8 ms·

I wonder if anyone really thought this whole 'defunding the police' idea through.

vharuck 5y ago
As the article mentions, murder rates rose across the country. And not many cities actually had official support, let alone took action, for defunding or restructuring police forces. Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification. Even if cops decided to patrol or investigate less because of that movement, I wouldn't expect a massive spike in the murder rate. Sure, people might pick pockets or rob houses if they think nobody's watching, but murder?
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  No actually you're wrong. Believe it or not, there's a direct co-orelation between police having resources available to fight crime and reduced crime! Crazy right? https://archive.is/5fIqM https://archive.is/5fIqM But we can't eliminate the possibility that all those thousands of new murders were all done by racist police officers. Has anyone looked into this? Could be a huge story. Wouldn't want anyone to get the crazy idea that police actually do good things for black communities.
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    How does that article prove your claim?
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Well I'll let the headline of the Washington post article do the 'splainin' "Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime"
      - eurasiantiger 5y ago
        Your proposition: 1. Cities increase police funding in response to increased crime 2. Therefore, decreasing police funding increases crime. However, 2. does not follow from 1, since many other factors affect crime rates, from legislation to enforcement and from social issues to societal issues. In fact, even the inverse of 2. does not follow from 1: increasing police funding does not decrease crime rates. If you disagree, please provide an academic source for the direct causal relationship between police funding and crime rate.
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        There's academia and then there's real life and in real life the leaders are realizing Defunding the Police is a stupid idea. Can you explain why these leaders with highly paid staff of analysts who have way more knowledge and data, are doing this? EDIT: while you're downvoting me, be sure to downvote the leaders and news media who lied to you as well. """In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would reinstate $92 million for a new precinct after scrapping the project last summer. The mayor of Baltimore, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by $22 million last year, recently proposed a $27 million increase. After attacks on Asian-Americans and a rise in homicides in Oakland, Calif., city lawmakers in April restored $3.3 million of the $29 million in police cuts, and the mayor is now proposing to increase the department’s budget by $24 million. Los Angeles’s mayor has proposed an increase of about $50 million after the city cut $150 million from its police department last year."""
        jbboehr 5y ago
        "I told you so" never felt so good.
        eurasiantiger 5y ago
        What’s this army of dumb doing on HN?
        5y ago
- angelzen 5y ago
  Do you seriously propose that 'defund the police' has no effect whatsoever on the murder rate? Here is a list of largest 100 American cities by party affiliation. Feel free to research whether political affiliation of the city leadership, thus propensity to embrace 'defund the police' policies, has anything to do with the spike in murders. Unfortunately I am not aware of professional studies of the matter. Perhaps there will never be. Given an academic system that is 99% affiliated with one political party, difficult to find people willing to scuttle their careers by researching topics that might place policies associated with that political party in anything but the most positive light. https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_the_100_largest_cities https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_t... Edit: Here is a chart showing sharp decline in 'officers in service' numbers in a progressive West Coast city that embraced 'defund the police': https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-spike-in-seattle-police-separations-durkan-warns-against-deeper-department-cutbacks https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-s... And the spike in murders in the same city: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-crime-Seattle-highest-homicide-rate-15864266.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-cri... > Crime dashboard data shows that 52 homicides occurred in 2020 compared to 35 in 2019 — an increase of 48.57%.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Thanks for those references. Being from New Orleans, a majority black city, its absolutely crazy to me that this is even a debate. I think these BLM people seriously believe that police do more harm than good in black communities. And they think that there's no co-orelation between funding and performance for the police.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      There is a tragedy of the commons at play, of which 'defund the police' is but the last installment. The local Seattle prosecutor was notorious for years for not prosecuting crime. He recently lost his primary and will likely be replaced from the left by a true 'defund the police' candidate. Seattle hasn't even experienced 'defund the police' to its fullest extent, the worst is yet to come. > A repeat offender who was released from the King County Jail last weekend after attacking a security guard in Seattle was re-arrested a few hours later for a brutal attack that ended with that victim being hospitalized in intensive care, according to court documents and police. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-king-county-jail-but-re-arrested-hours-later-for-brutal-attack/ar-BB1ckVVm https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-... https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-running-for-office https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-runn...
- darthnebula 5y ago
  >>Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification No, I think ignoring the facts is clinging to your ideology at all costs. Not many cities had official support? You can't be serious.
- iammisc 5y ago
  This is the most disingenuous form of misinformation imaginable. While certainly true that murder is up everywhere, it is not true that it is up the same amount. As the article says, murder is up more in cities with pop >100k. Under 25k, the murder rate rose 25%. In larger cities, up to 40%. That is a substantial difference. No one is claiming that some places had fewer murders than before. People are claiming that policies make differences (in this case, population size is a good correlate with party).
  - xmprt 5y ago
    Why are you correlating population size with party when you can literally look up the voting records of cities? What's more likely? 1. High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate OR 2. High population size implies higher murder rate (potentially because of higher poor populations or more population density or many other reasons that aren't because of party).
    - iammisc 5y ago
      > High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate Democratic party politics are correlated with higher population size. This is not controversial. A high population size ought to correlate with more overall murders, but a similar murder rate. Moreover, in many countries, urban areas are less violent.
      - xmprt 5y ago
        I agree with your first statement. However, this is one case where we don't have to make any guesses. City voting records are public. If you actually checked, then you'll see that Democratic and Republican controlled cities have seen an uptick in murder rate. In some cases, Republicans have a higher increase. So this isn't an issue with any particular party. > in many countries, urban areas are less violent This might be because of better mental healthcare, less drug/gang related violence, better gun control, or a variety of factors. If America had the same laws as other countries then this discrepancy would be strange however the US has been very slow at getting up to the current standards that most developed countries have adopted.
- floor2 5y ago
  Crime doesn't really work the way you're suggesting. Someone robbing houses is directly going to cause a massive uptick in violent crime. What if the resident is home and tries to defend themselves? The victim (of the home invasion) might shoot the invader in self-defense but be charged with murder anyway. Or the robber might kill the homeowner during a struggle even if they only intended to steal property initially. Plus, people aren't inherently "good" and "bad" or "criminals and non-criminals". There's complexity to how being a victim of crime can lead a person to commit other crimes, how "non-violent" crimes can quickly become violent, etc. Blaming "Defund the police" is kinda short-sighted, but certainly there have been massive shifts in how police see themselves, their jobs and their communities and how people see and interact with the police, and that those changes are part of the cascade of changes that lead to increases in murder rates.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- dumpsterdiver 5y ago
  You don't have to blame the defunding movement for the rise in homicide rates to wonder if the people in charge thought it through. The scariest part about having my city's police force defunded (aside from cops not wanting to work here anymore) is the realization that my city council members are strongly influenced by the news cycles. News cycles can be tampered with. Truly, what is the news, but a way to tamper with our opinions? Opinions can be changed through repetition, and rage can be incited seemingly with little effort. The modern warfront in the United States is our news feed. You can't exactly waltz an army into a country that's packing nukes. What you can do is hire an army to sway public opinion in a country in order to weaken them. Who knows, maybe next time we'll defund our military.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Plenty of people have thought it through in great detail over the last 30yr. Those people are mostly not being listened to because small government is a dirty word to most of the people currently pushing to defund the police and because viewing crime through an economic lens is out of vogue in favor of a racial one and people who are seriously studying minimum viable policing historically tend to be from one of those two camps.
dpweb 5y ago
I don’t see more policing or better militarization as the answer. These crimes are symptoms of core problems, that run like currents through society. We’re not served well by the constant prideful “we’re the greatest country in the world”. There are some wonderful things to be proud of. However, the fact is, we’re a rather violent society. We’re a society that loves alcohol. We’re a very insecure people. We don’t get to the root of the problems. They are in the psyche.
- mc32 5y ago
  It surely doesn't help that politicians sow division to weaken and conquer their constituencies and vilify each other creating animosity and discord. Instead of trying to unite our people they want to foment differences. People take cues. Moreover, we prefer to fix other people's problems (Iraq, Afghanistan) to fixing our internal problems. We see this with charities too. Charities eagerly want to help out people who get whacked by natural disasters overseas. That's great and I'm sure those people appreciate it. Where are they they in the US taking care of our homeless, our veterans, our unemployed? They give more shits about people losing their jobs in Timbuktu than they do about our own citizens losing jobs due to outsourcing and poor government policies.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    Wow, this is all over the place. A few thoughts: 1. We didn’t fix any problems in Iraq or Afghanistan. We made things worse. The reason was not really a preference, it was revenge, bad info, and protecting strategic reserves. 2. Charities do work locally. They also work internationally. If I am passionate about a specific issue, or about helping as many humans as possible, it’s not clear that it’s preferable to only help others after you’ve fixed all your internal problems. I definitely agree that people take cues from their leaders. That’s why the investigation into January 6 is such a big deal.
    - mc32 5y ago
      Do you remember when everyone claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop with compromising information was Russian disinformation and now the WaPo relented and says that yeah, it’s legit? Where is the pushback against those lies and collusion between the media and a candidate. It’s okay if 10 or 30% just ignore something because it’s not their bag, but 90% of the media refusing to cover it and denying it and all the fact checkers in cahoots? I think that’s a big deal.
leet_thow 5y ago
Read the comments at r/Portland to witness people realizing the law of unintended consequences in realtime.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  Are you sure these consequences were entirely unintended?
- felistoria 5y ago
  People said that instagram page Portlandlookslikeshit was an exaggeration. Just drive through Portland for a few hours. The city is completely trashed. Even just driving through on I-5 you see trash all over the sides of the road.
  - xrd 5y ago
    You don't see any improvement at all over the past few months specifically? I live in the suburbs and still visit family in Portland. Over the past few months, I've seen great improvements. There are no longer massive camps along 205, now it seems like a few sprinkled camps with four or five people, every half mile or so. I walked in Oak's Bottom (my kids attend Trackers school) and I saw three park rangers (not police) patrolling the park, querying people who camp there. I did not see any garbage inside the park at all, and this is a very dense forested park. I only saw one tent (I know there are more) but I do think the city has really made a concerted effort to break up large camps, remove garbage aggressively, and move people into temporary housing. My point is that progress is being made. But, I often wonder if I'm not seeing all neighborhoods and if this is just happening in the wealthier neighborhoods. I do feel like the places in SE and NE that I go to, there are visible differences from even a few months back. Maybe you feel like this is not the real story; if so, I'm interested in hearing that. I've been worried about my city for years, but I do feel like we are finally grappling with it as a society and making progress.
    - felistoria 5y ago
      I don't typically drive on 205 to be honest, but I-5 is still covered in garbage and downtown is unbelievably bad. Really sad to see and I avoid downtown as much as possible because of it. It's been a couple weeks since I've drove through but I am going through tomorrow so I guess I'll see if there has been any improvement.
lm28469 5y ago
Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. I find it way more likely, and interesting, that covid had a major role in the rise of homicides. The lockdowns/restrictions and their social / mental health impacts: people losing their loved ones, jobs, financial/mental struggles, domestic violence, &c. You can live in the most policed country in the world, if you're locked down with your abusive/violent partner for X months violence will happen
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  > Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. You're mixing up defunding the police with demilitarizing the police. Two different topics.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  We are gonna see the effects of these lockdowns and restrictions play out for years. We’ve got an entire generation of kids growing up that have missed more than a year of school and still aren’t back to “normal school. Wait until they become adults! The sad part is plenty of people warned about this sort of thing but they were (and still are) censored, bullied, harassed, gaslit, you name it. This myopic fixation on exactly one single disease to the exclusion of literally everything else in life is gonna go down as one of the worst public policy fuckups of all time.
ransom1538 5y ago
IMHO. This wasn't about cities defunding police as it was about DEMORALIZING the police. People will cite: "Look the crime rate was country wide so it couldn't be the result of specific cities defunding." But no. It is that the policing forces are demoralized nation wide. They do less patrolling, less aggressive tactics, less pull overs, less arrests etc. Police are more timid now. This is the result. I expect it to become much worse - with SF city the goal nation wide.
aaron-santos 5y ago
You might be surprised to learn that there are even whole books about the topic complete with reading groups, speaking events, and discourse.
drbojingle 5y ago
I wonder if police ever actually stopped murders from happening. Do you have any evidence that they did and have now stopped doing so? Police usually show up to crime scenes, not murders in progress. It's a murder after all, not a siege.

As the article mentions, murder rates rose across the country. And not many cities actually had official support, let alone took action, for defunding or restructuring police forces. Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification. Even if cops decided to patrol or investigate less because of that movement, I wouldn't expect a massive spike in the murder rate. Sure, people might pick pockets or rob houses if they think nobody's watching, but murder?

nickthemagicman 5y ago
No actually you're wrong. Believe it or not, there's a direct co-orelation between police having resources available to fight crime and reduced crime! Crazy right? https://archive.is/5fIqM https://archive.is/5fIqM But we can't eliminate the possibility that all those thousands of new murders were all done by racist police officers. Has anyone looked into this? Could be a huge story. Wouldn't want anyone to get the crazy idea that police actually do good things for black communities.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  How does that article prove your claim?
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Well I'll let the headline of the Washington post article do the 'splainin' "Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime"
    - eurasiantiger 5y ago
      Your proposition: 1. Cities increase police funding in response to increased crime 2. Therefore, decreasing police funding increases crime. However, 2. does not follow from 1, since many other factors affect crime rates, from legislation to enforcement and from social issues to societal issues. In fact, even the inverse of 2. does not follow from 1: increasing police funding does not decrease crime rates. If you disagree, please provide an academic source for the direct causal relationship between police funding and crime rate.
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        There's academia and then there's real life and in real life the leaders are realizing Defunding the Police is a stupid idea. Can you explain why these leaders with highly paid staff of analysts who have way more knowledge and data, are doing this? EDIT: while you're downvoting me, be sure to downvote the leaders and news media who lied to you as well. """In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would reinstate $92 million for a new precinct after scrapping the project last summer. The mayor of Baltimore, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by $22 million last year, recently proposed a $27 million increase. After attacks on Asian-Americans and a rise in homicides in Oakland, Calif., city lawmakers in April restored $3.3 million of the $29 million in police cuts, and the mayor is now proposing to increase the department’s budget by $24 million. Los Angeles’s mayor has proposed an increase of about $50 million after the city cut $150 million from its police department last year."""
        jbboehr 5y ago
        "I told you so" never felt so good.
        eurasiantiger 5y ago
        What’s this army of dumb doing on HN?
        5y ago
angelzen 5y ago
Do you seriously propose that 'defund the police' has no effect whatsoever on the murder rate? Here is a list of largest 100 American cities by party affiliation. Feel free to research whether political affiliation of the city leadership, thus propensity to embrace 'defund the police' policies, has anything to do with the spike in murders. Unfortunately I am not aware of professional studies of the matter. Perhaps there will never be. Given an academic system that is 99% affiliated with one political party, difficult to find people willing to scuttle their careers by researching topics that might place policies associated with that political party in anything but the most positive light. https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_the_100_largest_cities https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_t... Edit: Here is a chart showing sharp decline in 'officers in service' numbers in a progressive West Coast city that embraced 'defund the police': https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-spike-in-seattle-police-separations-durkan-warns-against-deeper-department-cutbacks https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-s... And the spike in murders in the same city: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-crime-Seattle-highest-homicide-rate-15864266.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-cri... > Crime dashboard data shows that 52 homicides occurred in 2020 compared to 35 in 2019 — an increase of 48.57%.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Thanks for those references. Being from New Orleans, a majority black city, its absolutely crazy to me that this is even a debate. I think these BLM people seriously believe that police do more harm than good in black communities. And they think that there's no co-orelation between funding and performance for the police.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    There is a tragedy of the commons at play, of which 'defund the police' is but the last installment. The local Seattle prosecutor was notorious for years for not prosecuting crime. He recently lost his primary and will likely be replaced from the left by a true 'defund the police' candidate. Seattle hasn't even experienced 'defund the police' to its fullest extent, the worst is yet to come. > A repeat offender who was released from the King County Jail last weekend after attacking a security guard in Seattle was re-arrested a few hours later for a brutal attack that ended with that victim being hospitalized in intensive care, according to court documents and police. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-king-county-jail-but-re-arrested-hours-later-for-brutal-attack/ar-BB1ckVVm https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-... https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-running-for-office https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-runn...
darthnebula 5y ago
>>Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification No, I think ignoring the facts is clinging to your ideology at all costs. Not many cities had official support? You can't be serious.
iammisc 5y ago
This is the most disingenuous form of misinformation imaginable. While certainly true that murder is up everywhere, it is not true that it is up the same amount. As the article says, murder is up more in cities with pop >100k. Under 25k, the murder rate rose 25%. In larger cities, up to 40%. That is a substantial difference. No one is claiming that some places had fewer murders than before. People are claiming that policies make differences (in this case, population size is a good correlate with party).
- xmprt 5y ago
  Why are you correlating population size with party when you can literally look up the voting records of cities? What's more likely? 1. High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate OR 2. High population size implies higher murder rate (potentially because of higher poor populations or more population density or many other reasons that aren't because of party).
  - iammisc 5y ago
    > High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate Democratic party politics are correlated with higher population size. This is not controversial. A high population size ought to correlate with more overall murders, but a similar murder rate. Moreover, in many countries, urban areas are less violent.
    - xmprt 5y ago
      I agree with your first statement. However, this is one case where we don't have to make any guesses. City voting records are public. If you actually checked, then you'll see that Democratic and Republican controlled cities have seen an uptick in murder rate. In some cases, Republicans have a higher increase. So this isn't an issue with any particular party. > in many countries, urban areas are less violent This might be because of better mental healthcare, less drug/gang related violence, better gun control, or a variety of factors. If America had the same laws as other countries then this discrepancy would be strange however the US has been very slow at getting up to the current standards that most developed countries have adopted.
floor2 5y ago
Crime doesn't really work the way you're suggesting. Someone robbing houses is directly going to cause a massive uptick in violent crime. What if the resident is home and tries to defend themselves? The victim (of the home invasion) might shoot the invader in self-defense but be charged with murder anyway. Or the robber might kill the homeowner during a struggle even if they only intended to steal property initially. Plus, people aren't inherently "good" and "bad" or "criminals and non-criminals". There's complexity to how being a victim of crime can lead a person to commit other crimes, how "non-violent" crimes can quickly become violent, etc. Blaming "Defund the police" is kinda short-sighted, but certainly there have been massive shifts in how police see themselves, their jobs and their communities and how people see and interact with the police, and that those changes are part of the cascade of changes that lead to increases in murder rates.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dumpsterdiver 5y ago
You don't have to blame the defunding movement for the rise in homicide rates to wonder if the people in charge thought it through. The scariest part about having my city's police force defunded (aside from cops not wanting to work here anymore) is the realization that my city council members are strongly influenced by the news cycles. News cycles can be tampered with. Truly, what is the news, but a way to tamper with our opinions? Opinions can be changed through repetition, and rage can be incited seemingly with little effort. The modern warfront in the United States is our news feed. You can't exactly waltz an army into a country that's packing nukes. What you can do is hire an army to sway public opinion in a country in order to weaken them. Who knows, maybe next time we'll defund our military.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Plenty of people have thought it through in great detail over the last 30yr. Those people are mostly not being listened to because small government is a dirty word to most of the people currently pushing to defund the police and because viewing crime through an economic lens is out of vogue in favor of a racial one and people who are seriously studying minimum viable policing historically tend to be from one of those two camps.

dpweb 5y ago

I don’t see more policing or better militarization as the answer. These crimes are symptoms of core problems, that run like currents through society. We’re not served well by the constant prideful “we’re the greatest country in the world”. There are some wonderful things to be proud of. However, the fact is, we’re a rather violent society. We’re a society that loves alcohol. We’re a very insecure people. We don’t get to the root of the problems. They are in the psyche.

mc32 5y ago
It surely doesn't help that politicians sow division to weaken and conquer their constituencies and vilify each other creating animosity and discord. Instead of trying to unite our people they want to foment differences. People take cues. Moreover, we prefer to fix other people's problems (Iraq, Afghanistan) to fixing our internal problems. We see this with charities too. Charities eagerly want to help out people who get whacked by natural disasters overseas. That's great and I'm sure those people appreciate it. Where are they they in the US taking care of our homeless, our veterans, our unemployed? They give more shits about people losing their jobs in Timbuktu than they do about our own citizens losing jobs due to outsourcing and poor government policies.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  Wow, this is all over the place. A few thoughts: 1. We didn’t fix any problems in Iraq or Afghanistan. We made things worse. The reason was not really a preference, it was revenge, bad info, and protecting strategic reserves. 2. Charities do work locally. They also work internationally. If I am passionate about a specific issue, or about helping as many humans as possible, it’s not clear that it’s preferable to only help others after you’ve fixed all your internal problems. I definitely agree that people take cues from their leaders. That’s why the investigation into January 6 is such a big deal.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Do you remember when everyone claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop with compromising information was Russian disinformation and now the WaPo relented and says that yeah, it’s legit? Where is the pushback against those lies and collusion between the media and a candidate. It’s okay if 10 or 30% just ignore something because it’s not their bag, but 90% of the media refusing to cover it and denying it and all the fact checkers in cahoots? I think that’s a big deal.

leet_thow 5y ago

Read the comments at r/Portland to witness people realizing the law of unintended consequences in realtime.

commandlinefan 5y ago
Are you sure these consequences were entirely unintended?
felistoria 5y ago
People said that instagram page Portlandlookslikeshit was an exaggeration. Just drive through Portland for a few hours. The city is completely trashed. Even just driving through on I-5 you see trash all over the sides of the road.
- xrd 5y ago
  You don't see any improvement at all over the past few months specifically? I live in the suburbs and still visit family in Portland. Over the past few months, I've seen great improvements. There are no longer massive camps along 205, now it seems like a few sprinkled camps with four or five people, every half mile or so. I walked in Oak's Bottom (my kids attend Trackers school) and I saw three park rangers (not police) patrolling the park, querying people who camp there. I did not see any garbage inside the park at all, and this is a very dense forested park. I only saw one tent (I know there are more) but I do think the city has really made a concerted effort to break up large camps, remove garbage aggressively, and move people into temporary housing. My point is that progress is being made. But, I often wonder if I'm not seeing all neighborhoods and if this is just happening in the wealthier neighborhoods. I do feel like the places in SE and NE that I go to, there are visible differences from even a few months back. Maybe you feel like this is not the real story; if so, I'm interested in hearing that. I've been worried about my city for years, but I do feel like we are finally grappling with it as a society and making progress.
  - felistoria 5y ago
    I don't typically drive on 205 to be honest, but I-5 is still covered in garbage and downtown is unbelievably bad. Really sad to see and I avoid downtown as much as possible because of it. It's been a couple weeks since I've drove through but I am going through tomorrow so I guess I'll see if there has been any improvement.

lm28469 5y ago

Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. I find it way more likely, and interesting, that covid had a major role in the rise of homicides. The lockdowns/restrictions and their social / mental health impacts: people losing their loved ones, jobs, financial/mental struggles, domestic violence, &c. You can live in the most policed country in the world, if you're locked down with your abusive/violent partner for X months violence will happen

nickthemagicman 5y ago
> Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. You're mixing up defunding the police with demilitarizing the police. Two different topics.
spookthesunset 5y ago
We are gonna see the effects of these lockdowns and restrictions play out for years. We’ve got an entire generation of kids growing up that have missed more than a year of school and still aren’t back to “normal school. Wait until they become adults! The sad part is plenty of people warned about this sort of thing but they were (and still are) censored, bullied, harassed, gaslit, you name it. This myopic fixation on exactly one single disease to the exclusion of literally everything else in life is gonna go down as one of the worst public policy fuckups of all time.

ransom1538 5y ago

IMHO. This wasn't about cities defunding police as it was about DEMORALIZING the police. People will cite: "Look the crime rate was country wide so it couldn't be the result of specific cities defunding." But no. It is that the policing forces are demoralized nation wide. They do less patrolling, less aggressive tactics, less pull overs, less arrests etc. Police are more timid now. This is the result. I expect it to become much worse - with SF city the goal nation wide.

aaron-santos 5y ago

You might be surprised to learn that there are even whole books about the topic complete with reading groups, speaking events, and discourse.

drbojingle 5y ago

I wonder if police ever actually stopped murders from happening. Do you have any evidence that they did and have now stopped doing so? Police usually show up to crime scenes, not murders in progress. It's a murder after all, not a siege.