There must surely be a middle road here.
This last year has involved a lot of blind hatred of policing and poorly thought out calls to reduce police funding all based on very rare anecdotal incidents which have been spun as data. The reality is that police forces in America have hundreds of millions of interactions with citizens and almost none of them are problematic. It do surprise that surveys show public perceptions of police brutality are incredibly skewed, far from resort (https://nypost.com/2021/02/27/cases-of-police-brutality-agai...).
I can only describe the current trend as a mass hysteria driven by biased news media and dedicated true believers, who organize on social media and real life, and end up influencing the masses into believing the same things.
This is interesting, because the evidence for your claim is anecdotes and “posts on NextDoor” — what statistical evidence do you have that crime is increasing more in “more permissive” cities vs “less permissive” ones? I would also invite you to consider that COVID may have more to do with this than anything else.
I also invite you to consider people who commit crimes as human beings with needs like you and I — needs that are often unmet: housing, healthcare, community, and which are not resolved by locking them up.
But regardless, truth starts with observations and anecdotes. In Seattle, reliable data measuring crime is hard to come by since people have become jaded and simply don’t report crime any longer. The police are understaffed (well below median police officers per capita in the country) and are directed by city leadership to deprioritize such investigations, so residents don’t see a benefit from reporting. I’ll admit I am part of the problem - the other day I saw a homeless person expose herself in front of children and I didn’t bother reporting it to any authority because nothing will be done and I am just exhausted by all of it. The only time residents bother is if they are victims of property crime that is large enough to make the insurance deductible worth it.
In the case of police shooting unarmed blacks, we already have the data. The Washington Post has maintained these records (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...). It gives us a clear sense of the magnitude of the issue at hand. This is also why surveys are able to say that people overestimate the frequency of police brutality.
> I also invite you to consider people who commit crimes as human beings with needs like you and I — needs that are often unmet
They are free to meet those needs the way anyone else does, by showing personal responsibility for their life choices. I have little sympathy for those who decide to live a drug centric lifestyle. And likewise, people shouldn’t move to a desirable, expensive location unless they have a plan on how to make it work. Existing residents should not have to subsidize either group, with their money or by giving up their quality of life.
Look up “just world fallacy”
As for policing: Seattle’s police force was too small even before the calls for defunding. It severely lagged the median police officer counts among cities in America. That, combined with an ideologically driven city attorney’s office, has led to a revolving door of criminals that signals to other criminals that they’ll face no consequences for their actions. That in turn has induced more and more criminality.