4 ms·

I don't know what it's like where you live, but in California it increasingly looks like our law enforcement organizations are either dreadfully understaffed or

I don't know what it's like where you live, but in California it increasingly looks like our law enforcement organizations are either dreadfully understaffed or failing miserably at enforcing basic traffic laws. I just drove to San Diego and back from the Bay Area and counted zero cops on the way down and two on the way back, and I returned on Super Bowl eve. In the south Bay Area, I regularly see folks intentionally disregard basic traffic safety laws. I never see anyone pulled over and generally never see any cops. My niece works in public safety in WA state and says that morale is in the gutter as police have been told to back off in all but the most imminent situations. The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police. I'm not typically pro-law enforcement but I am definitely not pro-no-law enforcement. On an unrelated note, I'm now about to get front window tinting on my vehicles because, why not, it's not like any traffic or vehicle laws are being enforced now.

acdha 5y ago
> The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police. It’s not true but it makes more sense if they’re saying that as a negotiating tactic: the police are banking that if the media coverage is dominated by stories about crime rising there will be a big reduction in support for police accountability.
- seneca 5y ago
  What inside knowledge do you have that indicates it's not true? You can't just assume something is false because it contradicts what you want to be true.
  - kevinh 5y ago
    What knowledge do you have that it is true other than a thirdhand account by someone on a web forum?
    - seneca 5y ago
      None, that's why I haven't made a statement claiming it's true or not, unlike the person I'm responding to. That's what you do when you have no information.
  - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
    Yet, you didn't apply that level of criticism to the parent post either. Some person's niece saying the police chief said it? Like that wouldn't be news worthy? Like the police chief wouldn't immediately raise that to the press because "look what these liberals are telling me now"? Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
    - technothrasher 5y ago
      Seneca didn't say it was true. They simply questioned acdha's claim that it was false. This is fair to question. But I suspect based on the rest of acdha's post that "it's not true" was shorthand for the more reasonable "I'm not convinced that it's true".
      - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
        Sure. But senaca wasn't upset how 01100011 got from "My best friends sisters boyfriend" to "That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police."
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    I can guarantee you that if a school in my particular municipality is under threat, police are going to roll in and roll deep. Morale or no morale. I think people are confused as to the types of crime police are backing off of policing. Shooting up Walmarts, schools, or churches will absolutely evoke a robust response here. Of course, I can't speak for municipalities outside of this particular county here in flyover country. But knowing police and firefighters the way that I do, I find it difficult to believe that any school under threat would be ignored. If you're genuinely curious, ask LEO you're friends with in your municipality, or LEO among your own family and friends to get an idea how professional LE is in your area. But you shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet. My assertions included.
  - acdha 5y ago
    I notice that you didn’t demand a citation for the original anecdote. Consider what it would take for it to be true: did California pass a law treating police officers like sex offenders, prohibiting them from being within a certain distance of a school? Seems unlikely given that they still have resource officers assigned to schools and there’s no way that wouldn’t be a major national news story. Now, given our national obsession with gun rights it may be that they couldn’t stop someone white with a gun from walking near a school[1] but there’s a 0% chance they couldn’t monitor the situation and make their presence known the way they do every day for teenagers with skateboards or the wrong colors on their clothes. Note to the deleted comment: note that I'm not saying that it's definitely untrue but simply that we have no way of evaluating it without something like a reference to a specific law or policy document, public comment from a named spokesperson, etc. There are enough levels of removal that the potential for misunderstanding would be high even if this wasn't touching on several of the hottest political issues at the moment, and that lack of context also affects how a lot of people might feel about it. For example, if this is true as written is that because there was a legal restriction passed setting a burden of proof for a police officer to interact with members of the public or was it something like the local sheriff not wanting to have an incident when a provocative local gun owner is insisting on their rights to free carry anywhere? A lot of people might have different opinions on the appropriate course of action based on context like that. 1. I realize some people might find this provocative but I'm thinking about how at two of the high schools I went to I had at least one classmate who'd brought a gun to school, and the second one had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated when some warning signs were apparently ignored. It's quite the contrast with the way hispanic students were “randomly” searched, and really didn't want to be found to have anything even as dangerous as a Swiss Army knife.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
zucked 5y ago
This is happening in my major metro, as well. A kind of flippant attitude toward even the most basic of compliance seems to be taking root. Cars are running Stop signs and red lights without even slowing, the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise and all of this seems to be happening at a time when enforcement is virtually non-existent. Even more alarming is that property crime (theft, particularly) is through the roof. While I place a lot of the blame at the feet of the police for failing to enforce law, I also understand that at least in my city, even repeat offenders are being released back into the wild with no skin in the game - a "personal recognizance" bond. I'm a left of center kind of guy, but this idea that we can totally kid-glove criminals (especially repeat ones) with peace and love and respect and whatever new-agey shenanigans that's helped us get to where our social order is falling apart doesn't fly with me.
- asciimike 5y ago
  > the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise I have noticed this too, and am curious if it is: - DMVs being slow/understaffed or plates aren't available, but people need to drive - conscious negligence of simply not registering your car and betting it won't be enforced
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    DMVs have been easily accessible and you can even make online appointments in my state since before pandemic, but I see plenty of cars driving without license plates or without paying the annual car taxes (i.e. registration fees seen via sticker).
- User23 5y ago
  Every city cop I know is checked out and counting the days to retirement. They have families and don’t want their lives ruined because an encounter with a person of the wrong race went bad.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
matthewmcg 5y ago
Who is allegedly telling the police they "cannot intervene"? And why would they say it?
darkwizard42 5y ago
I can't find the stat, but it was in an SF Chronicle article on police not doing anything about a homeless person tearing down a parklet, but in San Francisco, the number of traffic violations ticketed has gone from 10K+ to <1K in the same period... it is really astonishing how lax it has become and it looks like traffic and property crime is the least enforced.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
> I don't know what it's like [in NYC]… It's hilarious. Our biggest traffic offenders are the cops themselves. They speed, run reds on a whim, park in the middle of sidewalks, it's totally cool and we love it. It’s so great that there's a twitter account (@placardabuse) that tracks public officials who flout the law and has no shortage of content. As for enforcement: they don't. The explanation I've heard is, "We don't like being the bad guy." They join the force to become CSI detectives or terrarism-fighting SWAT soldiers, not to be that shithead who ruined your commute home. I'm definitely sure that our new police-chief-mayor — who just cancelled a widely-loved car-free-street program in Clinton Hill because one of his cronies thought it was annoying — will be right on top of things. [edit] Oh, and regarding these noise cameras… the very vocal minority of New Yorkers who have cars fight tooth and nail against camera speeding enforcement. The rest of us don't speak up because we don't have cars so we don't feel as affected. Also we don't even have control over our own laws, that’s all in the hands of the state gov't. So I have little faith that this will plan will survive, but hey, fingers crossed X,,
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  Check it out, same NY court officer https://twitter.com/_elkue/status/1494021798924623872?s=21 https://twitter.com/_elkue/status/1494021798924623872?s=21 https://twitter.com/nycbikelanes/status/1494022728185270277?s=21 https://twitter.com/nycbikelanes/status/1494022728185270277?...
whyenot 5y ago
Since we are sharing anecdata, CHP are camped out on southbound 280 by 85 almost every morning. They usually have someone pulled over. More broadly, I think it makes sense to automate some law enforcement activities by using speed cameras, etc. Cameras remove problems with bias and escalation. They also free up LEOs to focus on activities that can't be automated. The alternative is hire more officers and pay them more. That's not something that voters appear willing to do, even in the affluent Bay Area. (...or to do anything about homelessness in the South Bay; apparently we have collectively decided that the answer is to just ignore the problem and look the other way as people slowly die on the street)
tzs 5y ago
> The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police. A licensed gun owner can have a gun near a school in Washington, so why would you expect police to be able to intervene when someone is merely approaching a school? Police could ask the person what they are doing, but unless they have probable cause that the person is committing a crime they can't arrest them.
moogleii 5y ago
Police are everywhere in Manhattan. Pre-pandemic, it would be odd not to see several per day on patrol on a normal day to day. In SoCal, I can go days without seeing one. Having said that, they don't have the best rep for enforcing traffic violations here.
User23 5y ago
The lack of enforcement appears to be causing an increase in bad driving[1]. Anyhow I view this as a good thing. The people spoke loudly that they wanted less policing and they got what they asked for. This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened. Now I personally don’t want depolicing, but I accept that in a democracy I won’t always get my way. [1] https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-releases-new-data-showing-road-fatalities-spiked-first-half-2021 https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-releases-...
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened. Are you aware of any changes in (local) government policies in these affected areas? My cynical take is that this is an intentional play by police to allow things to deteriorate so that the public begs for the police to step up and rollback the loss of support since the high profile police-instigated incidents that culminated in George Floyd's killing. I don't think it's going to shake out that way, at least not as quickly as they'd hope.
  - User23 5y ago
    Many district attorneys who ran on a leniency platform were elected. Every arrest involves risks to both the officer and the suspect. If the DA isn’t going to file charges why would a rational officer take those risks?
VanillaIceWater 5y ago
toomanybeersies 5y ago
I'm not sure what it's like in the USA, but in Australia it's rare to see police on freeways, because traffic enforcement is done with cameras these days. When I drove from Melbourne to Brisbane and back, a 3,500 km round trip on mostly dual carriageway freeways, I didn't see a single cop outside of built up areas.

acdha 5y ago

> The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police. It’s not true but it makes more sense if they’re saying that as a negotiating tactic: the police are banking that if the media coverage is dominated by stories about crime rising there will be a big reduction in support for police accountability.

seneca 5y ago
What inside knowledge do you have that indicates it's not true? You can't just assume something is false because it contradicts what you want to be true.
- kevinh 5y ago
  What knowledge do you have that it is true other than a thirdhand account by someone on a web forum?
  - seneca 5y ago
    None, that's why I haven't made a statement claiming it's true or not, unlike the person I'm responding to. That's what you do when you have no information.
- lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  Yet, you didn't apply that level of criticism to the parent post either. Some person's niece saying the police chief said it? Like that wouldn't be news worthy? Like the police chief wouldn't immediately raise that to the press because "look what these liberals are telling me now"? Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
  - technothrasher 5y ago
    Seneca didn't say it was true. They simply questioned acdha's claim that it was false. This is fair to question. But I suspect based on the rest of acdha's post that "it's not true" was shorthand for the more reasonable "I'm not convinced that it's true".
    - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
      Sure. But senaca wasn't upset how 01100011 got from "My best friends sisters boyfriend" to "That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police."
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  I can guarantee you that if a school in my particular municipality is under threat, police are going to roll in and roll deep. Morale or no morale. I think people are confused as to the types of crime police are backing off of policing. Shooting up Walmarts, schools, or churches will absolutely evoke a robust response here. Of course, I can't speak for municipalities outside of this particular county here in flyover country. But knowing police and firefighters the way that I do, I find it difficult to believe that any school under threat would be ignored. If you're genuinely curious, ask LEO you're friends with in your municipality, or LEO among your own family and friends to get an idea how professional LE is in your area. But you shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet. My assertions included.
- acdha 5y ago
  I notice that you didn’t demand a citation for the original anecdote. Consider what it would take for it to be true: did California pass a law treating police officers like sex offenders, prohibiting them from being within a certain distance of a school? Seems unlikely given that they still have resource officers assigned to schools and there’s no way that wouldn’t be a major national news story. Now, given our national obsession with gun rights it may be that they couldn’t stop someone white with a gun from walking near a school[1] but there’s a 0% chance they couldn’t monitor the situation and make their presence known the way they do every day for teenagers with skateboards or the wrong colors on their clothes. Note to the deleted comment: note that I'm not saying that it's definitely untrue but simply that we have no way of evaluating it without something like a reference to a specific law or policy document, public comment from a named spokesperson, etc. There are enough levels of removal that the potential for misunderstanding would be high even if this wasn't touching on several of the hottest political issues at the moment, and that lack of context also affects how a lot of people might feel about it. For example, if this is true as written is that because there was a legal restriction passed setting a burden of proof for a police officer to interact with members of the public or was it something like the local sheriff not wanting to have an incident when a provocative local gun owner is insisting on their rights to free carry anywhere? A lot of people might have different opinions on the appropriate course of action based on context like that. 1. I realize some people might find this provocative but I'm thinking about how at two of the high schools I went to I had at least one classmate who'd brought a gun to school, and the second one had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated when some warning signs were apparently ignored. It's quite the contrast with the way hispanic students were “randomly” searched, and really didn't want to be found to have anything even as dangerous as a Swiss Army knife.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

zucked 5y ago

This is happening in my major metro, as well. A kind of flippant attitude toward even the most basic of compliance seems to be taking root. Cars are running Stop signs and red lights without even slowing, the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise and all of this seems to be happening at a time when enforcement is virtually non-existent. Even more alarming is that property crime (theft, particularly) is through the roof. While I place a lot of the blame at the feet of the police for failing to enforce law, I also understand that at least in my city, even repeat offenders are being released back into the wild with no skin in the game - a "personal recognizance" bond. I'm a left of center kind of guy, but this idea that we can totally kid-glove criminals (especially repeat ones) with peace and love and respect and whatever new-agey shenanigans that's helped us get to where our social order is falling apart doesn't fly with me.

asciimike 5y ago
> the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise I have noticed this too, and am curious if it is: - DMVs being slow/understaffed or plates aren't available, but people need to drive - conscious negligence of simply not registering your car and betting it won't be enforced
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  DMVs have been easily accessible and you can even make online appointments in my state since before pandemic, but I see plenty of cars driving without license plates or without paying the annual car taxes (i.e. registration fees seen via sticker).
User23 5y ago
Every city cop I know is checked out and counting the days to retirement. They have families and don’t want their lives ruined because an encounter with a person of the wrong race went bad.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

matthewmcg 5y ago

Who is allegedly telling the police they "cannot intervene"? And why would they say it?

darkwizard42 5y ago

I can't find the stat, but it was in an SF Chronicle article on police not doing anything about a homeless person tearing down a parklet, but in San Francisco, the number of traffic violations ticketed has gone from 10K+ to <1K in the same period... it is really astonishing how lax it has become and it looks like traffic and property crime is the least enforced.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago

> I don't know what it's like [in NYC]… It's hilarious. Our biggest traffic offenders are the cops themselves. They speed, run reds on a whim, park in the middle of sidewalks, it's totally cool and we love it. It’s so great that there's a twitter account (@placardabuse) that tracks public officials who flout the law and has no shortage of content. As for enforcement: they don't. The explanation I've heard is, "We don't like being the bad guy." They join the force to become CSI detectives or terrarism-fighting SWAT soldiers, not to be that shithead who ruined your commute home. I'm definitely sure that our new police-chief-mayor — who just cancelled a widely-loved car-free-street program in Clinton Hill because one of his cronies thought it was annoying — will be right on top of things. [edit] Oh, and regarding these noise cameras… the very vocal minority of New Yorkers who have cars fight tooth and nail against camera speeding enforcement. The rest of us don't speak up because we don't have cars so we don't feel as affected. Also we don't even have control over our own laws, that’s all in the hands of the state gov't. So I have little faith that this will plan will survive, but hey, fingers crossed X,,

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
Check it out, same NY court officer https://twitter.com/_elkue/status/1494021798924623872?s=21 https://twitter.com/_elkue/status/1494021798924623872?s=21 https://twitter.com/nycbikelanes/status/1494022728185270277?s=21 https://twitter.com/nycbikelanes/status/1494022728185270277?...

whyenot 5y ago

Since we are sharing anecdata, CHP are camped out on southbound 280 by 85 almost every morning. They usually have someone pulled over. More broadly, I think it makes sense to automate some law enforcement activities by using speed cameras, etc. Cameras remove problems with bias and escalation. They also free up LEOs to focus on activities that can't be automated. The alternative is hire more officers and pay them more. That's not something that voters appear willing to do, even in the affluent Bay Area. (...or to do anything about homelessness in the South Bay; apparently we have collectively decided that the answer is to just ignore the problem and look the other way as people slowly die on the street)

tzs 5y ago

> The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police. A licensed gun owner can have a gun near a school in Washington, so why would you expect police to be able to intervene when someone is merely approaching a school? Police could ask the person what they are doing, but unless they have probable cause that the person is committing a crime they can't arrest them.

moogleii 5y ago

Police are everywhere in Manhattan. Pre-pandemic, it would be odd not to see several per day on patrol on a normal day to day. In SoCal, I can go days without seeing one. Having said that, they don't have the best rep for enforcing traffic violations here.

User23 5y ago

The lack of enforcement appears to be causing an increase in bad driving[1]. Anyhow I view this as a good thing. The people spoke loudly that they wanted less policing and they got what they asked for. This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened. Now I personally don’t want depolicing, but I accept that in a democracy I won’t always get my way. [1] https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-releases-new-data-showing-road-fatalities-spiked-first-half-2021 https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-releases-...

sangnoir 5y ago
> This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened. Are you aware of any changes in (local) government policies in these affected areas? My cynical take is that this is an intentional play by police to allow things to deteriorate so that the public begs for the police to step up and rollback the loss of support since the high profile police-instigated incidents that culminated in George Floyd's killing. I don't think it's going to shake out that way, at least not as quickly as they'd hope.
- User23 5y ago
  Many district attorneys who ran on a leniency platform were elected. Every arrest involves risks to both the officer and the suspect. If the DA isn’t going to file charges why would a rational officer take those risks?

VanillaIceWater 5y ago

toomanybeersies 5y ago

I'm not sure what it's like in the USA, but in Australia it's rare to see police on freeways, because traffic enforcement is done with cameras these days. When I drove from Melbourne to Brisbane and back, a 3,500 km round trip on mostly dual carriageway freeways, I didn't see a single cop outside of built up areas.