I am convinced that many police units are an undeclared work to rule campaign. The resulting rise in crime is absolutely expected and will scare the country into backing off from efforts to enact serious reforms. "If we can't do our job like assholes than we are not going to try too hard." seems to be the message. And it absolutely will work.
Defund the Police meets the crime wave
231–240 of 365 posts
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#232The people who support defunding the police have never felt genuine fear from being victimized by crime. It's only after the crime, when you're thinking about how someone else had the hubris to threaten your life, thinking about how you could have died, or worse, if your loved ones had been with you, that they could have died, that you begin to wade yourself into a deep and abiding anger. I used to feel sympathy for…
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Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#233I combined https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_large... (proxy for political party), and found that the top 13 cities with the highest crime rate in that combined data set were democratic. 7 out of 9 republican cities were in the half with the lower crime rate. Interestingly, all 3 cities with independent party mayors were in the l…
no offense, but that feels like a useless statistic. All the large cities in the US are blue, and large cities attract the most crime.
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#234I 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…
The main item in certain states is not prosecuting crime. We recently had a smash and grab robbery that made news here in SoCal. The suspects were quickly apprehended, but it turns out they were released on bail almost immediately afterwards. Due to the non-prosecution of criminal acts, these people will probably never do any jail time. People are definitely cognizant of this at this point, and it's eroding peoples t…
Related to OPs point, Proposition 47 in California reclassified certain thefts under $950 to a misdemeanor instead of a felony. There is evidence that this has resulted in increases in such crimes.
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#235Walking and spraying multiple houses... I was surprise there was no return fire, then I saw it was CA.
> I was surprise there was no return fire, then I saw it was CA. I'm in CA and am surrounded by neighbors with guns, for better or worse. If you think CA is devoid of gun owners you're sorely mistaken.
It depends where you are in CA, I specifically moved to a place where I would know people around me don't own guns (SF). I have a hard time seeing myself live anywhere where people are allowed to carry or buy guns liberally.
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#236[deleted]
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#237This is fake …afaik Zero budgets hav been defunded. So this is people paid to do work, not doing it. They should be fired.
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#238I 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.
I feel you are spot on With this.
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#239Sorry, but I haven't seen any evidence for a "crime wave" in 2020-2021. FBI stats show a slight uptick in violent crimes. These rates haven't been seen since... gasp ... 2017. If police-civilian interactions really decreased 80% (as quoted in the article), and in exchange violent crime only raised 5.6% [0], personally that shows even dramatic reductions in police presence don't lead to complete "anarchy". I fear, giv…
That data doesn't show 2021. It only goes up to 2020. You don't have to try very hard to find data that supports a massive uptick in violent crime in 2021. Dozens of cities have reported all-time-high murder rates. Even cities like Philedelphia, which was already pretty high to begin with. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/27/us-murder-ra... I don't think it is due to defunding the police, however. As has…
Also, COVID as an ongoing thing isn't great for anybody's mental health in general. I suspect there's some similarity to how crime rates go up during heat waves.
Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been a victim of both violent crime and property theft. Police did nothing. It was pulling teeth just to get them to write up reports so that I could file insurance claims. Police don't prevent crime. Hell, they barely even respond to crime. And cops in our city have criminally generous pensions -- when you count the pension, lots of these high school grads making 100K+/yr. To say nothing of the absurd capital e…
> Police don't prevent crime. Hell, they barely even respond to crime. Awarding a well-marked group with some measure of public accountability the right to use violent countermeasures for the protection of life and property in a geographic area facilitates commercial trade and societal advancement. However, the “garbage-in, garbage-out” phenomenon applies to policing, which makes it less of a silver bullet. A certain…
I mean, accountability is severely lacking nearly across the board because the incentives are so messed up. (E.g. internal reviews are just the police governing themselves, and external reviews would be a prosecutor prosecuting the police, but that’s a professional relationship the prosecutor doesn’t want to mess up.)
But I think you’re also saying that police can’t change a local community, if it’s already filled with crime. If that’s the case and they don’t have a big impact… what’s the point?
I’d also say it works the other way around, where garbage input to the police force will result in garbage policing. And since education and training isn’t that rigorous, it’s hard to correct that.
Plus, I’d say the “hysteria” is more about police turning gold into lead, so to speak, harming or killing people unnecessarily. Perhaps you could argue whether or not the “hysteria” is justified given the number of times it happens. But the biggest outcries are normally against things you see where police are pretty obviously in the wrong. (Or at the very least, where police were incredibly brutal. Which in my opinion is nearly always wrong.)