5 ms·

So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely fru

So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong. Yes, you do not solve the "root problem of why people choose to commit crime" by putting repeat offenders in jail, but you do make the world way better for everyone else who is not a criminal. Poor people, immigrants, the downtrodden all disproportionately benefit from tough on crime policies because they are the people for whom have the least resources to isolate themselves from the chaos and antisocial behaviors of the worst among us. Its not a white kids in the marina that need to walk past piles of shit and needles to get to school, its the poor immigrant kids in the tenderloin who need to deal with this.

Clubber 4y ago
So I believe we put too many people in jail for too long. I think our justice system is pretty broken. Having said that, to fix it I never thought of just letting people commit crimes like areas in California seem to be doing. That's just as asinine but in the other direction. I always imagined giving people much lighter sentences for most things and if they repeat, then give them harsher and harsher sentences. Only the worst repeat offenders would get what they get today. I imagined not overcharging people hoping to scare someone into a plea. I imagined police not being able to interrogate and lie to children without a parent present. I imagined getting rid of pre textual stops to get innocent people's id's. I imagined "I smell marijuana," as not allowable probable cause. I imagined removing most K9 units. I imagined removing most SWAT units except for the largest cities. I imagined being able to remove bad police, bad prosecutors and bad judges from their positions of power. I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions.
- 0xB31B1B 4y ago
  The guy who hit the marina person on the head with a pipe was considered a "frequent flyer" by the SF police. They have tons (like 20+) of complaints against this person and the group they live with for various things like drug use, menacing behavior, starting fights, stealing, etc. A few businesses on the street have restraining orders on this person preventing them from entering for example the walgreens. A large issue we have with our criminal justice system in CA/SF right now is that "low level" non felony crimes (like theft of less than 950 dollars, public drug use, pooping in the street, menacing others), are treated more or less like an administrative issue and the criminal might be fined, but they won't be jailed, and there isn't an escalation policy where more and more low level crimes result in an escalation of consequences. This means that people can repeatedly perform extremely anti social behaviors (street shitting, public meth smoking, stealing 200 dollars of whatever from a store, threatening people and screaming) over and over and over again without an escalation of consequences for their actions. There is an escalation policy for things like murder or other felony crimes, but these escalations usually take a long time, and the end result is the repeat offenders do kill or cause serious harm before they are put in prison and taken out of society.
- DubiousPusher 4y ago
  > So I believe we put too many people in jail for too long. I think our justice system is pretty broken. Having said that, to fix it I never thought of just letting people commit crimes like areas in California seem to be doing. That's just as asinine but in the other direction. > I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions. This is a myth. Police everywhere prioritize violent crimes. Jails and prisons everywhere prioritize retaining violent criminals and when they have to, attempt to release the lowest risk offenders. When people have been prematurely released from jail it is not out of misplaced compassion. Mostly people are being released because the system is already at capacity. In fact many jails in the U.S. are well above capacity before they decide to release people. Some as much as 150% No matter where you are, a lot of violent crime goes un-solved. That has been true for decades. People cover up their crimes and many are reasonably good at it. The rise in crime during and following the pandemic has been significant for small, medium and large cities regardless of the policies adopted by those cities and regardless of the overriding politics of the state they are situated in.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >> I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions. >This is a myth. Police everywhere prioritize violent crimes. I was speaking mainly to petty crimes. I should have been more clear.
    - DubiousPusher 4y ago
      How much prison time does a person "deserve" for publicly injecting themselves with a chemical? How many more jails or prisons should we build to hold them? How much prison time do they "deserve" for doing it again? What percentage of the unhoused population should we continuously churn through the system? For the criminal justice system to contain this, I suspect you would have to create a large internment system which would something like double the size of U.S. incarceration. As I see it, the system is not failing for a lack of cruelty. But because there is a sizable population who have nothing left to lose.
      - 4y ago
zmnd 4y ago
People like to blame the politicians for what’s happening. However the politicians are not electing themselves. The problem is the people who with great intentions make things worse. Wait a few minutes until someone posts that “statistically it doesn’t happen and you are wrong”.
- lmaoge 4y ago
  Road to hell is paved with good intentions
  - candiodari 4y ago
    What you mean is social policy is mostly an excuse for expanding government, and government control. And "helping with root causes" always means expanding government departments, rather than, for example, dealing with housing shortages.
dvt 4y ago
> So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong. It's getting bad in LA as well. I've lived in Westwood (UCLA) and now Santa Monica since I went to school here around 2012. You'd always see homeless people every now and then, but they were mostly isolated to encampments and the "bad areas." Not anymore. I walk around a lot and work in coffee shops and hotel lobbies, and in the past year, I've witnessed people shooting up literally next to a kid's playground, I've been offered meth in the middle of the street (at like 10am in the morning, mind you), I hear people screaming/yelling at the top of their lungs outside of my apartment at midnight, had to dodge human poop in the middle of a sidewalk, a homeless person used my garage (the door was stuck open for a few weeks until someone came out to fix it) as a drug den, etc. I'm literally considering running for city council to try to fix this. We changed the city government a few years ago, but it's gotten worse, not better. It's honestly insane. I have a few friends that just had babies and I have no idea how you could raise a child in a city like this. When I get married/have kids, I'm not sure I would stay here.
- Balgair 4y ago
  Are we talking Arizona St. or Santa Monica Blvd or Sotel or west of the 405 here? Because Santa Monica Blvd. has been pretty bad for decades. That Starbucks/parklet area at Santa Monica and Bundy has been the worst for a long while.
  - dvt 4y ago
    Yeah, I mean even the "nice" areas, as in North of Wilshire, West of Lincoln.
    - Balgair 4y ago
      Oh man, now that's a shocker to me. Thanks for the reality check there.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  So what would you propose exactly? Make it illegal to not own a home so the police can throw these people in jail for being too poor to be around?
tablespoon 4y ago
> So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong. Yes, you do not solve the "root problem of why people choose to commit crime" by putting repeat offenders in jail, but you do make the world way better for everyone else who is not a criminal. AND by doing that you do harm, by perpetuating racist systems of of injustice and oppression. The only way to solve that more important problem is by addressing the root causes and allow longer term healing to happen. Yes, that means some people will be inconvenienced, but that's acceptable and a necessary part of the solution. The only way to speed that phase up is to implement comprehensive reparations quickly.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  >Yes, that means some people will be inconvenienced It's okay to say "killed" here. We all know that's the true cost of these policies.
cameldrv 4y ago
Eliminating the root causes of crime is a noble goal. Of course you can treat both the root cause and the symptoms, but if you want to get at the root cause, you have to know what the root cause is. Of course nothing complex has a single root cause. The main one I'm seeing though is extremely addictive drugs, specifically Meth and Fentanyl. A certain percentage of people, if they try these drugs, will become hopelessly addicted until they are living on the street stealing to buy more drugs. SF seems unwilling to do anything to disrupt this cycle.
KwisatzHaderack 4y ago
> Its not white kids in the marina that need to walk past piles of shit and needles Cue Rob Henderson’s luxury beliefs theory: Many rich white liberals support policies that lead to crime/chaos because it signals their high status and the options it affords (ie. I’ll just move to my other house in Marin if SF gets too crazy)

Clubber 4y ago

So I believe we put too many people in jail for too long. I think our justice system is pretty broken. Having said that, to fix it I never thought of just letting people commit crimes like areas in California seem to be doing. That's just as asinine but in the other direction. I always imagined giving people much lighter sentences for most things and if they repeat, then give them harsher and harsher sentences. Only the worst repeat offenders would get what they get today. I imagined not overcharging people hoping to scare someone into a plea. I imagined police not being able to interrogate and lie to children without a parent present. I imagined getting rid of pre textual stops to get innocent people's id's. I imagined "I smell marijuana," as not allowable probable cause. I imagined removing most K9 units. I imagined removing most SWAT units except for the largest cities. I imagined being able to remove bad police, bad prosecutors and bad judges from their positions of power. I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions.

0xB31B1B 4y ago
The guy who hit the marina person on the head with a pipe was considered a "frequent flyer" by the SF police. They have tons (like 20+) of complaints against this person and the group they live with for various things like drug use, menacing behavior, starting fights, stealing, etc. A few businesses on the street have restraining orders on this person preventing them from entering for example the walgreens. A large issue we have with our criminal justice system in CA/SF right now is that "low level" non felony crimes (like theft of less than 950 dollars, public drug use, pooping in the street, menacing others), are treated more or less like an administrative issue and the criminal might be fined, but they won't be jailed, and there isn't an escalation policy where more and more low level crimes result in an escalation of consequences. This means that people can repeatedly perform extremely anti social behaviors (street shitting, public meth smoking, stealing 200 dollars of whatever from a store, threatening people and screaming) over and over and over again without an escalation of consequences for their actions. There is an escalation policy for things like murder or other felony crimes, but these escalations usually take a long time, and the end result is the repeat offenders do kill or cause serious harm before they are put in prison and taken out of society.
DubiousPusher 4y ago
> So I believe we put too many people in jail for too long. I think our justice system is pretty broken. Having said that, to fix it I never thought of just letting people commit crimes like areas in California seem to be doing. That's just as asinine but in the other direction. > I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions. This is a myth. Police everywhere prioritize violent crimes. Jails and prisons everywhere prioritize retaining violent criminals and when they have to, attempt to release the lowest risk offenders. When people have been prematurely released from jail it is not out of misplaced compassion. Mostly people are being released because the system is already at capacity. In fact many jails in the U.S. are well above capacity before they decide to release people. Some as much as 150% No matter where you are, a lot of violent crime goes un-solved. That has been true for decades. People cover up their crimes and many are reasonably good at it. The rise in crime during and following the pandemic has been significant for small, medium and large cities regardless of the policies adopted by those cities and regardless of the overriding politics of the state they are situated in.
- Clubber 4y ago
  >> I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions. >This is a myth. Police everywhere prioritize violent crimes. I was speaking mainly to petty crimes. I should have been more clear.
  - DubiousPusher 4y ago
    How much prison time does a person "deserve" for publicly injecting themselves with a chemical? How many more jails or prisons should we build to hold them? How much prison time do they "deserve" for doing it again? What percentage of the unhoused population should we continuously churn through the system? For the criminal justice system to contain this, I suspect you would have to create a large internment system which would something like double the size of U.S. incarceration. As I see it, the system is not failing for a lack of cruelty. But because there is a sizable population who have nothing left to lose.
    - 4y ago

zmnd 4y ago

People like to blame the politicians for what’s happening. However the politicians are not electing themselves. The problem is the people who with great intentions make things worse. Wait a few minutes until someone posts that “statistically it doesn’t happen and you are wrong”.

lmaoge 4y ago
Road to hell is paved with good intentions
- candiodari 4y ago
  What you mean is social policy is mostly an excuse for expanding government, and government control. And "helping with root causes" always means expanding government departments, rather than, for example, dealing with housing shortages.

dvt 4y ago

> So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong. It's getting bad in LA as well. I've lived in Westwood (UCLA) and now Santa Monica since I went to school here around 2012. You'd always see homeless people every now and then, but they were mostly isolated to encampments and the "bad areas." Not anymore. I walk around a lot and work in coffee shops and hotel lobbies, and in the past year, I've witnessed people shooting up literally next to a kid's playground, I've been offered meth in the middle of the street (at like 10am in the morning, mind you), I hear people screaming/yelling at the top of their lungs outside of my apartment at midnight, had to dodge human poop in the middle of a sidewalk, a homeless person used my garage (the door was stuck open for a few weeks until someone came out to fix it) as a drug den, etc. I'm literally considering running for city council to try to fix this. We changed the city government a few years ago, but it's gotten worse, not better. It's honestly insane. I have a few friends that just had babies and I have no idea how you could raise a child in a city like this. When I get married/have kids, I'm not sure I would stay here.

Balgair 4y ago
Are we talking Arizona St. or Santa Monica Blvd or Sotel or west of the 405 here? Because Santa Monica Blvd. has been pretty bad for decades. That Starbucks/parklet area at Santa Monica and Bundy has been the worst for a long while.
- dvt 4y ago
  Yeah, I mean even the "nice" areas, as in North of Wilshire, West of Lincoln.
  - Balgair 4y ago
    Oh man, now that's a shocker to me. Thanks for the reality check there.
TremendousJudge 4y ago
So what would you propose exactly? Make it illegal to not own a home so the police can throw these people in jail for being too poor to be around?

tablespoon 4y ago

> So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong. Yes, you do not solve the "root problem of why people choose to commit crime" by putting repeat offenders in jail, but you do make the world way better for everyone else who is not a criminal. AND by doing that you do harm, by perpetuating racist systems of of injustice and oppression. The only way to solve that more important problem is by addressing the root causes and allow longer term healing to happen. Yes, that means some people will be inconvenienced, but that's acceptable and a necessary part of the solution. The only way to speed that phase up is to implement comprehensive reparations quickly.

remarkEon 4y ago
>Yes, that means some people will be inconvenienced It's okay to say "killed" here. We all know that's the true cost of these policies.

cameldrv 4y ago

Eliminating the root causes of crime is a noble goal. Of course you can treat both the root cause and the symptoms, but if you want to get at the root cause, you have to know what the root cause is. Of course nothing complex has a single root cause. The main one I'm seeing though is extremely addictive drugs, specifically Meth and Fentanyl. A certain percentage of people, if they try these drugs, will become hopelessly addicted until they are living on the street stealing to buy more drugs. SF seems unwilling to do anything to disrupt this cycle.

KwisatzHaderack 4y ago

> Its not white kids in the marina that need to walk past piles of shit and needles Cue Rob Henderson’s luxury beliefs theory: Many rich white liberals support policies that lead to crime/chaos because it signals their high status and the options it affords (ie. I’ll just move to my other house in Marin if SF gets too crazy)