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> Some of the stats say property crime is actually down in San Francisco, but that is probably a reporting issue, because some store managers have stopped bothering to waste their time filing police complaints.

Seems like these stats could have done with a more rigorous investigation, given that they contradict the thesis of the article?

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In Seattle we don’t report properly crime except if insurance requires it. Police can’t be bothered to show up so it’s just a huge headache. I think they just have you fill out your own shit online anyway. I would assume sf is similar.

Naturally that discourages reporting and drives crime stays down

Even when you fill out the online police reports they'll often reject it for whatever reason that they want to, and then force you to call it in if you really want it submitted.

When there is police and/or prosecutorial inaction[1] in respect of a crime, why would you expect the statistics of that crime to do anything but go down?

[1] Here's an interesting question - how does police/prosecutorial inaction in cases of shoplifting compare to police/prosecutorial inaction in cases of other crime? Is it more? Is it less? Is it the same?

A recurring theme in these conversations is that the lack prosecutorial interest in prosecuting minor crimes intrinsically results in decreased police action, presumably because the police lack the motivation to enforce laws that they don’t believe will be fully discharged in the courts.

But I don’t understand why this is a necessary relationship: the political incentives of the police are such that it always makes sense to make crime rates look as bad as possible (since more crime means more police funding). So we’d expect them to continue to make arrests, even if those arrests don’t result in a convictions. But that isn’t happening, and nobody has produced a particularly satisfying explanation other than “the cops are depressed.” Which, in turn, strikes me as a larger indictment of the police than of the DA.

> But I don’t understand why this is a necessary relationship: the political incentives of the police are such that it always makes sense to make crime rates look as bad as possible (since more crime means more police funding). So we’d expect them to continue to make arrests, even if those arrests don’t result in a convictions.

Honestly that doesn't make any sense (I dunno, maybe english is not your primary language).

1. You're correct that it always makes sense for police to make crime rates as bad as possible.

2. $FOO is *NOT RECORDED AS A CRIME* if the apprehended suspect is not convicted.

So your assertion that:

> So we’d expect them to continue to make arrests, even if those arrests don’t result in a convictions.

is completely and totally incorrect in every sense of the word and under even the broadest possible interpretation.

Why would a LEO make (for example) 100 arrests in a week if every single one of them *WOULD NEVER BE RECORDED AS A CRIME* due to prosecution not getting a conviction?

> But that isn’t happening, and nobody has produced a particularly satisfying explanation other than “the cops are depressed.”

I just gave you one now; a guaranteed no-conviction of shoplifters in turn guarantees that LEOs would rather spend their efforts on making their numbers.

English is my first language! Sorry if my phrasing is confusing.

> 2. $FOO is NOT RECORDED AS A CRIME if the apprehended suspect is not convicted.

This is not true in any municipality that I'm aware of. For example, the NYPD's CompStat[1] system publishes weekly and monthly crime reports based on pre-conviction arrests. That information isn't considered guilt-presumptive, because it doesn't assume that any particular arrested person has committed a crime -- it's an agglomerated statistic.

Given that crime reporting data doesn't require convictions, it's not clear to me that your counterpoint holds.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat

> $FOO is NOT RECORDED AS A CRIME if the apprehended suspect is not convicted.

I'm not sure this is completely correct... In my home town, the police used to send a list of arrests to the local paper, who would print all of them in the weekly issue. How many of those translated into convictions was something I wouldn't even know how to find out, but they certainly were able to publicize their arrest rate.

National Review is an American conservative rag that extends a long tradition of American conservative editorialism in the style of William F. Buckley. It would still be pushing for racial segregation were it allowed to.

No, I'm sure that the current writers do not secretly yearn for racial segregation. If you read it you would notice that there are some non-white contributors, such as Deroy Murdock and Ramesh Ponnuru.

We're speaking of the same National Review in which William F. Buckley wrote about the gross superiority of the white race in "Why the South Must Prevail"? [1]

https://adamgomez.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/whythesouthmus...

For context, you probably want to also cite

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/13/william-f...

From Politico, no less. Bill is remembered by those who lived through those times for doing good rear-guard work in civil rights in the 1960s when it really counted.

That was in 1957. Almost every long-lived publication has taken positions in the past that would now be considered reprehensible.

Is this an excuse for the remarkably reprehensible views of the National Review?

White people are not the only ones capable of being racist. A good many people of color look at how pervasive white supremacy is and decide their local maximum is to align with the white supremacists. Internalized white supremacy is a bitch.

It's usually white people accusing minorities of being "internalized white supremacists" though, and I can't think of anything more patronizing to minorities than that. Especially since it's usually whenever a minority does something they don't agree with ("they are going against their own self interest which should be to agree with me") so it completely reeks of white saviorism. I'm not saying that's what you are doing here, it's just that in my own experience it's rhetoric that is almost always used in a way to shutdown any criticism/dissent (and very rarely from someone who is part of a minority). A good example of that would be how non-whites are quickly labeled "low information voters" when they don't toe the party line.

Obviously everyone can be racist or bigoted, regardless of race but that doesn't mean they are internalizing white supremacy whenre they aren't white, it just means they are racist. Its weird to make everything all about white people and the whole concept is increasingly sounding like a way to cope with bruised savior egos.

That’s the complexity of race in the US though. Your average African American person’s ancestry contains a whole lot of European ancestors too; in many cases more European ones than African ones. Who counts as white and who doesn’t, and in what context?

We all have internalized white supremacy, regardless of our skin color. It’s just that the definition of “white” changes situationally (e.g. Italians weren’t considered “white” until the mid-1900s, rather they inhabited the “brown” space that south Asians and Hispanics currently do). But the internalized part is that we generally consider what is “white” to be the better outcome.

Other interests often supersede a naïve outsider calculation of self-interest. For example: Log Cabin Republicans, Caitlyn Jenner endorsing Trump (before conceding it was a mistake while continuing to follow the party line), me voting for Democrats even though I know that they will, at best, hold the line against oblivion while grassroots organizers do the real work in the space created by that line.

There are people who steadfastly believe minorities cannot or should not be conservative. Witness the reactions to the black lieutenant governor of Virginia vs other minorities being elected to office. The former gets accused of being a black white supremacists because she’s conservative and mr Blackface got a pass because he’s a white liberal. Had he been the same person but been conservative or libertarian he’d have been cancelled… but no, not in this case.

The mayor of Detroit too. He won a write-in campaign against a progressive. Now Democrats are trying to strip him of some of his appointments because he's a little too conservative for them and not progressive enough.

That doesn't really have any bearing on whether or not the National Review is a broadly racist newspaper.

People are loath to believe that minorities might be conservative, so they use all kinds of racist tropes and tools to present them as the actual bad thing.

Look at former racist house representatives who were Democrats but renounced their racism. It's as if they never espoused racist views. But if they had been conservatives, then by definition they could never disavow their racist past and would for ever be racists.

I, for one, continue to think that those people are probably still racist. But the public sentiment is perfectly reasonable, given that they belong to the contemporary American party that has fewer (not zero!) white nationalists in it.

But it’s still not clear what this has to do with the National Review.

Still no idea what any of that has to do with the National Review being a racist newspaper. Absolutely rabid stuff old chap.

They are saying that if you have to judge the NR by who founded it, and assume they have the same beliefs now as they did back then it only makes sense to apply that same logic to the democratic party since it was notoriously extremely racist at the exact same period Buckley was advocating for segregation.

It would be silly to say the DNC is still what it was in the 1950s, since "organisations change and it was 60 years ago" but the comment you're replying to is arguing that we only give that sort of benefit of the doubt when it's convenient politically. Buckley wouldn't be relevant otherwise here, and every single "older" newspaper would be a conservative rag if we were to go by what's been published or said by their founders.

No, that's not what he's saying at all.

If you're looking for a broadly racist newspaper, check out the New York Times.

I'm not looking for a broadly racist newspaper, a total non sequitur on your part.

I'll take non sequitur snark over ad hominem lies any day.

Where's the lie? William Buckley was a proud white nationalist[1] and the magazine he founded continues to publish all kinds of blandly racist content and anti-semitic content (and authors)[2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley_Jr.#Views_o...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review#Controversies

The lie is that they are racist today, not 50+ years ago.

The examples in that list of controversies are weak to say the least. In each case that could vaguely be considered racism or antisemitism, the higher ups at the magazine issued a rebuke and often dismissed the writer. Is this really all you got?

Meanwhile, the NYT posts shit like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/opinion/sunday/interracia...

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