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Defund the Police meets the crime wave

bariweiss.substack.com

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Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#261

Post by alphabettsy »

whimsicalism wrote: post #198
vondur wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seems reasonable to have bail for a smash-and-grab rather than jail. I'd vote against someone proposing otherwise, as do most people I know, so I'm guessing this is just a reflection of the general democratic will of the citizenry here.

Interesting because I’m all for bail reform and alternative punishment for petty crime, but a smash-and-grab seems awfully brazen. Bail seems appropriate for someone stealing an unattended bike, less so for other crimes.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#262

Post by AnthonyMouse »

crooked-v wrote: post #218
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #88

The problem with "defund the police" is that we never really defined what it was. Are we talking about the libertarian thing were you literally don't have the police anymore, and then you have a posse of ordinary citizens come together to execute arrest warrants and a high rate of private firearms ownership to deter crime? That would have been a weird thing to hear from progressives, I would think. And did anybody ac…

The gist of the slogan, as originally intended, is to take some (not all) money and responsibilities away from the police and give them to unarmed or lesser-armed civil enforcement agencies when appropriate (for example: parking enforcement, mental health interventions with unarmed people), and to take away funding the exceeds that scope of reasonable armed police activity (e.g. no MRAPs, no elaborate SWAT teams in s…

I see what the problem is now.

The thing you're asking for is too reasonable and the reason it hasn't happened is political corruption.

Because the reason the police have military vehicles isn't because anybody thought it was a good idea. It's because companies that make military hardware lobby for funding for law enforcement to buy their products. So you say "police don't need MRAPs" and everybody says "no kidding" and there is no debate to be had because there is no one really defending it. There is no controversy to cover, no story, because what are you going to say? Everyone we interviewed thought this was stupid?

Then you turn around and it's happened again because some Congressperson needed some campaign contributions they could only get by sticking that funding into the omnibus bill.

And of course anything that would actually reduce the need for police, and therefore their number, would be fought hard by police unions.

The best solution I can come up with to problems like this is the double ox goring. Police unions are Republican things, so if you want to get something that benefits the public at their expense, find some thing that benefits the public at the political expense of the Democrats (e.g school choice), and then do them both together so it cancels out. In other words, so you can pass it with 60% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans instead of 100% of either party.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#263

Post by Nostromos »

settrans wrote: post #85
schwartzworld wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that current police funding levels help to deter crime in any significant way whatsoever?

Is there any evidence that, on net, state welfare programs deter crime in any significant way?

It's been studied extensively and the research overwhelmingly shows that more generous welfare policies are associated with lower levels of crime.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472... https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-13463-002 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3509381 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/655778

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#264

Post by uoaei »

A note on the comments, if meta-discussion is allowed:

Seeing a lot of unchecked and unexamined confirmation bias despite the complete lack of evidence presented in the article or anywhere else that there is any kind of causal relationship here. Many commenters here on HN are self-aware but in the grass we can find hiding those who paradoxically fetishize rationality despite continually falling into fallacy traps.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#265

Post by kragen »

giantg2 wrote: post #230
throwawaygh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walking and spraying multiple houses... I was surprise there was no return fire, then I saw it was CA. Most folks on my street own a gun. First of all, I probably wouldn't have time to wait for cover, make it to my safe, pull a gun, take the safety off, make it to a safe position, aim, and fire before the threat left. But set that aside. No way in hell me or any of my neighbors would return fire at a moving target…

My understanding from the article is that the person was on foot, not in a vehicle. There is risk in any action you take. If they're spraying more houses, nor acting could mean they kill some of your neighbors. There are a lot of variables that were missing just discussing this online.

The article didn't say anything about whether the person was on foot or in a vehicle. I assumed they were in a vehicle because that's the way people would spray bullets into random houses in the neighborhoods I grew up in, precisely because it's enormously less risky, for precisely the reasons described above.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#266

Post by alphabettsy »

mostertoaster wrote: post #183
heavyset_go wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that adds up to more crime And yet there is a dearth of evidence for this claim.

As is the claim that police use force unjustly more often against PoC

The evidence relies on self-reporting. If use of force data resulting in death has proven to be inaccurate than what reliability can be expected when we’re talking about an unjustified assault?

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#267

Post by yongjik »

tshaddox wrote: post #76
eckmLJE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can understand some criticisms of the slogan, but why are you criticizing the slogan in this case when the police were literally not defunded?

If education reformers cry "Feed shit to children" but don't actually feed shit to children, would you argue that it wasn't a terrible slogan because they didn't actually did it?

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#268

Post by tshaddox »

yongjik wrote: post #267
tshaddox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand some criticisms of the slogan, but why are you criticizing the slogan in this case when the police were literally not defunded?

If education reformers cry "Feed shit to children" but don't actually feed shit to children, would you argue that it wasn't a terrible slogan because they didn't actually did it?

No, I would argue that it’s a terrible slogan for other reasons completely unrelated to whether or not they actually fed shit to children.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#269

Post by kragen »

rbanffy wrote: post #112
Trias11 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what conceal weapons permits are for. Criminals won't know and every attempt to do stupid thing might mean the end of them. If wanabe robbers expect citizens to be armed and legally able to protect themselves and their loved ones - they will think twice if it worth dying for $100.

They don't have to know. They just assume and kill everyone before they have a chance to defend themselves. From their point of view, it's simple and neat. Remember it's always them surprising their victims, not the other way around.

Dunno, when I was growing up, around 01990, there was a bank robbery in my town where one of the bank customers shot the robbers dead. Bank robbery is already a pretty bad career choice but it gets worse in a hurry when mass-murdering the customers is a prerequisite.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#270

Post by whimsicalism »

alphabettsy wrote: post #261
whimsicalism wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems reasonable to have bail for a smash-and-grab rather than jail. I'd vote against someone proposing otherwise, as do most people I know, so I'm guessing this is just a reflection of the general democratic will of the citizenry here.

Interesting because I’m all for bail reform and alternative punishment for petty crime, but a smash-and-grab seems awfully brazen. Bail seems appropriate for someone stealing an unattended bike, less so for other crimes.

what sort of petty crimes, that previously had mandatory jail time, are you even thinking of?

to me, cutting a bike lock and smash & grabbing are like definitional petty crimes.

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