If we as a society are OK with qualified law enforcement looking the other way, then we're OK with passing the buck to the unqualified.
Yes, it's a "rabbit hole [we're] not sure we're prepared to go down". We're not prepared. We're going down it
Yes, it's a "rabbit hole [we're] not sure we're prepared to go down". We're not prepared. We're going down it
You're excluding the admittedly somewhat bleak but still quite plausible third alternative: we as a society are in practice OK with this class of crime going largely unprosecuted.
The legitimate authorities are resource constrained, the political process isn't prepared to allocate sufficient resources to change that, and the societal costs of allowing vigilanteism and extrajudicial punishment are broadly believed to outstrip the scope of the problem they would ostensibly be solving. This leads to an equilibrium where a lot of petty theft goes unpunished and we, as a society, are in practice content to accept it that way.
Money: Reduce spending overseas by cutting down drastically on operations outside the nation's borders.
Education: Establish longer training, covering more in-depth the actual goals of law enforcement, effective strategies in community engagement, de-escalation tactics, psychology and the justice system.
Respect: Integrate law enforcement back into the communities they are supposed to serve. Reduce the barriers, demilitarize law enforcement from the look, equipment and the strategies employed all the way to the mindset of the law enforcement officials. Citizens (all humans in fact) should be viewed more like customers than like potential perpetrators.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc make for valid public policy it does not.
What source do you point to that we as a society are OK with qualified law enforcement looking the other way?
One of my exes is certain what to do, which is why she’s campaigning for the fourth largest political party in America.
Me, I could work on AI to fully enforce all laws, but I suspect that would have unfortunate side effects like accidentally returning to feudalism after all but a few thousand Americans end up with multiple millennia of prison time because the laws themselves are overbroad… and if I limit it to just laws I agree with, well that’s exactly the sort of thing I would be appalled by if done by someone with whom I disagreed about which laws were just.
What should we do, do you recon?
It is also official policy to not investigate theft below of $500, unless special circumstances. Because of this many stores has refused to file police reports, which the state statisticians then complained on national news since that limits their ability to make accurate reports to the politicians on how much crime exist.