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"That has not happened. Every place in the Bay Area has sufficient numbers of police and firemen. There is no place that has run out of them. Trouble hiring is

"That has not happened. Every place in the Bay Area has sufficient numbers of police and firemen. There is no place that has run out of them. Trouble hiring is not the same as no hiring. " [citation needed] This is literally not true. See, e.g, san jose, which is drastically understaffed: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Recruiting-a-Priority-for-Understaffed-San-Jose-Police-Department-369192501.html http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Recruiting-a-Priority-f... San jose is not only at something like half force, they know it will drop even further before they can make it better. You can google the numbers exactly if you want them, but they are really bad. It's been getting bad for years: http://abc7news.com/politics/sjpd-facing-tough-time-recruiting/349217/ http://abc7news.com/politics/sjpd-facing-tough-time-recruiti... " The city has some serious catch-up to do with officers already working overtime to handle patrol needs. The challenge for San Jose police is that more officers are leaving than being recruited, as other cities continue to offer higher pay and better benefits. That makes it difficult to keep the ranks at full authorized strength of 1109 officers. When you factor in disabilities and military leave, the department is roughly 200 officers below that. And it's expecting to lose well over 100 sworn officers this year from resignations and retirements. " (Note: Can't handle patrol needs, expected to be down 300. IIRC, they are actually down significantly more than that down. They literally can't handle patrol needs right now at all, even with overtime) ... " The outlook of catching up is not looking good. A new police academy class starting Tuesday has a capacity of 60. The city made 29 job offers. But five took jobs elsewhere and one was a no-show. That will mean the class will have 23 recruits plus one who was previously hired. " (note the timing of these articles has shown that what they are doing is not helping) Let's go with another place: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Understaffed-firefighters-rake-in-overtime-4457787.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Understaff... "O'Connor points the finger at chronic understaffing - caused by the department's failure to fill 400 vacant positions - for requiring some firefighters to put in hundreds of hours of OT a year. " 400 vacant positions does not sound like "sufficient numbers" to me. etc You keep making handwaving assertions to support your point, while i am providing actual data. Please provide actual data. I have shown they often have 30-40% under what they are supposed to. This has gotten worse as housing prices have increased. That is not "sufficient". You cannot handwave this away as simply saying "it's trouble hiring". As far as i know, plenty of places in the bay area that are expensive do not have sufficient numbers of police, firemen, or paramedics. They are having significant trouble recruiting precisely due to cost to live vs pay. The places that are not expensive are not having these problems. If you want to argue this is simply not true, please provide any evidence instead of just saying "no, you are wrong".

twblalock 10y ago
You wrote that people would have to choose between having no police and firemen, and having low housing prices. You did not say "fewer" police and fireman. You said there would be none. It's clearly a ridiculous thing to say, and no matter how high housing prices get, it's very unlikely to become true. I'm not sure why you would try to defend such a silly and extreme statement. The existence of a single police officer disproves it. You also said that lack of police and firemen would cause downward pressure on housing prices. That's also untrue. If you think that has happened, it is your job to provide evidence for it, not my job to provide evidence to refute it. You can nitpick all you want about whether the numbers indicate a sufficient amount of police or not. That's moving the goalposts. You said there would be none, and that is untrue. You have no evidence that this has affected housing prices. So I can indeed just say "you're wrong," because the burden of proof is on you, and you haven't met it.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "You wrote that people would have to choose between having no police and firemen, and having low housing prices. " That was write after writing "This is the same as the cities having trouble attracting police/firemen/etc because they can't pay enough." So, first, yes, i did essentially write about "fewer", and you are just ignoring that part. I also can't possibly see how one would assume i was being literal in the sentence you quoted in light of that (reading your other comments on hacker news, you don't seem to do that elsewhere) Since that doesn't make a lot of sense, i'm just going to assume you simply have no evidence, and instead of saying "you know what, you might be right, maybe i should reevaluate", you've chosen to just instead be super pedantic. That's kind of sad. I was hoping you actually had any data to back up your counter-argument, because i'd really like to see the other side of this.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    You wrote "no police/firemen," not "fewer." It's not "super pedantic" to use the plain, obvious meaning of words. Furthermore, it's not reasonable to expect people to read what you "essentially" wrote. People read what you actually wrote.

twblalock 10y ago

You wrote that people would have to choose between having no police and firemen, and having low housing prices. You did not say "fewer" police and fireman. You said there would be none. It's clearly a ridiculous thing to say, and no matter how high housing prices get, it's very unlikely to become true. I'm not sure why you would try to defend such a silly and extreme statement. The existence of a single police officer disproves it. You also said that lack of police and firemen would cause downward pressure on housing prices. That's also untrue. If you think that has happened, it is your job to provide evidence for it, not my job to provide evidence to refute it. You can nitpick all you want about whether the numbers indicate a sufficient amount of police or not. That's moving the goalposts. You said there would be none, and that is untrue. You have no evidence that this has affected housing prices. So I can indeed just say "you're wrong," because the burden of proof is on you, and you haven't met it.

DannyBee 10y ago
"You wrote that people would have to choose between having no police and firemen, and having low housing prices. " That was write after writing "This is the same as the cities having trouble attracting police/firemen/etc because they can't pay enough." So, first, yes, i did essentially write about "fewer", and you are just ignoring that part. I also can't possibly see how one would assume i was being literal in the sentence you quoted in light of that (reading your other comments on hacker news, you don't seem to do that elsewhere) Since that doesn't make a lot of sense, i'm just going to assume you simply have no evidence, and instead of saying "you know what, you might be right, maybe i should reevaluate", you've chosen to just instead be super pedantic. That's kind of sad. I was hoping you actually had any data to back up your counter-argument, because i'd really like to see the other side of this.
- twblalock 10y ago
  You wrote "no police/firemen," not "fewer." It's not "super pedantic" to use the plain, obvious meaning of words. Furthermore, it's not reasonable to expect people to read what you "essentially" wrote. People read what you actually wrote.