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"While reasons behind the drop are multi-faceted, Cook and other experts warn that more people getting away with murder in the the U.S. is driving a kind of doo

by jdkee 3y ago

"While reasons behind the drop are multi-faceted, Cook and other experts warn that more people getting away with murder in the the U.S. is driving a kind of doom loop of mutual mistrust: low murder clearance rates impede future investigations which in turn potentially drive up killings in some communities where a lack of arrests undermines deterrence and sends a message that the police will not or cannot protect them." Interesting that the article mentions the sizable drop in clearance rates in 2020 yet does not offer up any explanation for why that may be the case.

owyn 3y ago
Police didn't like the "defund the police" movement (which was most active in 2020, so there's your temporal coincidence). The theory is that they are deliberately doing a bad job to make crime worse. Just be bad at your job and you'll get paid more because the low morale and understaffing means it's harder to hire and your overtime pay goes up so that's a win-win. In general no defunding actually happened anywhere. If you google around you'll find plenty of articles about that [0]. From the article: "local spending on police increased in 90 percent of locations since 2019." Anecdote, I've only talked to one former Oakland cop in person, but when he talked about his experience literally ALL he talked about was overtime and how to get more of it, and this was years before the pandemic. So it seems to be part of the institutional culture now. In Oakland, the police department is like 25% of the total city budget. Depending on the year and what you count as "budget" it can be closer to 40% of the general fund [1]. Either way, as a percentage their budget has actually gone UP significantly since 2019, mostly due to excessive overtime. It works "kind of" like a protection racket. Some back of the napkin math and the OPD budget is something like $500k per officer and $3.5 million per murder, which they don't prevent and barely bother trying to solve. I think a few million redirected to better mental health and homeless services would probably pay off. They have lots of new SUV's which they like to drive through residential neighborhoods really fast though. [0] https://abc7news.com/defund-police-oakland-crime-shooting/12311750/ https://abc7news.com/defund-police-oakland-crime-shooting/12... [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Ou1LrUcAE67SZ?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Ou1LrUcAE67SZ?format=jpg&name=...

by jdkee 3y ago

owyn 3y ago

Police didn't like the "defund the police" movement (which was most active in 2020, so there's your temporal coincidence). The theory is that they are deliberately doing a bad job to make crime worse. Just be bad at your job and you'll get paid more because the low morale and understaffing means it's harder to hire and your overtime pay goes up so that's a win-win. In general no defunding actually happened anywhere. If you google around you'll find plenty of articles about that [0]. From the article: "local spending on police increased in 90 percent of locations since 2019." Anecdote, I've only talked to one former Oakland cop in person, but when he talked about his experience literally ALL he talked about was overtime and how to get more of it, and this was years before the pandemic. So it seems to be part of the institutional culture now. In Oakland, the police department is like 25% of the total city budget. Depending on the year and what you count as "budget" it can be closer to 40% of the general fund [1]. Either way, as a percentage their budget has actually gone UP significantly since 2019, mostly due to excessive overtime. It works "kind of" like a protection racket. Some back of the napkin math and the OPD budget is something like $500k per officer and $3.5 million per murder, which they don't prevent and barely bother trying to solve. I think a few million redirected to better mental health and homeless services would probably pay off. They have lots of new SUV's which they like to drive through residential neighborhoods really fast though. [0] https://abc7news.com/defund-police-oakland-crime-shooting/12311750/ https://abc7news.com/defund-police-oakland-crime-shooting/12... [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Ou1LrUcAE67SZ?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Ou1LrUcAE67SZ?format=jpg&name=...