elsewhere in Asia. The New York Times reported in November 2025 that bear attacks are on the rise in Japan, too, partly driven by demographic trends. Farms there used to serve as a buffer zone, shielding urban residents from ursine intruders. However, rural depopulation is allowing bears to encroach on more densely populated areas, bringing safety concerns in conflict with conservation efforts.
Dorje can attest to those concerns. When we met him in 2023 he showed us deep claw marks running down his shoulder and arm, and he vowed to refrain from chasing away bears at night.
So in October 2025, Dorje and Tsewang harvested a field before marauding bears could get to it and hauled the corn to their courtyard for safekeeping. The courtyard is surrounded by stone walls piled high with firewood – not a fail-safe barrier but at least a deterrent. They covered the corn with a plastic tarp, and for extra measure Dorje decided to sleep on the veranda.
He described what happened next:
“I woke to a noise that sounded like ‘sharak, sharak.’ I thought it must be a bear rummaging under the plastic. Before I could do anything, the bear came up the stairs. When I shouted, it got frightened, roared and yanked at my mattress. Suddenly my foot was being pulled and I felt pain.”
Dorje suffered deep lacerations to his foot. Trained in traditional Tibetan medicine, he staunched the bleeding using, ironically, a tonic that contained bear liver.
Yet his life was still in danger due to the risk of infection. It took three days and an enormous expense by village standards – equivalent to roughly US$2,000 – before they could charter a helicopter to Kathmandu for further medical attention.
And Dorje is not the only victim. An elderly woman from another village bumped into a bear during a nocturnal excursion to her outhouse. It left her with a horrific slash from forehead to chin – and her son scrambling to find funds for her evacuation and treatment.A woman weeding freshly planted corn across the valley from Trok, Nubri. Geoff Childs, CC BY-SA
So how should Nepal’s highlanders respond to the increase in bear attacks?
Dorje explained that in the past they set lethal traps when bear encroachments became too dangerous. That option vanished with the creation of Manaslu Conservation Area Project, or MCAP, in the 1990s, a federal initiative to manage natural resources that strictly prohibits the killing of wild animals.
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Learning to grin and bear it?
Dorje reasons that if MCAP temporarily relaxed the regulation, villagers could band together to cull the more hostile bears. He informed us that MCAP officials will hear nothing of that option, yet their solutions, such as solar-powered electric fencing, haven’t worked.
Dorje is reflective about the options he faces as young people leave the village, leaving older folk to battle the bears alone.
“At first, I felt that we should kill the bear. But the other side of my heart says, perhaps I did bad deeds in my past life, which is why the bear bit me. The bear came to eat corn, not to attack me. Killing it would just be another sinful act, creating a new cycle of cause and effect. So, why get angry about it?”
It remains to be seen how Nubri’s residents will respond to the mounting threats bears pose to their lives and livelihoods. But one thing is clear: For those who remain behind, the outmigration of younger residents is making the perils more imminent and the solutions more challenging.
Dolma Choekyi Lama and Tsering Tinley made significant contributions to this article. Both are research team members on the author’s project on population in an age of migration.
The Building That Proved Los Angeles Could Go Vertical
Los Angeles once banned skyscrapers, yet City Hall broke the height limit and proved high-rise buildings could be engineered safely in an earthquake zone.
How City Hall Quietly Undermined LA’s Own Height Limits
The Knowledge Series | STM Daily News
For more than half a century, Los Angeles enforced one of the strictest building height limits in the United States. Beginning in 1905, most buildings were capped at 150 feet, shaping a city that grew outward rather than upward.
The goal was clear: avoid the congestion, shadows, and fire dangers associated with dense Eastern cities. Los Angeles sold itself as open, sunlit, and horizontal — a place where growth spread across land, not into the sky.
And yet, in 1928, Los Angeles City Hall rose to 454 feet, towering over the city like a contradiction in concrete.
It wasn’t built to spark a commercial skyscraper boom. But it ended up proving that Los Angeles could safely build one.
A Rule Designed to Prevent a Manhattan-Style City
The original height restriction was rooted in early 20th-century fears:
Limited firefighting capabilities
Concerns over blocked sunlight and airflow
Anxiety about congestion and overcrowding
A strong desire not to resemble New York or Chicago
Los Angeles wanted prosperity — just not vertical density.
The height cap reinforced a development model where:
Office districts stayed low-rise
Growth moved outward
Automobiles became essential
Downtown never consolidated into a dense core
This philosophy held firm even as other American cities raced upward.
How Los Angeles City Hall Proved Skyscrapers Could Be Built Safely
Why City Hall Was Never Meant to Change the Rules
City Hall was intentionally exempt from the height limit because the law applied primarily to private commercial buildings, not civic monuments.
But city leaders were explicit about one thing: City Hall was not a precedent.
It was designed to:
Serve as a symbolic seat of government
Stand alone as a civic landmark
Represent stability, authority, and modern governance
Avoid competing with private office buildings
In effect, Los Angeles wanted a skyline icon — without a skyline.
Innovation Hidden in Plain Sight
What made City Hall truly significant wasn’t just its height — it was how it was built.
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At a time when seismic science was still developing, City Hall incorporated advanced structural ideas for its era:
A steel-frame skeleton designed for flexibility
Reinforced concrete shear walls for lateral strength
A tapered tower to reduce wind and seismic stress
Thick structural cores that distributed force instead of resisting it rigidly
These choices weren’t about aesthetics — they were about survival.
The Earthquake That Changed the Conversation
In 1933, the Long Beach earthquake struck Southern California, causing widespread damage and reshaping building codes statewide.
Los Angeles City Hall survived with minimal structural damage.
This moment quietly reshaped the debate:
A tall building had endured a major earthquake
Structural engineering had proven effective
Height alone was no longer the enemy — poor design was
City Hall didn’t just survive — it validated a new approach to vertical construction in seismic regions.
Proof Without Permission
Despite this success, Los Angeles did not rush to repeal its height limits.
Cultural resistance to density remained strong, and developers continued to build outward rather than upward. But the technical argument had already been settled.
City Hall stood as living proof that:
High-rise buildings could be engineered safely in Los Angeles
Earthquakes were a challenge, not a barrier
Fire, structural, and seismic risks could be managed
The height restriction was no longer about safety — it was about philosophy.
The Ironic Legacy
When Los Angeles finally lifted its height limit in 1957, the city did not suddenly erupt into skyscrapers. The habit of building outward was already deeply entrenched.
The result:
A skyline that arrived decades late
Uneven density across the region
Multiple business centers instead of one core
Housing and transit challenges baked into the city’s growth pattern
City Hall never triggered a skyscraper boom — but it quietly made one possible.
Why This Still Matters
Today, Los Angeles continues to wrestle with:
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Housing shortages
Transit-oriented development debates
Height and zoning battles near rail corridors
Resistance to density in a growing city
These debates didn’t begin recently.
They trace back to a single contradiction: a city that banned tall buildings — while proving they could be built safely all along.
Los Angeles City Hall wasn’t just a monument. It was a test case — and it passed.
When TV Talks About Gentrification and Shopping Local — and Where It Gets It Right (and Wrong)
A closer look at how the TV show The Neighborhood tackles gentrification and shopping local—and where the reality of online sales and small business survival is more complex.
In our continuing look at how entertainment—television, movies, and streaming shows—grapples with real-world issues, this time we turn our attention to gentrification and the often-repeated call to “shop local.” Once again, we examine how popular culture frames these conversations, this time through the CBS sitcom The Neighborhood and the episode “Welcome Back to What Used to Be the Neighborhood.”
A Familiar Story: When the Neighborhood Changes
In the episode, Calvin’s favorite longtime restaurant closes its doors and is replaced by a flashy new pet spa. To Calvin, the change symbolizes something much bigger than a single business closing—it represents the slow erosion of the neighborhood he knows and loves. In response, he launches a campaign urging friends and neighbors to buy local in order to protect small businesses from disappearing.
Emotionally, the episode hits home. Many communities across the country have watched beloved neighborhood institutions vanish, replaced by businesses that feel disconnected from the area’s history and culture. In that sense, The Neighborhood gets something very right: gentrification often shows up one storefront at a time.
Where Television Simplifies a Complicated Reality
But, as is often the case with television, the episode also simplifies a much more complex economic reality.
The show frames “shopping local” as a direct alternative to shopping online, subtly suggesting that online platforms are inherently harmful to small businesses. In real life, however, the line between “local” and “online” is no longer so clear.
Many local and small businesses now survive precisely because they sell online—through their own websites, through Amazon, or through other platforms that support independent sellers. For some, online sales are not a threat to local commerce; they are a lifeline.
Why Brick-and-Mortar Isn’t Always Sustainable
Rising costs are a major factor driving these changes. Commercial leases, insurance premiums, utilities, staffing costs, and local fees have all increased dramatically in many cities. For small business owners, keeping a physical storefront open can become financially impossible—even when customer support remains strong.
As a result, some businesses choose to close their brick-and-mortar locations while continuing to operate online. Others scale back to pop-ups, shared spaces, or hybrid models. These businesses may no longer have a traditional storefront, but they are still local—employing local workers, paying local taxes, and serving their communities in new ways.
The Real Issue Behind “Shop Local”
Where The Neighborhood succeeds is in capturing the emotional truth of gentrification: the sense of loss, displacement, and cultural change that comes with rising rents and shifting demographics.
Where it misses the mark is in suggesting that consumer choices alone—simply avoiding online shopping—can solve the problem.
The real challenges facing local and small businesses go far beyond individual buying habits. They include zoning policies, commercial rent practices, corporate consolidation, and economic systems that increasingly favor scale over community presence.
A Conversation Worth Having—Even If TV Can’t Finish It
The Neighborhood deserves credit for bringing these issues into mainstream conversation. It sparks discussion, even if it wraps a complicated topic in a sitcom-friendly moral lesson.
The reality is messier. Supporting local businesses today often means rethinking what “local” looks like in a digital economy—and recognizing that survival sometimes requires adaptation, not nostalgia.
At STM Daily News, our Local and Small Business coverage continues to explore these real-world dynamics beyond the TV screen, highlighting the challenges, innovations, and resilience of the businesses that keep communities alive—whether their doors are on Main Street or their storefronts live online.
📍 Read more Local and Small Business coverage at:STM Daily News
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Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and Christopher S. Warshaw, Professor of Political Science, George Washington University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
