4 ms·

The situation with the "crisis" feels very manufactured consent. Right around the time "defund the police" is getting serious attention, suddenly there's a cris

The situation with the "crisis" feels very manufactured consent. Right around the time "defund the police" is getting serious attention, suddenly there's a crisis of theft to take the wind out of the movement.

hammock 5y ago
>Right around the time "defund the police" is getting serious attention Which was, itself, a response to another crisis...
- delecti 5y ago
  I've been hearing about police defunding/abolition for longer than just since last year. It just only got a jolt of attention because there was a 9 minute filmed incident that was pretty unambiguous. "Give the police lots of money" has been the status quo for a long time, and there's also been pushback against that for a long time.
cowmoo728 5y ago
I think there's a simpler explanation. The theft crowd and the "defund the police" crowd have semi-independently come to the conclusion that policing and legal systems are not very good at stopping or preventing most crime.
- chrischen 5y ago
  These types of crimes are indicators of underlying social and societal flaws. America has a very high incarceration rate. Either our people genetically are just predisposed to crime or we’re doing something wrong with our policies, governing, and equality.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I would like to see the stats with people who are in prison for low level drug offenses taken out. I suspect the numbers would start to be much closer to the European numbers. I personal theory is that there are two types of criminals - normal people who do the occasionally stupid thing (stealing a single item from retail or getting into a bar fight), and people who make crime their career path. The US model is to treat everybody as being in the latter group, while the Scandinavian model is to treat everybody as being in the first group. Instead we should treat people based on who they are, even if that means very different sentences for the same crime to different people.
    - clavicat 5y ago
      >I would like to see the stats with people who are in prison for low level drug offenses taken out. Lucky for you, criminologists have crunched the numbers over and over again. Only 20% of prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses—not just “low-level” ones. Furthermore, many of them are violent offenders who pleaded down to lesser offenses as part of a plea bargain. In other words, the United States could release every single drug offender from prison and still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Mass incarceration is overwhelmingly driven by violent offenders. America is simply a much more violent country than any European one.
      - greedo 5y ago
        It's unfortunate that the US views the carceral system as a punitive one instead of a rehabilitative one. Recividism is so high because even if you go in a decent person who made a mistake, you'll come out violent and often broken.
        chrischen 5y ago
        Is is accurate to describe prison as college for the criminal career path?
  - simplestats 5y ago
    The whole point, though, is that incarceration rate is (assumed to be at least) a trade-off against crime rate, which is what really matters. And the US is not the highest there.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Who is the "theft crowd"?
  - cowmoo728 5y ago
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/organized-crime-rings-are-behind-spate-of-high-end-store-robberies-in-bay-area-experts-say-01637629485 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/organized-crime-rings-are-... https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/organized-crime-rings-are-driving-auto-burglaries-sf-offering-cash-rewards-to-break-them-up/ https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/organized-crime-rings-are-dr... https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Bay-Area-retail-theft-bust-nets-8-million-in-16673449.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Bay-Area-retail-th... There are organized groups recruiting significant numbers of people to do retail theft, bike theft, and car break-ins. The police and legal system haven't been very effective at combating this, so over the past few years the theft has become very public and visible.
  - jiveturkey42 5y ago
    People who steal things
davidhyde 5y ago
It might also be companies keen to popularize facial recognition cameras as a replacement for store cards. Make everyone think that theft is the problem they are trying to solve when, in fact, they just want to automatically track everyone that walks into their store. (EDIT: typos)
kerneloftruth 5y ago
Cause and effect is more likely than a grand conspiracy. Reduction in police, reducing felonies to misdemeanors, eliminating bail have indeed taken root... and as was predictable, crimes have increased. The experiment failed, and it's now time to clean up the mess and resume normal order.
- delecti 5y ago
  Very few places actually did any defunding of the police. The SFPD's budget for 2021 is only about 1% lower. The evidence in TFA shows the public's subjective perceptions have no correlation with actual crime rates, and subjective crime rates also seem to have no correlation with police budgets. Also, TFA shows crime hasn't increased, it's the whole point of the article. https://www.sfweekly.com/news/is-san-francisco-re-funding-the-police/ https://www.sfweekly.com/news/is-san-francisco-re-funding-th...
  - kerneloftruth 5y ago
- cowmoo728 5y ago
  Why is crime going up pretty uniformly across the US, even in places where police budgets and enforcement have increased?
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Is crime going up pretty uniformly across the US? (Violent crime seems to be, last year and this, but I've seen claims that it is only rising in the larger cities that had race riots last year.) Is crime anywhere near where it was in 2000, much less 1990?
clavicat 5y ago
Funny, that’s how I felt last year when every respectable media outlet and seemingly every Fortune 500 company unanimously pivoted to amplifying BLM and promoting street demonstrations after they had just been telling everyone to stay home because of the pandemic. If anything, Americans are just now sobering up and surveying the damage after last summer’s wild drunken party.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Correlation does not mean causation, and even if it does, it could be reversed... so less money for the police, police does less, more crime. Add to this the however high the limit even is to make it a felony, and people will steal, because effectively, nothing will happen to them.
- mcguire 5y ago
  I believe organized retail crime in general is already a felony in most states, and the violent breaking-n-entering of the current "crisis" certainly is.

hammock 5y ago

>Right around the time "defund the police" is getting serious attention Which was, itself, a response to another crisis...

delecti 5y ago
I've been hearing about police defunding/abolition for longer than just since last year. It just only got a jolt of attention because there was a 9 minute filmed incident that was pretty unambiguous. "Give the police lots of money" has been the status quo for a long time, and there's also been pushback against that for a long time.

cowmoo728 5y ago

I think there's a simpler explanation. The theft crowd and the "defund the police" crowd have semi-independently come to the conclusion that policing and legal systems are not very good at stopping or preventing most crime.

chrischen 5y ago
These types of crimes are indicators of underlying social and societal flaws. America has a very high incarceration rate. Either our people genetically are just predisposed to crime or we’re doing something wrong with our policies, governing, and equality.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I would like to see the stats with people who are in prison for low level drug offenses taken out. I suspect the numbers would start to be much closer to the European numbers. I personal theory is that there are two types of criminals - normal people who do the occasionally stupid thing (stealing a single item from retail or getting into a bar fight), and people who make crime their career path. The US model is to treat everybody as being in the latter group, while the Scandinavian model is to treat everybody as being in the first group. Instead we should treat people based on who they are, even if that means very different sentences for the same crime to different people.
  - clavicat 5y ago
    >I would like to see the stats with people who are in prison for low level drug offenses taken out. Lucky for you, criminologists have crunched the numbers over and over again. Only 20% of prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses—not just “low-level” ones. Furthermore, many of them are violent offenders who pleaded down to lesser offenses as part of a plea bargain. In other words, the United States could release every single drug offender from prison and still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Mass incarceration is overwhelmingly driven by violent offenders. America is simply a much more violent country than any European one.
    - greedo 5y ago
      It's unfortunate that the US views the carceral system as a punitive one instead of a rehabilitative one. Recividism is so high because even if you go in a decent person who made a mistake, you'll come out violent and often broken.
      - chrischen 5y ago
        Is is accurate to describe prison as college for the criminal career path?
- simplestats 5y ago
  The whole point, though, is that incarceration rate is (assumed to be at least) a trade-off against crime rate, which is what really matters. And the US is not the highest there.
pessimizer 5y ago
Who is the "theft crowd"?
- cowmoo728 5y ago
  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/organized-crime-rings-are-behind-spate-of-high-end-store-robberies-in-bay-area-experts-say-01637629485 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/organized-crime-rings-are-... https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/organized-crime-rings-are-driving-auto-burglaries-sf-offering-cash-rewards-to-break-them-up/ https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/organized-crime-rings-are-dr... https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Bay-Area-retail-theft-bust-nets-8-million-in-16673449.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Bay-Area-retail-th... There are organized groups recruiting significant numbers of people to do retail theft, bike theft, and car break-ins. The police and legal system haven't been very effective at combating this, so over the past few years the theft has become very public and visible.
- jiveturkey42 5y ago
  People who steal things

davidhyde 5y ago

It might also be companies keen to popularize facial recognition cameras as a replacement for store cards. Make everyone think that theft is the problem they are trying to solve when, in fact, they just want to automatically track everyone that walks into their store. (EDIT: typos)

kerneloftruth 5y ago

Cause and effect is more likely than a grand conspiracy. Reduction in police, reducing felonies to misdemeanors, eliminating bail have indeed taken root... and as was predictable, crimes have increased. The experiment failed, and it's now time to clean up the mess and resume normal order.

delecti 5y ago
Very few places actually did any defunding of the police. The SFPD's budget for 2021 is only about 1% lower. The evidence in TFA shows the public's subjective perceptions have no correlation with actual crime rates, and subjective crime rates also seem to have no correlation with police budgets. Also, TFA shows crime hasn't increased, it's the whole point of the article. https://www.sfweekly.com/news/is-san-francisco-re-funding-the-police/ https://www.sfweekly.com/news/is-san-francisco-re-funding-th...
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
cowmoo728 5y ago
Why is crime going up pretty uniformly across the US, even in places where police budgets and enforcement have increased?
- mcguire 5y ago
  Is crime going up pretty uniformly across the US? (Violent crime seems to be, last year and this, but I've seen claims that it is only rising in the larger cities that had race riots last year.) Is crime anywhere near where it was in 2000, much less 1990?

clavicat 5y ago

Funny, that’s how I felt last year when every respectable media outlet and seemingly every Fortune 500 company unanimously pivoted to amplifying BLM and promoting street demonstrations after they had just been telling everyone to stay home because of the pandemic. If anything, Americans are just now sobering up and surveying the damage after last summer’s wild drunken party.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Correlation does not mean causation, and even if it does, it could be reversed... so less money for the police, police does less, more crime. Add to this the however high the limit even is to make it a felony, and people will steal, because effectively, nothing will happen to them.

mcguire 5y ago
I believe organized retail crime in general is already a felony in most states, and the violent breaking-n-entering of the current "crisis" certainly is.