Doesn't Chicago have a large violent crime problem? I wonder how saying "there's going to be less policing" would play with voters
What if someone is walking in the street, naked, and screaming things? Are they violent? Are they mentally ill? Are they on drugs?
I get the intention here but I don’t think I’ve really seen anyone ask why we police this way. Is there a lesson we are forgetting?
It’s like the tale of the new property owners that come across a fence that appears random. They’d be wise to verify why the fence was put there before removing it.
Also, I think your implicit assumption is incorrect (that the police typically don’t have the individual‘s safety in mind, or that they only have the general public’s safety in mind).
Because we created police forces to round up slaves and then just kept adding more responsibilities to them. In fact, before we had ambulances, police officers would just throw the injured/sick in the back of their paddy wagon and drive them to a doctor. Frustrated with the staggeringly high death rate for people in his community, a black doctor eventually created the idea of an ambulance and specialized paramedics who handle that situation instead of police. It was so effective, white neighborhoods started calling him too and we eventually adopted the idea everywhere.
The idea of defunding the police means to do more of that. Trained specialists for different types of calls who are dispatched based on need. Much like how police will often show up with an ambulance to make sure it’s safe but then leave pretty quickly once they confirm it is, the same could be done with other non-violent calls like the one you described.
This isn’t rocket science, and it’s well steeped in research. We just need to be able to get over our biases.
"Less" policing can mean better services that replace poorly executed police functions.
I don't think you're second question is answerable as phrased, but I think having fewer killers on the street probably matters for quality of life in Chicago, or, at the very least, quantity of life.
What is the alternative to detectives that solves more crimes?
The first year will be a bit rocky, but after that the worst offenders will be removed from the planet.
I haven't seen evidence that this is an effective strategy, though there's not really compelling evidence in either direction. At the very least, I can argue that this should be tested thoroughly before implementation in Chicago.
On a personal level, I really do not want to be made responsible for killing anyone, though I expect your response is that enough people would be willing to kill a person that there would be a kind of herd immunity. I also do not believe in the death penalty, even for murder. Accordingly, I disagree with this plan wholeheartedly, exactly to the degree that it is effective.
You asked whether police solve crimes and whether that matters to people, and you gestured at the existence of alternatives. I answered your two questions, and you didn't contest those answers. And I asked what those alternatives might be. I guess what I'm saying is I don't know why you're talking about the complaint rate for patrol cops now.
The police department however has had numerous scandals.
It is worth noting that, earlier this year, when property crime briefly became popular in certain rich areas, the response of the city government was to deepen segregation by raising the bridges over the Chicago river, which serves as a boundary between the poor south/west and the rich north. Chicago's inequality problem is more serious than its crime problem.
But I'd contest that the bridges that separate the Loop from the rest of city is symbolic as a divide between rich and poor. Plenty of the near west side across the river is affluent, as are the near west suburbs, and the lower north side. It's remarkable how much of the violence (especially homicides) are concentrated to East and West Garfield Park outside the south side where it's less concentrated. Raising the bridges doesn't really inconvenience anyone but commuters going between the Loop, West Loop, and River North. The bridges were raised to prevent looting of the store fronts, not stop violent crime. I wouldn't compare the boarding up of stores in Emeryville at the same time as symptoms of the divide between rich and poor in the east bay.
All that said, the violence is much better today than it was even a few years ago, and orders of magnitude improved over 30 years ago. Though there is debate whether crime was reduced or just spread out to the suburbs after the demolition of housing projects like Cabrini Green.
And while property crime and violent crime are separate to a degree, I think the city's response says a lot. My experience in Chicago is that the police are more interested in keeping crime contained than truly eliminating it.
This is pretty silly. The highways were open between the north and south sides (I crossed the river the next day without issue); they were only isolating the hardest hit commercial districts to dissuade more damage. It wasn’t some ploy by our Black mayor to increase racial segregation.