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Comment by khuey | Hacker News Reader

To most voters "a misdemeanor" is not equivalent to "totally legal" but yet that's how the police and district attorneys have chosen to treat it.

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This is the most concerning aspect, why do police feel that only felonies are worth their time?

Because non-felons are back in store taking stuff before the officers can finish the arrest paperwork.

Repeat offenses don't escalate the charges in SF?

If it gets escalated, then it’s no longer a misdemeanor, and worth considering :-)

No, repeat misdemeanors of this sort don't escalate charges anywhere in California, since there is no law for that. And the SF DA certainly wouldn't care to escalate charges for repeat offenders even if he could.

They don't. Their hand cuffed by Prop 47 and the apt but misdirected antics of defund the police.

I suppose we can take this further and say prop 47 attempts to address symptoms because of a failure to agree on what the problems are (what problems should we be talking about).

My understanding of prop 47 reduced up charging and limited non violent theft to a misdemeanor offense. To my knowledge it doesn’t block enforcement of misdemeanor crimes.

I don't think they "feel" that way more as it is an economical decision. If you have more work coming in than you have allocated resources for, there are decisions that have to get made.

Summed up and very simplified obviously, but eh.

But the workload shouldn’t change - the same number of arrests and prosecutions can be made before and after the law is passed.

The police arrest, gather information, and pass the file to the prosecutor. If the prosecutor decides to drop the case, the police have no say.

If the police hand hundreds of cases to the prosecutor only to have the prosecutor refuse to pursue them, the police get the message.

Why doesn't the DA pursue these cases? San Francisco elects their DA. One could even imagine starting a recall campaign over a refusal to prosecute misdemeanors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_San_Francisco_District_At...

Years ago, I ran across the statement that democracy guarantees voters get the government they deserve. I didn’t take it seriously at the time, but I’ve come around. San Francisco will change when the voters insist on it, but I don’t expect that any time soon.

Each time I hear about this I'm baffled that not prosecuting is a legal option for DA.

How much intersection do you think there is between people who shoplift at CVS and people who have something to lose if they get a fine?

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