7 ms·

Why do people claim that "the police can't solve this" about issues that the police could absolutely solve by just enforcing the law? Post some police outside

• nikanj 4y ago
  What happens after the arrest? In the current system, the perpetrator get logged into the system and released after they promise to appear in court. In 6-18 months the court will issue some fines. Meanwhile the person is free to continue petty crime
• swilliamsio 4y ago
  Physically placing police officers outside literally every store in a city seems very impractical and expensive.
  • bpodgursky 4y ago
    These are professional criminals who raid multiple stores a day, every day. You don't have to catch and convict them every time to be effective. If you caught and convicted even 2% of the crimes, crime would be massively lower within 6 months, because it's the same people doing it over and over.
    • db48x 4y ago
      That assumes that they are actually convicted and put in jail. The DA doesn’t believe that putting people in jail is effective at reducing crime, and so just doesn’t.
      • yodon 4y ago
        The DA you are referring to was removed from office five months ago and replaced by attorneys who quit his office in disgust and led the effort to recall him. SF still has a lot of work to do but Chessa Boudin is no longer running the SF DA's office.
        • db48x 4y ago
          s/doesn’t/didn’t/g
      • ilyt 4y ago
        And we go back to "how about you just enforce the law, catch people breaking it and put them in jail"
    • wahnfrieden 4y ago
      how does the cost of this compare with say UBI? bearing in mind there's a cost to illegal/legalized civil forfeiture theft, or caging more people, as well
      • xienze 4y ago
        Are you laboring under the delusion that these same criminals wouldn't happily pocket the UBI in between shoplifting raids for which they face almost no consequences?
        • wahnfrieden 4y ago
          got a source for calling me (or that) delusional?
          • gsinclair 4y ago
            Category error: the claim was that an idea is delusional, not a person.
            • wahnfrieden 4y ago
              how is this helpful? it's not even correct
              • tristor 4y ago
                You’re making the error in belief that criminals primarily commit crime out of necessity, rather than out of inculcated behavioral habit. At least in the US, most crimes are committed by people who were brought up from a young age in a culture of criminality. There is no ethical or moral dilemma on the part of the criminal, their behavior is fully in line with the social mores of their cultural upbringing. The folks running in shoplifting and robbery gangs are not stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving children, criminality is their profession.
                • 4y ago
  • jeffbee 4y ago
    You don't need that. We have physical police officers who are sometimes present in some places and they don't do anything. They are on a tacit strike and have been for years. If you look at SF compstat, larceny-theft is on pace to be about 34,000 citywide this year, which will put thefts for this year lower than every year 2013-2019, and higher than 2020-21, which were exceptionally low (pandemic). If you look at the FBI UCR report you'll see that clearance of theft is on a 40-year-long monotonic decline. Theft rate was about the same around 1990, but the SFPD clearance rate was 3-5x higher back then. This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs. Anyway if you want to know why we have to constantly hear about thefts in SF which are objectively at the lowest levels in a recent years, here's the explanation for that: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/26/crime-midterm-elections-news-coverage-fox-news/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/26/crime-mid...
    • HPsquared 4y ago
      With a 2.4% clearance rate on reported cases, most people aren't going to bother reporting thefts.
      • jeffbee 4y ago
        When citizens try to report crimes, the SFPD will just stand there ignoring them. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/SF-police-crime-16931399.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article... When the district attorney is busy busting a car burglary gang, doing the SFPD's job for them, the SFPD refuses to help. https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-francisco-quickly-car-burglary-ring-report-alleges/40106042# https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-f... SFPD is a reactionary gang who are invested in making crime in SF be and appear to be as bad as possible.
    • leephillips 4y ago
      > This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs. Maybe...but the two might be related, no? After some years of the police observing that the people they arrest are released with no charges and no prosecution, why would they bother to keep arresting people? It sounds demoralizing.
  • treis 4y ago
    The guys post is interesting to sort of see the change in society. Times were that the shop owner would physically stop shop lifters. Now we mostly have low wage employees in shops. Understandable that they don't want the risk of injury and liability so they don't stop shoplifters. Ok, so we hire specialized employees ostensibly trained in security. But due to liability reasons they aren't allowed to physically stop shoplifters. That makes them basically useless. Ok, so well there's always cops. But they have a similar cost benefit analysis as the other parties with the same result. It's not worth it to the individual cops to intervene. Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff? The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff? And why risk the blowback of a police brutality incident?
    • hotpotamus 4y ago
      > Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff? I'm sure that's a factor, but physical altercations also bring risk to the cop. I don't know how generous their disability pensions are, but I suspect it's better for them and their family to still be able to work. Also, anyone in the US can be armed which tends to raise the stakes that cops perceive with every interaction - look at their training material/propaganda sometime and it paints a very adversarial picture.
    • pmoriarty 4y ago
      "The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff?" It's not their money, so many of them have no problem spending it. That's not to mention those who personally benefit from putting more people in jail because they have investments in the prison industry, get some sort of bribe/kickback, or just have an easier time getting elected/appointed because they're "tough on crime".
• MrPatan 4y ago
  The DA freeing the criminals right back out.
  • ModernMech 4y ago
    They got rid of that DA and put one in who claimed to be “tough on crime”. That hasn’t fixed anything yet.
    • jibe 4y ago
      He was DA for two and half years, and was only kicked out two and half months ago, so give it some time. Unfortunately, it almost always takes more time to build things than destroy them, so the damage may take a long tome to reverse.
    • asdajksah2123 4y ago
      Why would you decide to bring facts into the discussion when feelings are so much more important.
• conductr 4y ago
  Can’t post up in front of every store.
• yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
  Isn't it because the law changed? https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto-legal-california https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...
  • jeffbee 4y ago
    No, that's just right-wing propaganda. The threshold of felony theft was raised to $950. Before and after that change, California had one of the lowest thresholds in the nation. In Texas, for example, the threshold is $2500. So crime in California can't be explained by the change.
    • augustuspolius 4y ago
      Not sure if comparison to Texas is appropriate. Gun laws and property protection laws are very different there and act is a big deterrent for such crimes.
    • TMWNN 4y ago
      The difference is that in Texas and other states, misdemeanors are still prosecuted. In San Francisco, DA Boudin *did not*.
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  That only works if being locked up is a deterrent. If you have large numbers of mentally ill and/or drug addicted people living on the streets with little to lose then it's pretty easy to do a DDOS to the rest of society. Like drug dealing, you really want to catch the people a couple of steps up the chain, as the people on the frontline are just disposable cannon fodder and easily replaceable.
  • mc32 4y ago
    Also no cash bail. Prosecutors who claim lack of evidence or simply refuse to prosecute. A new DA will take time to right this ship. At least the new one has intention to arrest crime where the other one was sympathetic to criminals.
  • booleandilemma 4y ago
    This is the kind of analysis paralysis that gets us nowhere. More law enforcement, even at the lowest levels, acts as a deterrent to further crime. The problem is when we do nothing then people feel like they can get away with anything. I'm seeing this in nyc right now. Twice this week I've witnessed people acting violently in public. They know there will be no repercussions, and everyone else does too.
    • welshwelsh 4y ago
      Law enforcement helps to a degree, but it's not an efficient way of reducing crime. If it was, we would have solved this problem a long time ago. Personally, the reason I don't rob stores is that it's a waste of time. Software development is easier and pays far better than robbery. There's no moral aspect to it. If other people are robbing stores, they must be in a position where they think robbery is their most profitable option. Maybe they are desperate and need money today, maybe they don't have the skills to do anything more useful. In any case, that type of situation should never happen. >Twice this week I've witnessed people acting violently in public. They know there will be no repercussions It's not that they know there will be no repercussions, it's that they have nothing to lose. They don't have a career to keep or money or a house or the respect of others. They aren't integrated with society. You don't see politicians or executives doing this. Or put another way: what's the reward for good behavior? It should be much, much higher than the reward for crime, to the extent that people would never commit crimes simply because it's not a good use of their time.
• _chu1 4y ago
  Because they want to believe that SF is some sort of paradise utopia for the wealthy
• rufus_foreman 4y ago
• cumshitpiss 4y ago
• mms__ 4y ago
  You have the largest prison population in the world, at some point maybe you should try a different solution
• throwaway9870 4y ago
  The police are only part of the problem, the criminals still needs to be charged and convicted. There was a reason SF recalled their DA. Also, many of these people are mentally ill, and the arrest can turn physical. In the current environment, police have very little room to make mistakes and even if they do everything according to their training, public opinion can really go against them (see Nicholas Reardon). Nobody wants to be public enemy #1 for doing their job. Imagine reading an honest job description for being a police officer: * Good benefits, poor hours * Willing to risk life to save others even if they hate you. * Must make split second life and death decisions and if you are wrong, you can go to jail for lifetime. * You will be recorded and every important decision will be second guessed by people who have never done the job * Even if you follow training perfectly, public opinion might go against you which could lead to criminal charges. Can you image taking a sys admin job like that? Hackernews would laugh non-stop at that posting. But we expect less educated people to do that job for less money. Good luck with that plan. Just like we have done to teachers in our schools, I think we have made the job almost impossible. In a more gentle society, I can see the plan working, but in our current cities, I think our expectations are complete fiction.
  • hotpotamus 4y ago
    You've more elaborately written my exact thoughts on the subject. Anytime I hear on HN about how we need more people to do a job, I think, "would you want to do that job?", or maybe more relevant, "would you want your kids to do that job?". I suppose it could be taken as a snarky, gotcha question, but it's a question I ask myself often. Someone's kids have to do these jobs.
  • Eric_WVGG 4y ago
    let me give that list another pass… * Unbelievable benefits, poor hours * Carte blanc opportunity to deliver violence on anyone you hate * Must make split second life and death decisions, and you've qualified immunity to protect you even from deliberate wrongdoings * You will be joining a team whose reputation is so miserable that they're asked to record everything; those cameras can be turned off or trashed. * If you fail to follow your training perfectly, you're probably going to be able to keep your job through to retirement anyway. Can you imagine what kinds of people take jobs like this? One thing that you and I agree on — in a more gentle society, police departments would work. We've spent the past forty years dismantling society, tearing the copper wiring out of every support structure for the lower class, and driven people deeper into poverty. If we didn't create a society that required stormtroopers to keep order, we wouldn't have this kind of crime or need stormtroopers.
• jscipione 4y ago
  Because the police are only as good as the people giving them their orders.
• dfxm12 4y ago
  I don't know if this is the police's problem to solve. Police historically don't solve problems, but rather react to crime reported to them. They aren't Cotopaxi's or other private business' private security detail, and if they were to be tasked with trying to prevent crime before it happened, to profile us, closely watch over our every move, then we'd be literally living a police state. This is worse for society than a big corporation having a problem with shrinkage, or, God forbid, wood boards on their property getting graffitied.
• aiisjustanif 4y ago
  Because San Fran could do much better long term strategies to curb crime, like making San Fran more accessible and reducing inequality. You have less crime when people aren’t dramatically poor compared to others in the area and have access to care.
  • augustuspolius 4y ago
    Most of these mass daytime raids are done by people from the East Bay. Fixing inequality just in SF won’t address that.
  • hackinthebochs 4y ago
    Are there any concrete proposals to making SF "more accessible and reducing inequality"?
    • augustuspolius 4y ago
      I mean, previous DA’s refusal to act, the whole restorative justice movement, allowing homeless people to occupy the downtown, allowing widespread hard drug street distribution and consumption.. all these policies intend to reduce inequality and injustice. Really confusing policies by progressives who (probably) mean well.
• Spooky23 4y ago
  When Johnny Crackhead leaves the store with a garbage bag of loot, the officer goes to arrest him, and the guy offers some level of resistance. He gets wrestled to the ground cuffed and arrested. The guy getting arrested files a brutality claim, and the cop is jammed up for a few days with pay. Because the garbage bags of shampoo and shaving cream are <$1500, it’s petit larceny, and the DA won’t prosecute. So the guy gets printed and released assuming no warrants. When the cop gets off of the leave, the sergeant sits him down and says “Hey asshole, officer bob over there missed his kids concert covering your dumb ass. The lieutenant is pissed because you’re burning his budget.” Police aren’t idiots and faced with knee-jerk policy, they take the pragmatic approach - do nothing. Same thing happened with shootings. Pre 1990s, people pulling knives on officers would get beaten with a club. Lawsuits/liability made it more pragmatic to leap to lethal force.
  • vanilla_nut 4y ago
    Good point. As another commenter said: we've made these jobs impossible because we criticize each and every decision cops make. Then we wonder why they don't do anything. If I was micromanaged and scrutinized anywhere near the level we micromanage cops, I doubt I could do my job very effectively. I've only had negative cop interactions in my life, but I do empathize over this. Sadly, I'm not sure how to solve the problem. Today's culture doesn't seem to have any accommodation for people screwing up in any role.