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Defund the Police meets the crime wave

bariweiss.substack.com

311–320 of 365 posts

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#311
I just can't understand the defund movement.

Seattle tried 'CHOP' or whatever it was, it seemed like it had murders in a week or two.

San Fransisco is frequently in the news with smash-n-grabs.

Chicago always has double-digit murder counts per weekend.

Can we just agree that more policing would be better, if there was less violence against civilians? Maybe more liberal use of stun-guns or something. Less cops clearly seems to be a wrong path.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#312
post #5

The Democrats run the cities where this is happening. What are they going to do about it? Quoting the article: 'I recently finished reading “San Fransicko,” by Michael Shellenberger. I recommend it. The subtitle is provocative: “Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” But, as Shellenberger explains, he does not mean to imply that progressives always ruin the cities they govern. He’s just interested in the specific phenomenon…

Please don't take HN threads straight into partisan flamewar. This is a site for intellectually curious conversation. Those are opposite things. This is especially important when a thread is fresh, because threads are so sensitive to initial conditions. If someone shows up with a low-information provocation like this one, that's extremely likely to leave a negative imprint. Please don't do that. If you wouldn't mind…

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Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle crime statistics are misleading. It's been reported many times that since the police no longer even show up for shoplifting crimes, business owners no longer bother to report it. Nobody knows what the crime rate actually is as a result. But the accountants at the retail stores know, and they're raising prices, installing armored doors, or simply leaving the city. The local bank branch I patronize now sports a…

spd total spending went up every year 2016 to 2020 i believe. doesnt that suggest the money isnt doing much?

This is 2021, not 2020.

"In 2019, there were about 1,280 deployable officers in the Seattle Police Department. Today, the number of in-service cops stands at 1,015."

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/council-must...

"The 2021 adopted SPD budget is nearly $363 million. During the previous budget cycle, the Mayor and City Council made about $70 million in cuts, but because of funds added elsewhere in the police budget, the net reduction was $46.1 million (about 11 percent) from the 2020 Adopted Budget of $409.1 million."

https://www.aclu-wa.org/story/follow-the-money-policing-seri...

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spd total spending went up every year 2016 to 2020 i believe. doesnt that suggest the money isnt doing much?

This is 2021, not 2020. "In 2019, there were about 1,280 deployable officers in the Seattle Police Department. Today, the number of in-service cops stands at 1,015." https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/council-must... "The 2021 adopted SPD budget is nearly $363 million. During the previous budget cycle, the Mayor and City Council made about $70 million in cuts, but because of funds added elsewhere in the…

when i look at the crime rate over the last 5 years, its doesnt seem to correlate with spending. 2019 being a good example. https://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/crime-da...

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtue signaling about what though? The people I know that are pro-gun here aren't shy about it but they're not whining about their 2nd Amendment rights all the time either.

> Virtue signaling about what though? Is this a deliberate strawman? In a place like SF there's a lot of pressure to conform, and it's not in a pro-gun right-leaning trajectory. So what I mean to say is there's plenty of presentation of conformity, and it's often inauthentic. The stakes are high in a place like SF. People will keep their mouth shut or even fly the opposition's flag in the interests of preserving/incr…

What is your point? My initial point is that SF is probably one of the cities with the less gun freaks

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#316
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should start differentiating between Democrats and progressives. At least here in Portland, the differentiation is already complete. Basically everyone is a Democrat and most residents would like to have our police force back and see people prosecuted for property crimes. The city leadership is beholden to a radical fringe who aren't really even liberals so much as anarcho-communists.

> differentiating between Democrats and progressives...a radical fringe Well, I don't see the moderate democrat leadership denouncing the radical fringe, either.

This is roughly like saying that the Republicans in Congress aren't denouncing the Capitol rioters. My point about progressive cities is that a portion of the leadership is afraid of the extremists. Ted Wheeler, the Mayor of Portland, had to run his last election against an actual Stalinist who had very vocal supporters but ultimately not overwhelming numbers on her side. She catalyzed the average Dems to get out and vote for Wheeler, who no one really likes. So what I mean is there's a large silent majority of Dems, if not the leadership, who are rattled by the progressives' increasingly unhinged, illiberal program. Just as I think there's a bulk of Republicans who don't believe in attacking the Capitol.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like rioters wait patiently to see if someone will be held accountable, before rioting.

Really? it seems like many of the protests occur directly after major acquittals of police?

Many is listed on the Wikipedia definition of a weasel word so it's hard to reply to this.

But, specifically, the two largest recent ones:

* George Floyd protests happened almost one full year before the trial outcome (which wasn't an acquittal btw)

* Kenosha protests happened 6 months before the acquittal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosha_unrest

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#318
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Virtue signaling about what though? Is this a deliberate strawman? In a place like SF there's a lot of pressure to conform, and it's not in a pro-gun right-leaning trajectory. So what I mean to say is there's plenty of presentation of conformity, and it's often inauthentic. The stakes are high in a place like SF. People will keep their mouth shut or even fly the opposition's flag in the interests of preserving/incr…

What is your point? My initial point is that SF is probably one of the cities with the less gun freaks

My point is SF likely has more gun freaks than you've convinced yourself of.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#319
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads straight into partisan flamewar. This is a site for intellectually curious conversation. Those are opposite things. This is especially important when a thread is fresh, because threads are so sensitive to initial conditions. If someone shows up with a low-information provocation like this one, that's extremely likely to leave a negative imprint. Please don't do that. If you wouldn't mind…

[flagged]

> I've noticed that you come out on the wrong side of just about every major issue

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#320
post #27

I read most of the article, in which the author implies that defunding the police increases crime, and blames the people in charge of Oakland with this crime. Yet I recalled hearing that police budgets in Oakland were steady to up this year, despite the protests. A quick search seems to confirm this: https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-didnt-cut-any-money-from-t... >Despite claims to the contrary, the Oakland City Coun…

Actual instances of police funding being reduced are so rare that the author reaches for incidents of low police-citizen interaction following controversial police-on-citizen violence as evidence of what a straw-man version of "defund the police" advocates for. "Defund the police" has to be the most poorly conceived political slogan of all time. It sounds more like a pejorative its opponents came up with.

> Actual instances of police funding being reduced are so rare

I'm not sure what you mean by rare, but many major cities did proceed with reducing police funds:

"New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Baltimore and a dozen other cities have all also reduced police spending. "

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-de...

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