4 ms·

> In fact, we’ve gotten worse at it over time. Consider the homicide clearance rate. It was around 80% in the 1960s. Today it’s more or less a coin-flip. I thi

> In fact, we’ve gotten worse at it over time. Consider the homicide clearance rate. It was around 80% in the 1960s. Today it’s more or less a coin-flip. I think this needs adjustment for whether they caught the right person. This was before video cameras, DNA, etc. and during a time of significant racial bigotry. Same with car theft, vandalism, etc. Standards for convictions back then were laughably bad.

bko 2y ago
Sure, happy to consider an explanation. But I do notice that a lot of obvious crimes are not being prosecuted, which leads me to believe that police and prosecutors just aren't trying very hard. Why doesn't the police officer care that my bike was stolen? Why are package thieves stealing things in broad daylight? Why can a YouTuber setup a sting operation where they get their ps4 stolen in broad daylight after a few hours but police can't operate the same sting?
- rachofsunshine 2y ago
  Well, if nothing else, that would be an enforcement issue - not a policy choice. A policy choice would be "we're going to reduce the penalties for bike theft", not "we're failing to catch bike thieves". But looking at the post, it claims there are 20 bike thefts per day in NYC. Looking at Midtown Manhattan alone, I count a roughly 14 x 40 street grid, i.e., 560 blocks. The city as a whole is presumably many thousands, meaning that the probability of a bike theft on any specific block of NYC on a given day is <1%. It's possible that that is approaching saturation (i.e., that the 20 stolen bikes represent a substantial percentage of all bikes left out on a given day), but 20 bikes left out per day seems awfully low for a city of more than ten million. So my suspicion is that your premise is wrong, and that a YouTuber can't set up a sting operation where they get their ps4 stolen in broad daylight after a few hours consistently. I don't know that for sure, but it would be consistent with the observed evidence, and without reporting of negative results positive results tell you very little about actual rates. Anecdotally, I lived in a porch-theft-prone section of the Bay Area for several years and have never had a package stolen. Doesn't mean it can't happen, or even that it isn't a serious problem (the Bay objectively has very high rates of property crime). But there's a vast difference between "leaving a package out is taking a significant risk" and "leaving a package out absolutely will be stolen reliably in a very short period of time".
  - bko 2y ago
    > So my suspicion is that your premise is wrong, and that a YouTuber can't set up a sting operation where they get their ps4 stolen in broad daylight after a few hours consistently Why does it have to work consistently? The premise still holds, if a YouTuber has the resources available to catch a thief and he's doing so for imaginary internet points, surely our police can do it. Or take Inside Edition: > Brazen bandits in San Francisco keep breaking into car windows, stealing anything left inside the vehicle. The smash-and-grab problem is especially bad near Ghirardelli Square where tourists flock for chocolate treats and photos. To test how bad the smash-and-grab problem is, Inside Edition purposely left a suitcase, a Bluetooth speaker, a purse and a guitar with GPS trackers inside a bait car. An hour later, two men showed up and stole the purse and speaker. The mayor of San Francisco declined an interview but tells Inside Edition in a statement that they are implementing new tools to combat car break-ins, including utilizing their own bait cars and installing hundreds of new cameras at smash-and-grab hot spots. It took them an hour. Maybe they're lying, but its worth trying. Or use tracking. I've seen other videos that follow the people and they hit up a lot of cars. Its a full time job. It's not a lot of them, so just get the few that are causing issues. Those two men likely caused millions of dollars of damage over their criminal careers. It's worth investing to get them off the streets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwMM_8cnxI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwMM_8cnxI0
    - rachofsunshine 2y ago
      I'm not saying that it's literally impossible, I'm saying that it need not be trivial or cost effective, or that the level of the problem we see may be after such mitigation measures and not before them, or that limited resources may be being allocated elsewhere, or that there might be local incentive gradients blocking solutions - or more generally that the claims you're making don't seem to have taken these alternatives seriously. "It doesn't seem like it should be that hard" is a fair observation, and a reasonable starting point for questions, but it isn't a proof that it isn't that hard and it isn't the end of the conversation. Two things stick out at me here: one, I don't think Inside Edition would publish a piece entitled "we put out a bait car and nothing happened", so the negative-reporting bias is still operative. And unless Breed's office is just lying (possible, of course), your own choice of quote says SF is apparently already doing what you want them to do. My claim here isn't that there isn't a problem or that there aren't solutions to it or even that this specific approach isn't a solution to it. My claim is that this is not a good argument (in the sense of validity, not in the sense of correctness of conclusion), because it is not engaging with any alternative explanations or even investigating seriously whether this approach has already been tried. Instead, it's simply going "well I, a random blogger, thought of something that seems like a plausible solution, so the only possible reason for failure is that city governments don't care about crime".
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Did the police care in the 1960s? Did they set up sting operations for package thieves?

bko 2y ago

Sure, happy to consider an explanation. But I do notice that a lot of obvious crimes are not being prosecuted, which leads me to believe that police and prosecutors just aren't trying very hard. Why doesn't the police officer care that my bike was stolen? Why are package thieves stealing things in broad daylight? Why can a YouTuber setup a sting operation where they get their ps4 stolen in broad daylight after a few hours but police can't operate the same sting?

rachofsunshine 2y ago
Well, if nothing else, that would be an enforcement issue - not a policy choice. A policy choice would be "we're going to reduce the penalties for bike theft", not "we're failing to catch bike thieves". But looking at the post, it claims there are 20 bike thefts per day in NYC. Looking at Midtown Manhattan alone, I count a roughly 14 x 40 street grid, i.e., 560 blocks. The city as a whole is presumably many thousands, meaning that the probability of a bike theft on any specific block of NYC on a given day is <1%. It's possible that that is approaching saturation (i.e., that the 20 stolen bikes represent a substantial percentage of all bikes left out on a given day), but 20 bikes left out per day seems awfully low for a city of more than ten million. So my suspicion is that your premise is wrong, and that a YouTuber can't set up a sting operation where they get their ps4 stolen in broad daylight after a few hours consistently. I don't know that for sure, but it would be consistent with the observed evidence, and without reporting of negative results positive results tell you very little about actual rates. Anecdotally, I lived in a porch-theft-prone section of the Bay Area for several years and have never had a package stolen. Doesn't mean it can't happen, or even that it isn't a serious problem (the Bay objectively has very high rates of property crime). But there's a vast difference between "leaving a package out is taking a significant risk" and "leaving a package out absolutely will be stolen reliably in a very short period of time".
- bko 2y ago
  > So my suspicion is that your premise is wrong, and that a YouTuber can't set up a sting operation where they get their ps4 stolen in broad daylight after a few hours consistently Why does it have to work consistently? The premise still holds, if a YouTuber has the resources available to catch a thief and he's doing so for imaginary internet points, surely our police can do it. Or take Inside Edition: > Brazen bandits in San Francisco keep breaking into car windows, stealing anything left inside the vehicle. The smash-and-grab problem is especially bad near Ghirardelli Square where tourists flock for chocolate treats and photos. To test how bad the smash-and-grab problem is, Inside Edition purposely left a suitcase, a Bluetooth speaker, a purse and a guitar with GPS trackers inside a bait car. An hour later, two men showed up and stole the purse and speaker. The mayor of San Francisco declined an interview but tells Inside Edition in a statement that they are implementing new tools to combat car break-ins, including utilizing their own bait cars and installing hundreds of new cameras at smash-and-grab hot spots. It took them an hour. Maybe they're lying, but its worth trying. Or use tracking. I've seen other videos that follow the people and they hit up a lot of cars. Its a full time job. It's not a lot of them, so just get the few that are causing issues. Those two men likely caused millions of dollars of damage over their criminal careers. It's worth investing to get them off the streets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwMM_8cnxI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwMM_8cnxI0
  - rachofsunshine 2y ago
    I'm not saying that it's literally impossible, I'm saying that it need not be trivial or cost effective, or that the level of the problem we see may be after such mitigation measures and not before them, or that limited resources may be being allocated elsewhere, or that there might be local incentive gradients blocking solutions - or more generally that the claims you're making don't seem to have taken these alternatives seriously. "It doesn't seem like it should be that hard" is a fair observation, and a reasonable starting point for questions, but it isn't a proof that it isn't that hard and it isn't the end of the conversation. Two things stick out at me here: one, I don't think Inside Edition would publish a piece entitled "we put out a bait car and nothing happened", so the negative-reporting bias is still operative. And unless Breed's office is just lying (possible, of course), your own choice of quote says SF is apparently already doing what you want them to do. My claim here isn't that there isn't a problem or that there aren't solutions to it or even that this specific approach isn't a solution to it. My claim is that this is not a good argument (in the sense of validity, not in the sense of correctness of conclusion), because it is not engaging with any alternative explanations or even investigating seriously whether this approach has already been tried. Instead, it's simply going "well I, a random blogger, thought of something that seems like a plausible solution, so the only possible reason for failure is that city governments don't care about crime".
pavel_lishin 2y ago
Did the police care in the 1960s? Did they set up sting operations for package thieves?