Defund the Police meets the crime wave
bariweiss.substack.com
bariweiss.substack.com
Yet I recalled hearing that police budgets in Oakland were steady to up this year, despite the protests.
A quick search seems to confirm this: https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-didnt-cut-any-money-from-t...
>Despite claims to the contrary, the Oakland City Council did not make any cuts to the police budget at all this year. In fact, Oakland police were allotted about $39 million more than in the previous two years, according to a KTVU analysis of city records.
What did I miss?
Someone pushing their propaganda
Nothing. There is a narrative being pushed that tries to correlate Black Lives Matter, Defund The Police, etc. activity with increasing crime. That narrative might have some validity in some localized cases, but is clearly not universally causal.
"Defund the police" has to be the most poorly conceived political slogan of all time. It sounds more like a pejorative its opponents came up with.
I suspect that proponents thought anger at the police was much more widely spread than it was, so they grabbed what they thought would sell.
Is this not literally the idea? The issue with "defund the police" slogan is that defunding isn't the end goal. The idea is to reduce the size, scope, militarization, and budget of the police force _and_ use that money to instead fund programs to help citizens and the local economy.
Part of the platform is absolutely to reduce the current scope of the widely militarized police force in the US.
I'd argue that the reason that folks rallied 'defund' is that police aren't willing to accept reasonable reform and they have enough power to keep it from happening.
Reform isn't realistic in a system that required the group being reformed to consent to the type of reform.
I'm personally a fan of 'reallocate' police funds.
For example: There was an article on Hacker News today about how an FBI program to track use-of-force incidents may shut down due to a lack of police involvement (https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2021/12/09/fbi-poli...).
I think there is likely a de-escalation path that involves sensible reform, but it will also require that reform to be embraced and implemented by the police
[1] https://abc7news.com/oakland-police-funding-city-council-cut...
If I read this article correctly then the author's point is that simply the passage of a bill to be enacted in the future is the cause of increased crime in the present, which seems like a shaky argument to me.
Also I'm noticing that the ABC7News article says
>More than $17 million will be diverted from the police to violence prevention and other services not involving police. Another $3.6 million will be put into the new MACRO program which will basically be a civilian crisis response program within the Oakland Fire Department addressing those in mental health crises.
This means that even assuming this is a net decrease of $20.6 million to budget, this is still giving back only ~half the net increase from this year's budget. So we should still be up $16 million or so vs. 2020
I still think this amounts to the argument "next year's budget cuts are increasing crime in my neighborhood now" which doesn't make sense to me.
[0] https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-didnt-cut-any-money-from-t...
If your argument is that the police haven't been defunded or abolished, maybe your issue is with the mainstream media that were publishing arguments in favor of abolishing the police?
Have you considered holding them to account for that?
I'm not sure what you mean by rare, but many major cities did proceed with reducing police funds:
"New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Baltimore and a dozen other cities have all also reduced police spending. "
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-de...
L.A. cut millions from the LAPD after George Floyd. Here’s where that money is going
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-26/lapd-fun....
And just one month ago, LAPD's budget was increased by 12% for the upcoming fiscal year, up $213 million.
A cultural shift. We now have people getting mad about things that aren't happening and sharing this info as fact to anyone who will listen
> As the surge in violence has become less theoretical to white, middle class residents, Oakland’s mayor has been afforded the political space to push to restore the funds that were cut from the police budget.
If someone puts a gun to your head and says they will kill you and you protect yourself. Well you will be made an example.
Mistaking a taser for a gun and killing someone is very risky.
Kneeling on someone's neck while they are handcuffed is risky.
Normal policing is not.
Increases in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Kentucky would indicate to me a lack of correlation for various partisan policies driving this.
The filter bubble self-awareness is palpable.
The poster you're responding to is correct. St. Louis, KC, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Nashville are wild places. I feel much safer in Portland than in any of those cities. Especially the ones toward to top of that list. Lots of cities in bright red states are cesspools compared to Portland.
Here in the UK, "stop and search" was massively reduced because it was seen as racist. The result has been a marked increase in knife and drug related crimes.
Of course it is the poor and minorities who suffer from these progressive policies.
[1] https://abc7news.com/oakland-police-funding-city-council-cut...
If I read this article correctly then the author's point is that simply the passage of a bill to be enacted in the future is the cause of increased crime in the present, which seems like a shaky argument to me.
Also I'm noticing that the ABC7News article says
>More than $17 million will be diverted from the police to violence prevention and other services not involving police. Another $3.6 million will be put into the new MACRO program which will basically be a civilian crisis response program within the Oakland Fire Department addressing those in mental health crises.
This means that even assuming this is a net decrease of $20.6 million to budget, this is still giving back only ~half the net increase from this year's budget. So we should still be up $16 million or so vs. 2020
Police are intentionally allowing crimes specifically to boost the narrative of posts like this.
I think the most recent city to have this kind of strike was Baltimore in the 2015-18ish time range.
My friend is a police officer and is moving out of my progressive state to a more conservative one. He told me this is happening in nearly every department.
His reasoning was that they use to feel like they were on the side of the community, but in many places it is now the community is opposed to the police. Also they don’t risk certain things because they might have to use force and they’re worried they’ll be charged with a crime f or doing so, (especially if people riot enough and the DA needs to satisfy them).
All that adds up to more crime, even though budgets will probably rise to pay more to try to convince officers to stay.
How do we both protest police brutality when it rears its head, while still treating officers like they’re on the side of the good guys (like most, but not all, are).
I have no answer.
>As the surge in violence has become less theoretical to white, middle class residents, Oakland’s mayor has been afforded the political space to push to restore the funds that were cut from the police budget.
Which seems to be to be a misunderstanding of consensus reality
And yet there is a dearth of evidence for this claim.
This is like your grandpa telling you kids have no respect nowadays when all he does is scream at any kid he sees and then demands respect. It works both ways. Police used to be part of the community. Then they put themselves in tanks and body armor and come into every situation guns blazing and scared of everyone in the community.
How is the community supposed to react...?
- Many in the community marched to "Defund the Police".
- Others in the community started committing more crimes.
Unfortunately those two groups are part of the same community, so they'll have to learn to get along.
It is not the jobs of people being policed to watch their own tone so they avoid offending cops. It is the job of cops to serve and protect, full stop.
It is well-known that police departments align closely with the cultural segments that (among other things) critique alleged "snowflakes". If what you say is true then there is ironically a glut of snowflakes at our local precincts and they cannot be trusted to handle weapons in public spaces.
The real question is how can we attract and retain officers that want to do the job?
Maybe the job just doesn't make sense in modern America? If police as a concept didn't exist already, no one would create it.
If you broke it down into its parts, you find plenty of people who would sign up to handle mental health crisis and plenty of people to sign up to handle quality of life problems. You'd have a third group that wants to do the more dangerous stuff.
Is there any evidence of that? Seems there are quite a few who support them as-is and many more who want to see minor reforms.
What do you mean by quality of life problems? How do we plan to staff in that model given police response time already averages 5 minutes (would it then be 15, or would we have 3x the cost to fill 3x the positions)?
How could there be any evidence of that?
> Seems there are quite a few who support them as-is and many more who want to see minor reforms.
Sure, that's the not the same thing. Many people reflexively back the police because they perceive themselves as benefitting from the status quo or otherwise have it as part of their socio-political identity. Some people back the police because they think they are "good enough" and don't want to think about how to reshape the system. But that isn't what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about a hypothetical. We have a list of problems such as theft, drunk driving, speeding, people in mental health crisis, domestic violence, crowd control, etc. In the hypothetical situation where we have all of these problems, but we don't have the police and never had, do you honestly think we'd assign all of these duties to one position?
> What do you mean by quality of life problems?
Cat in a tree, unwanted person, taking a report about a stolen bicycle, responding to a traffic collision. Non-life threatening situations that have absolutely no need for someone with a gun to respond.
>How do we plan to staff in that model given police response time already averages 5 minutes (would it then be 15, or would we have 3x the cost to fill 3x the positions)?
The police are unqualified to handle most of the calls they are called out to. You'd have different teams that respond to different types of calls. Non-armed responders are a hell of a lot cheaper and are able to respond to the majority of calls. You'd have a small group of armed LEOs who would respond to violent crimes in progress, and then you'd have hybrid responses to stuff like domestic violence where you need a social worker as the primary response and an armed person as a secondary security.
You'd construct your force around those principles. Remember, most cops never fire their weapon.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who think that those problems should be beaten into submission by the state.
Studies, surveys, anything at all to back up your claim. Sounds like there isn't (use of absolutes in your statement was probably the problem).
"Non-life threatening situations that have absolutely no need for someone with a gun to respond."
Depends on one's perspective and a bunch of other factors. You might be surprised about how many people carry guns in various professions (medical workers, mental health worker, various first responders, the general public, etc). The vast majority of people never have to fire their weapon. Most never even have to use their weapon. It's utility isn't solely based on being fired.
"In the hypothetical situation where we have all of these problems, but we don't have the police and never had, do you honestly think we'd assign all of these duties to one position?"
Yes, mostly due to staffing issues like response time and cost, which is something you didn't really addresses in your answer. You also mention things like domestic violence, which is actually one of the most high risk calls you can get.
You talk about armed personnel being more expensive. That's not exactly true. People become expensive based on the level of training they need/have. A gun is a part of that, but so are many other things like mental health training. You could still use police as responders for mental health issues with some level of training while waiting for existing social workers or medical professionals to arrive. Even under the model of using another type of person police likely have to show up in case things turn violent anyways.
"The police are unqualified to handle most of the calls they are called out to."
How so? Or is this another case of using the wrong words (most or unqualified)? If it's a matter of training, it may be cheaper to provide police with additional training rather than hire additional forces an incur all that overhead of benefits etc. The three things you mentioned were quality of life, violent situations, and mental health issues. You seem to accept that violent situations require police response, so would be qualified for that. Although there are numerous situations in the other two categories that could quickly turn violent an would likely require police presence even if they are not the sole responders. It sounds like the quality of life stuff are generally easy tasks that police are qualified to handle (you even mention a police report for a stolen bike). The mental health situations depend on the level of training. Relatively few departments have adequate mental health training. I think this could be handled with training on how to approach those situations and talk people down while the social worker or mental health professional arrives.
Most people are generally capable of reading that as an opinion absolute statement.
Like, if I said 'Casino Royale is the best James Bond movie of the Daniel Craig era' that's an absolute statement but the reader can intuitively understand that its not going to be objectively provable and that it's clear its an opinion.
Now, if I said 'It's a fact that....' it'd be fair to ask for evidence. But I didn't.
> Depends on one's perspective and a bunch of other factors. You might be surprised about how many people carry guns in various professions (medical workers, mental health worker, various first responders, the general public, etc). The vast majority of people never have to fire their weapon. Most never even have to use their weapon. It's utility isn't solely based on being fired.
The norm in most of the world is that unarmed people respond to most issues. If you think mental health workers are carrying guns on the job, you are just extremely uninformed on this topic.
>You talk about armed personnel being more expensive. That's not exactly true. People become expensive based on the level of training they need/have.
So it is exactly true then isn't it? Not only do you have to pay the increased cost of training and certifying , you actually pay them more hourly too to carry that gun too.
>You could still use police as responders for mental health issues with some level of training while waiting for existing social workers or medical professionals to arrive.
Why would you though? Police have no real training in mental health, the week long classes they take are really not useful. Remember that actual mental health professionals generally need a minimum of six years of education. Why in the world would you want someone with no training and gun to be the first responder to someone having a mental health crisis?
> How so? Or is this another case of using the wrong words
No, they are unqualified
> If it's a matter of training, it may be cheaper to provide police with additional training rather than hire additional forces an incur all that overhead of benefits etc.
It isn't though. Police are by far more expensive than people who are more qualified, which in many ways is sad, but it is what is. The idea that you can train police into being mental health professionals just shows the lack of understanding about what it takes to be a mental health professional. When it comes to lower level calls, why would it be better to send a more expensive employee to handle a call a less expensive can handle? Is that what your work does? Send the most expensive labor possible to handle simple problems?
> ou seem to accept that violent situations require police response, so would be qualified for that.
It's the only thing they are somewhat qualified for, yes. They do need much better training and weed all the 'killology' cops.
> It sounds like the quality of life stuff are generally easy tasks that police are qualified to handle (you even mention a police report for a stolen bike).
Sorry, they are unqualified to handle most of their calls, but that is an example of one where they are overpaid to handle that call.
>The mental health situations depend on the level of training. Relatively few departments have adequate mental health training. I think this could be handled with training on how to approach those situations and talk people down while the social worker or mental health professional arrives.
Mental health is a professional degree. There is no amount of week long trainings that will make police officers good responders to mental health calls.
You of course have spent a lot of time talking about how armed police could do all these jobs, but you really haven't talked about why they should.
What's the point of spending tons of money getting a cop even moderately good at responding to mental health crisis when we could just hire someone who is better trained and cheaper to respond to mental health crisis?
You are locked into this idea that an armed police officer should be the first responder to every issue which gets back to my original point, you want police because that's the law enforcement construct you grew up with. Why in the world would you send an armed person to handle a bicycle report? You want to spend tons of money to try and maintain the status quo, which isn't going to improve things, rather than reallocating money to people who are significantly more qualified.
Then there's no reason to discuss this. Based on the rest of the comment, you are not listening to what I'm saying, nor are you offering anything to back up any opinions. It's a matter of temporal response time within spacial constraints. Specialization and limitations of labor means that you need to drastically increase headcount to maintain current surface levels, which is more expensive even if a significant subset is currently cheaper (non-union police are cheaper, but once these public sector unions unionize, costs go up significantly). Then you still have questions about efficacy of the replacements (mental health pros don't have a great track record without patient history in these situations) and the fact that you still need to provide training to the existing force due to their exposure to these events either spontaneously or through misclassification. It also sounds like you have some odd and unexplained bias against armed people (in many states, the people you're adding can be and currently are armed even if it's not a part of their job).
I'm listening to what you're saying, it's just incorrect.
> Specialization and limitations of labor means that you need to drastically increase headcount to maintain current surface levels, which is more expensive even if a significant subset is currently cheaper (non-union police are cheaper, but once these public sector unions unionize, costs go up significantly).
Why do we do any specialization in the labor force then? What's the point? After all, specialization only increases labor costs.
Or, perhaps specialized labor is more efficient, which is why it exists. An LEO is by far the most expensive person you could have respond to a situation and they aren't particularly effective at most of the situations they are called to.
You could replace huge chunks of your inefficient armed staff and increase the head count while not increasing costs. For Portland, our unarmed PS3 position is a little more than 1/2 the cost of an entry level armed LEO. That means we can have almost two of them for every one cop. We could have more people out on the street. More people helping out, having eyes in the community and generally being useful. As an added bonus, non-armed staff are more useful to the community because a huge chunk of the community is terrified of police and wont call them or communicate with them making them effectively useless in certain neighborhoods.
> Then you still have questions about efficacy of the replacements (mental health pros don't have a great track record without patient history in these situations)
Yikes, you want to talk about track records
"People with Untreated Mental Illness 16 Times More Likely to Be Killed By Law Enforcement"
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/key-issues/criminali...
Mental health professionals are far far far far far more qualified to safely help someone who is experiencing a crisis.
> and the fact that you still need to provide training to the existing force due to their exposure to these events either spontaneously or through misclassification.
The mild amount of training they get is fine. If they encounter someone in mental health crisis, they should disengage immediately and call for someone who is trained to handle that situation.
> It also sounds like you have some odd and unexplained bias against armed people (in many states, the people you're adding can be and currently are armed even if it's not a part of their job).
Guns make almost every single situation worse. I'm not sure my 'bias' is odd. Most of developed world recognizes that guns are terrible and that people walking around with them is a pretty dumb idea. The USA just has a fetish for making boom boom with them so we live with our school shootings, mass shootings, and frequent accidental deaths.
I'm not aware of any governmental agency that lets their staff bring guns to work when it isn't part of their job. Would you care to provide a source? Even the gutter backwater of Texas doesn't allow them.
Eh? Community policing has been an universal in every culture. Not in the way conventional "modern"/Western police forces are, which was invented in Paris, but city and village militias took turns standing guard and arrest/whack away violators, drunkards, thieves, etc.
So if there's no police, expect communities to make their own. Hell, don't crime gangs like the Mafia have their own professional policing forces? To catch members who are too violent, or dissuade informing the state/police?
Do you know any who rushed into active mass shooting scenes, which is clearly a dangerous place to be? If you did, then you might think differently.
Have cops used undue force? Yes. Are there some that are on a power trip and need to be fired? Yes.
That doesn’t change what the police officers I know are like, nor the risks they are taking with every patrol.
I think the main legitimate beef I’ve seen is how seemingly good cops still stand up for cops that are obviously bad.
Note the articles refer back to earlier texting scandals in places like SF where recently cops were caught on camera just sitting around watching people rob a dispensary.
It’s obvious some cops do not serve and protect, and there are too few good cops holding their own accountable.
We need cops but the current state of the force is untenable and unprofessional
All cops “serve and protect”.
The problem with isn’t that those verbs don’t apply, it is the objects of the verbs. Who do they serve and what do they protect.
Completely agree
> and there are too few good cops holding their own accountable
Maybe true in SF and other progressive cities, but I’m doubtful this is the norm across all police departments.
The problem is people are treating all cops the same. In Oakland there might be a good precinct, and a bad one, if you treat the good like the bad, all you will be left with is the bad.
Still if it is bad enough might make sense to just turn it all over.
Hypothesizing too few good cops in progressive cities, and implying (happily assuming) there are plenty of good cops in conservative areas to keep checks and balances? Color me unconvinced.
> The problem is people are treating all cops the same.
The phrase "a bad apple spoils the barrel" absolutely applies in fraternistic, spartan settings of indoctrination such as "the brotherhood". Yes cops literally call it that; the dominant culture has most people in the course of their duties acting tough by cosplaying military with looser rules of engagement, and other impressionable folks fall into a similar pattern to be accepted by a community that they hold in respect (their brothers, not the citizenry). If you are relatively free-thinking, you are filtered out at the application level. If you somehow slip through, you have no power to make real change. We know this from countless examples of those who left the force after seeing obscene behavior. Chris Dorner's case is the most prominent recent example I can think of right now.
LA also has a serious problem with cop gangs[1] that have murdered people.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/los-ange...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
Nor are they required to rush into an active shooter situation any more than any other citizen
https://abcnews.go.com/US/cop-fired-parkland-shooting-job-ba...
It is insane we give people both deadly weapons and wide judgement for when to use them and then the worst that occurs in most cases of misuse is firing.
Exceptions do not disprove the rule. We can look to one or a handful of officers who put on their big kid pants and fulfilled the nominal job description that they consensually agreed to (despite not being required to do so, by law). Statistically speaking, they are completely insignificant when you want to draw conclusions such as those you imply are proven by the counterexample you've provided.
"Police officers you know" are probably nice to you, and recount stories from their perspective. Sure some may actually be decent, but again, that's not exactly a safe bet considering the evidence we have. Even with the 5th amendment, we can include the evidence that cops regularly hide evidence which would otherwise make them look bad as a factor in comprehending the reality of the situation.
Even the nice ones among the officers you know are regularly silent about numerous abuses, large and small. The fact that no one speaks up against the ne'er-do-wells means they are complicit. Complicity is generally not any more morally good than performing the action yourself, especially when you are in a position to prevent it from happening.
anecdotal counter-evidence will not be taken as a valid argument, either - just because you know cops that haven't either harmed you or claim to not have harmed anyone unjustly doesn't make policing as a whole less morally reprehensible
But, specifically, the two largest recent ones:
* George Floyd protests happened almost one full year before the trial outcome (which wasn't an acquittal btw)
* Kenosha protests happened 6 months before the acquittal
Though I think there is some guilt on the other side when they’ve treated police departments as if they’re all the same. When every use of force against even the most vile of criminals, in legitimate life or death situations, is somehow proof of their racist tendencies if the perp was a PoC.
Example?
Think about it; if others read my statement and feel it is true they will think it is true. Cops who read it will think it is true as well.
The facts might be it is not true, but if you believe the story being told... well it doesn’t matter does it.
Which story is being believed, that the cops are evil racists, or that they are good guys with some bad apples?
What story is being believed, that blacks are victims who need white mans help? Or that they are glorious victors over even oppression, so much so that the most loved president of the last 20 years is a black man?
The facts don’t matter, because we only use them to promote the story we already agree with it?
Is covid such a deadly virus we should have lockdowns and mandates that 40% of the population disagree with?
Yes?
What is the story you have believed in this situation, and what are the facts?
We had the same amount of drunk driving deaths here in my county the last month as we did covid. Yet bars are open, school children still wear masks.
It's simple: don't commit crime.
> How do we both protest police brutality when it rears its head, while still treating officers like they’re on the side of the good guys (like most, but not all, are).
Get rid of the bad apples. Simple as that. No more unions and charges for those who decided to cover up instead of reporting malpractice. And liability insurance not paid by the taxpayers.
Bail is given when someone hasn't had a court determine their guilt yet. Getting rid of bail means that innocent people will sit in jail until their trials.
to me, cutting a bike lock and smash & grabbing are like definitional petty crimes.
For me there’s a distinction between entering a locked building and stealing a bike locked on the sidewalk. It’s arbitrary I know.
Misdemeanors still carry punishment and possible jail time.
What’s missing?
A felony for $950 in stolen goods? You're not gonna get that conviction without a court, which means that everyone involved in that chain, from the judge, to the lawyers, to the compensation of the jury, to the bailiff, to the entire police apparatus involved in apprehending and charging them, and so on, is gonna need to be compensated for handling the issue. And that's before any time is served.
If you aren't going to try to root out the true cause of why people are stealing, you might as well just throw a ton of money in a giant pit and have a cookout.
When the property crime goes back up to where it was two years before I’m having a hard time seeing anything conclusive.
How do I know that police choosing not to pursue or investigate minor property crime after the passage of Prop 47 is not the cause?
Maybe it’s part of a greater social and economic shift in the region?
Are no other factors to be considered and ruled out?
Given the considerable cost of criminalization and incarceration it’s amazing to me that it seems to be the only solution being offered.
The author does provide a more holistic solution, but I can’t say I’m anymore convinced about the roughly $500 change making a big difference.
In real terms, the Oakland policing budget went from $706mm to $674mm. That is unambiguously a cut in their ability to fund their operations.
You missed the part about people linking together statistics, that are not necessarily related in any meaningful way, into a BS narrative or story. This is commonplace on various Substacks that people write. Also, I especially tend to find this from people with formal economics backgrounds and training.
There were only 2 city council-members who voted against defunding. Whether or not actual budgets get reduced, urban cops got the message that they are not appreciated, or worse. The good ones can easily get jobs somewhere less stressful and with higher job satisfaction.
Also, all budgets need to increase just to keep up with inflation. So just because a budget is increased or it stays the same does not imply that it has not been cut. An increase of $39 mil. can only be properly evaluated if we know the size of the original budget and inflation.
The inflation argument is not very convincing to me either. Both of those measures (inflation, budget) are objective facts that are absent from the article. Also "police budgets not quite keeping up with inflation is causing chaos in my neighborhood" is not very convincing.
This feels like a strawman. I don't think it's surprising that there's a rise in crime when police are defunded, especially when those social programs aren't enacted. I think most reasonable progressives who support defunding the police also recognize the whole point is to shift investment away from punishment (police) into aid (social programs) to deter crime. It takes years for that to happen, and really needs to happen on a societal level to provide opportunities that otherwise 'career criminals' do not have which leads them down that path.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472... https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-13463-002 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3509381 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/655778
https://www.nber.org/papers/w28202?utm_source=npr_newsletter...
It's only after the crime, when you're thinking about how someone else had the hubris to threaten your life, thinking about how you could have died, or worse, if your loved ones had been with you, that they could have died, that you begin to wade yourself into a deep and abiding anger.
I used to feel sympathy for criminals. Especially seeing how many of them have led rough lives, having been raised by bad parents, in horrible environments, having been led by others to delinquency as youth, then into crime as adults.
However, once you have been victimized, this sympathy vanishes. It does not matter how bad you've had it -- violence is never justified. Any person who resorts to violence instantly loses all justification.
It is only the rich who can afford to stroke their moral ego in such an egregious manner. It is the poor and the middle class who pay with their lives for this sanctimony.
People make this argument all the time but I fail to see how the police have helped any time I've experienced any actual crime, not to mention so many others. That's not even getting into the politics of who can call the police and how the police react differently to situations, either.
'Police Abolitionism' can't be taken seriously as an ideology. I'm not white, and I've been the victim of crime multiple times, unfortunately. I don't think the police are perfect, or a perfect institution. They did their job, and helped me in these cases. Whenever I hear people talk about being afraid to call the police I switch off immediately. Total bunk.
Police don't prevent crime. Hell, they barely even respond to crime.
And cops in our city have criminally generous pensions -- when you count the pension, lots of these high school grads making 100K+/yr. To say nothing of the absurd capital expenditures. So, I'm super okay with shifting resources from PDs to basically any other program. Value per dollar spent is just super low. Probably lower than literally every other item on the budget sheet.
Doesn't have to be a political thing. Hell, prior to 2019, right-leaning libertarians were the only ones who I could find who agreed with me on this. PDs are just a shit use of tax dollars until we figure out how to bust up the unions and reign in the excessive toy purchases.
If I find my truck has been broken into and stuff is stolen, all those abilities are deeply useless to me. I need someone who is good with taking down details and filling out forms and following up and ideally investigating. Up until that leads to the act of actually arresting someone there's very little need to have people who are trained in the violent use of force involved at all.
And that's before you start asking questions about how our current police force is trained to use violent force and if they could do all that differently or not.
Which is not at all what our hiring standards at police departments select for.
Awarding a well-marked group with some measure of public accountability the right to use violent countermeasures for the protection of life and property in a geographic area facilitates commercial trade and societal advancement.
However, the “garbage-in, garbage-out” phenomenon applies to policing, which makes it less of a silver bullet. A certain amount of criticism lobbed at police forces in America can be reduced to hysteria over police being unable to turn lead into gold.
But I think you’re also saying that police can’t change a local community, if it’s already filled with crime. If that’s the case and they don’t have a big impact… what’s the point?
I’d also say it works the other way around, where garbage input to the police force will result in garbage policing. And since education and training isn’t that rigorous, it’s hard to correct that.
Plus, I’d say the “hysteria” is more about police turning gold into lead, so to speak, harming or killing people unnecessarily. Perhaps you could argue whether or not the “hysteria” is justified given the number of times it happens. But the biggest outcries are normally against things you see where police are pretty obviously in the wrong. (Or at the very least, where police were incredibly brutal. Which in my opinion is nearly always wrong.)
The point is to preempt a power vacuum threatening social order, e.g. imagine if Japan didn’t have a police force.
> Plus, I’d say the “hysteria” is more about police turning gold into lead, so to speak, harming or killing people unnecessarily.
I don’t disagree, nor did I claim to. However, I’d be curious to know whether you’d prefer all police be replaced by robots and drones which perfectly upheld the law. For many, that’s an even scarier thought than imperfect, human policing.
What I would want is:
- More intensive training and education with less focus on violence.
- Better laws to increase accountability and to reduce conflicts of interest.
- Police or social worker units which don’t need to carry guns. Basically separate dangerous crime from vice or disturbances in terms of enforcement. I fully agree the FBI should have resources to hunt down serial killers. I don’t think we need a similar level of force (guns) for dealing with a drug addict on the street, or a drunk driver.
And other things would be good or better I’m sure! My feeling now is that police are entrenched in their own system of power enough that many types of good changes are unlikely to happen. Why would police want to increase their risk by adding more oversight, for example?
This is an argument for defunding the police.
Police reform is sorely needed. "Defund the police" as a slogan was insane political malpractice.
A lot of them felt more than once genuine fear from being victimized by crime committed by the police. Which, of course, is almost never reported as a crime by whoever survives it.
I used to believe as you do. Then I was a little down on my luck and found myself living in a poor, high-crime neighborhood. It was a shocking for me. There were cops everywhere, but they somehow never managed to help a situation.
I called the police multiple times because of violence in the area -- including for a discharged firearm in the apartment upstairs. Sometimes they showed up, sometimes they didn't. And when they did, they invariably contrived to make things worse.
I could have walked to the precinct station in less time than the police typically responded to calls. They were routinely aggressive and bullying to victims. They were dismissive of eye-witness testimony and anyone who volunteered assistance. They made open threats to anybody who questioned them or asserted their rights -- to record an interaction, retrieve their personal effects, or even help calm a neighbor in distress.
The police in that community drove around in custom cars and body armor, armed to the teeth. They hassled hard-working men, women, and even children as they went about their daily business, humiliating them in front of their neighbors for sport. They were -- almost to a man -- officious, patronizing cowards.
I moved to that neighborhood believing that police dedicated their lives to serve and protect their communities. I have several police officers in my family and, prior to my time south of the tracks, had always believed their side of the story. Criminals bad. Cops heroes.
But I left that neighborhood afraid of the cops. Far more afraid than of any of the many criminals in that community. I left with the understanding that most American police are little more than a terrifyingly well-armed gang. They have a fundamentally oppositional stance to the communities they are supposed to serve. And they are almost completely unaccountable for their actions and inaction.
So no, it's not the luxury of the rich to criticize the cops or call for a reallocation of police funds from guns to training and crime prevention. The poor have been doing it for ages. We were just ignoring them.
But when the culture praises gangsters, being a "bad bitch" or whatever cancerous crap they brag about these days, then you get the issue of crime.
Unpopular opinion, but culture is a bigger factor than most people recognize.
Poor whites don't commit more crimes?
Funny how upper-middle class kids listen to the same songs and end up working at FAANGs, banks, law firms, hospitals, etc.
How many upper-middle class kids listen to Chicago SoundCloud rappers?
Literally everyone in Gen X listened to NWA.
I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not, but the answer is a lot.
It's not like I never enjoyed 50 cents.
The problem is when it's part of the culture to the point where it's internalized.
Heh. So convincing. I can definitely tell you're not full of shit /s
the drug trade is similarly violent in Mexico, where rap music is not as popular and there are fewer black people.
> It's not like I never enjoyed 50 cents.
Sure, "50 cents"
I’m not going to argue that Rap isn’t often talking about crime and violence, but rap is a wide genre and quite a lot of it is not violent. The origins of Rap are quite different than what we have today, you might be interested to learn the history of rap and how/why it changed.
You might also learn about rap and not cherrypick what fits your narrative. You might understand that alot of rap is about the lifestyle individuals feel forced to live and just about their circumstances in general.
This narrative also convieniently ignores the massive audience for pop, gospel and R&B in the same communities you’re discussing as if black people listen to rap and only rap.
Regardless biggest consumers of rap are not black people, but in your analysis only black people are unable to overcome the influence of popular entertainment.
If rap causes black people to commit crime then country music must certainly cause drunk driving and Call of Duty is why we have school shootings.
Also, I guess Marilyn Manson's music actually was responsible for turning young people away from God. Atheism's popularity has grown ever since its debut, and so has the Church of Satan. The numbers don't lie!
If you're homeless, for example, your mere existence is illegal in many places. You can be arrested and charged for illegal camping and dumping, trespassing, loitering, etc. Panhandling can be heavily policed, too.
A wealthy person has no reason to steal food, unless they're the kind of person who gets off on stealing. Someone who hasn't had a meal in 3 days, on the other hand, will become a criminal in order to survive.
It's a meme at this point, but this quote still stands: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread".
A lot of these factors are dictated by wealth individually and wealth communally as a city.
It made me wonder whether the right NOR the left had any clue left as what the role of a police force in a democracy was actually supposed to be — or whether that battle cry _really_ originated from the same forces trying to split the US society: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-po...
Like, there would have been lots of great claims: "Train police", "Restructure Police", "Rebuild Police"... but what's a single good argument to "Defund Police" other than wanting to go back to anarchy?
I believe it's a reaction to police forces now having military gear when it should be totally unnecessary. In many places police officers don't even need guns.
Maybe spending less money in militaria and more in training would be a consequence of not having to fund military equipment, supplies, and maintenance. It'd, at least, limit the violent options police has when they are going to engage a suspect.
I don't want to be SWATTED (for script kiddie's Lulz) just because the police have the equipment and need to justify usage of it.
Also, international good will increases.
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/09/why-police-pay-nothing-for-m... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout
Get it now and pay forever. Sounds like a sweet deal to the manufacturer.
Literally 100% of the times I hear about them using SWAT in the news I think this.
If someone is truly valuable they tail them and conduct a fishing stop and arrest them. SWAT is all for show these days.
While I agree that there is a trend in this direction, an import exception where SWAT is used that isn’t just for show (and where a tail + fishing stop as you describe would not work) is high-threat hostage situations, which do occur.
https://abc7.com/hostage-downtown-la-suspect-dead-police-sho...
Duh. Who could possibly have foreseen that defunding would not change their attitude?
It's almost like a job where you get to work in military cosplay and just intimidate and sometimes kill people you don't like without facing any consequences would attract people suitable for being a police officer. When you offer sociopath-candy, you attract sociopaths.
I think that 2020s protests might've gone very differently if, after the previous 18 complaints against Chauvin for racially-motivated excessive use of force, his department had said "Yes, this is a problem. He is no longer with the force" rather than continuing to employ him until somebody died. Most police officers I know have been decent people, with some bad apples. But unfortunately the bad apples are protected and ruin the trust in the police force for everyone.
And in fact, they had no clue what a police force or a democracy were supposed to look like.
That last one "Rebuild police" has not been tried. Many PDs need that. From the ground up. One applicant at a time. Carefully screened and lavishly trained.
Here’s a simple example. Portland, OR has had extremely high gun violence this year, like many cities. The public perception is that the police are doing a very poor job handling that, either with bringing people to justice or preventing crime. Now, just a month ago, there was a manhunt near where I live. It seemed like half the force showed up for it, and the reason was that someone allegedly shot at police. It is very difficult to take this in a positive light when it seems the police are only turning up in force when they are threatened, rather than when the public feels unsafe.
I’m not trying to make a claim about what they should or shouldn’t be doing really, I’m just pointing out the severe PR problem the police have created for themselves. And it seems like they continue digging themselves into a hole.
I also think this has less to do with individuals, but it’s clear that the system of policing in place just isn’t working for the community. I don’t think the community will or even has to be experts on what the system should look like. We’re just people who want to feel safe in our city!
But everything about policing seems set up to primarily protect the police (qualified immunity, asset seizure, police unions, lack of accountability from top to bottom, extreme focus on violence as a solution), rather than the public. That’s very concerning.
Anyways, my point is that when average people see a system that isn’t working for them, and don’t really get the “good” that the system may also be doing, of course the reaction is going to be very negative. It just makes sense. And since if you have a very negative view of a system, why would you want to deal with it at all?
And there aren’t clear solutions to the problem! I’d say getting rid of qualified immunity and asset seizure (to an extent) is a start, but that probably requires constitutional changes. And that’s unlikely to get anywhere anytime soon. And police unions seem to prevent local changes as well. If the police aren’t willing to reform themselves despite the very obvious need, it’s no wonder the public is not reacting in a “constructive” way.
[1] 2014 California Proposition 47: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
[2] It’s Time for Californians to Recognize that Prop. 47 Criminal Justice Reform Failed: https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2021/06/16/its-time-for-...
it's a resource allocation argument, not an 'everything would be better if police instantly winked out of existence' argument.
RE-form the Police -- this is a movement I can more readily support and I hope is self descriptive and accurate. Police departments have become alienated from communities because they are no longer about the mission to protect and serve the common people and the commons; they have instead become yet another type of organization using violence for control. The videogame Crackdown got that right many years ago.
As horrid as the Japanese justice system is about the presumption of guilt; their practice of neighborhood officers and community involvement seem like positive traits that should be copied in the USA and elsewhere as one facet of improving the positive interaction of peace officers and the community.
What this is missing here from "defund the police" is that part of the point of that slogan is to take responsibility (and, yes, funding) for some duties away from police entirely and give them to new organizations that have more limited scope and much more limited use of force.
A prime example here is parking enforcement, which is often performed by the police despite having no particular need for the legal monopoly on violence that comes with police officers.
If I were in charge of naming the idea, I'd suggest something like "Get Rid of Thug Cops!". Focus on how cops are supposed to be part of society instead of prison guards. Focus on the fact that e.g. Western European police get multiple years of education.
Even the UK has a problem, since the lying thieving government has been squeezing budgets for the last decade, the police have been underfunded there and it's harder to do the "be a part of society" part of policing.
But it's incredible how a protest slogan has been morphed by "the other side" into "this is actually happening, and look at all the results", when, as many have said, no actual defunding is happening.
FTA:
> Defund advocates often claim that police don’t actually prevent crimes, that they only bust the perpetrators after the fact. But that’s untrue. Police presence deters crime. Arresting career criminals takes them out of circulation. And, most important, effective policing bolsters a community’s faith in government-administered justice.
From the cited paper:
> Since larger police forces lead to reductions in index crimes, the decline in index crime arrests that we observe suggests that larger police forces reduce serious crime primarily through deterrence rather than by arresting and incapacitating additional offenders.
More from the paper:
> With respect to the prospect for police hiring to “widen the net" of the criminal justice system, we report mixed conclusions. ... we find evidence that larger police forces lead to large and meaningful increases in low-level “quality of life” arrests, in particular for Black civilians, where the per capita arrest increase for liquor violations and drug possession is 2.5-3 times higher for Black civilians.
What exactly would police have done in any of these situations to prevent them from happening?
> They claim that, by taking money from police and putting it toward social programs, they can eliminate the need for heavy-handed policing in the first place. But the social programs are an afterthought. What matters most to these activists is tearing down the cops, not building up the tattered neighborhoods those cops are charged with protecting.
Progressives in the US want an increased federal minimum wage and guaranteed healthcare for everyone. Studies seemed to show mixed results on whether or not this will result in a decrease in overall crime, but now seems like the time to try.
They would have arrested and imprisoned the perpetrators, who are more than likely to have long criminal histories, after their first offence. People don't often go from zero to armed home invasion.
> Progressives in the US want...
I'm not sure any of this will work if there's insufficient order as to prevent smash-and-grab robberies and shootings from being a daily occurence. I don't suppose these people are stealing to eat or pay for healthcare. Dollars are best spent incarcerating violent people a la Japan, rather than paying them and hoping they behave themselves. Living in a peaceful society is a right afforded only to those who remain nonviolent.
Police were able to catch the murderer when he (literally) shot himself in the foot shortly thereafter… during a second home invasion in the Hollywood Hills [2].
> What exactly would police have done in any of these situations to prevent them from happening?
What if threatening would-be criminals with prison wasn’t an effective deterrent anymore? Singapore employs corporal punishment [3] in addition to prison, and I’d be interested in reviewing any studies examining whether swift corporal punishment delivered early in life for minor offenses (e.g. bullying) could be shown to prevent future criminality.
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-01/jacqueli...
[2]: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-06/murder-c...
I am unaware of any evidence that early, swift violence is an effective long- or short-term deterrent for crime.
The "Defund the police" movement has completely dominated the Internet and mainstream media so it wouldn't surprise me if many cops are moving to smaller towns or changing fields.
If police-civilian interactions really decreased 80% (as quoted in the article), and in exchange violent crime only raised 5.6% [0], personally that shows even dramatic reductions in police presence don't lead to complete "anarchy".
I fear, given the increasing discussion around this crime """wave""", that some disastrous "tough on crime" policies are going to be (re)introduced in the coming years.
[0]https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/cri...
You don't have to try very hard to find data that supports a massive uptick in violent crime in 2021. Dozens of cities have reported all-time-high murder rates. Even cities like Philedelphia, which was already pretty high to begin with.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/27/us-murder-ra...
I don't think it is due to defunding the police, however. As has been pointed out, murder rates are up in large cities, and small towns, both Red and Blue.
There is a simple explanation: Nobody is getting incarcerated, because of COVID requirements in jails.
In my hometown, which is not a major metro area, a friend of mine (who lives inside city limits) even had a cow stolen. When discussing this with the police officer, the officer's remark was "crime is up over a thousand percent" because "they can't incarcerate anyone" because of covid. They would book people, but the jails are at max capacity, so they don't even do time. They get "booked and released".
https://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-the-covid-19-crisis-str...
I call bullshit if you're meaning actual cities aka 500k+ people and using rate to mean rate.
We're not even remotely close to the 90s.
The population of Portland has increased by 92% since 1987, but the murders just passed the 1987 level.
All that said, murder *rates* across the U.S. have jumped significantly vs 2019. Though they're not yet to their highs from the early 90s.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homi...
Also, police departments were flush with military surplus from excess war supplies and Homeland Security grants. So they showed up to the protests with tanks, full body armor, and automatic weapons. There was shock at those images that fed an older liberal response to "demilitarize the police". That was used to soften "abolish" to "defund". Coupled with some civic movements to shift budgets to mental health response instead of armed force, "defund the police" became a thing.
Very few cities ever actually defunded their police. Minneapolis itself voted it down.
Separately, the article links to this source[0] when talking about how progressives are "ruining cities", arguing that progressives have successfully pushed for decreases police budgets despite violent crime increases. But the article linked shows increases in police budgets by percentage of the overall budget. There are real instances of yoy "cuts" but they seem to occur with disproportionately larger cuts elsewhere across the budget, which does not support the hypothesis that progressives are defending the police; it shows that when cutting budgets we still prioritize policing. [0] https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/when-the-crime-wave-hits-yo...
Obviously crime is Oakland is too high, what happened to the author shouldn't happen anywhere. These experienced incidents are an important barometer on whether or not what we measure statistically is working to describe reality. We need good metrics prescribe the cure. However, it doesn't follow to me that the issue was caused by lower police budgets looking at how police budgets changed, and I am not convinced that there a progressive voting block to blame yet.. Maybe the morale issue is related, but the budget seems like a red herring.
It's the general announcement that everyone is on-board with de-funding the police that is causing it. You tell everyone that the police are not needed? What do you think the crime prone are going to react with? More crime.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/upshot/murder-crime-trend...
The gang warfare was stopped by massive police operations and surveillance. This included military surveillance and signal intelligence planes [1] and helicopters to aid the police.
It worked. I know it goes against techno libertarian ideals on HN to suggest that police and surveillance can actually stop crime but it did in 2017 in Copenhagen.
[1]: https://www.berlingske.dk/samfund/politiet-tager-nye-vaaben-...
For the most part I didn't learn anything new. Though didn't necessarily agree with everything.
If you were to list out every task the police do and don't do.
Eliminate any and all laws that the police never enforce.
Fix any law which is disproportionately applied. For example, less than 1% of traffic accidents are because of speeding. Yet police enforce speeding laws extensively doing huge damage to society. On top of that, so many of the applications are intentionally meant to be antagonistic toward society. Speeding laws are meant to be set where 80% of society does not break the law. That's not at all how it is. It's set such that 100% of society is breaking the law. With intention of revenue generation.
It's not just speeding. It's all the petty laws meant to generate revenue. Does your bike have a bell? These laws change police from law enforcement to antagonistic toward society. This is the fundamental problem. The police are no longer there to help you, they are there to be against you. Anything you say will be used AGAINST you in the court of law. Anything you say will NEVER BE USED FOR you in the court of law. The police are the enemy, this is intentional design and no politician ever will consider fixing this problem.
Nobody knows what the crime rate actually is as a result. But the accountants at the retail stores know, and they're raising prices, installing armored doors, or simply leaving the city.
The local bank branch I patronize now sports an armed guard wearing body armor standing outside the door. It's only a block from the police station. Pretty sad.
Well that's certainly a vote of confidence for the professionalism and effectiveness for the police.
"In 2019, there were about 1,280 deployable officers in the Seattle Police Department. Today, the number of in-service cops stands at 1,015."
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/council-must...
"The 2021 adopted SPD budget is nearly $363 million. During the previous budget cycle, the Mayor and City Council made about $70 million in cuts, but because of funds added elsewhere in the police budget, the net reduction was $46.1 million (about 11 percent) from the 2020 Adopted Budget of $409.1 million."
https://www.aclu-wa.org/story/follow-the-money-policing-seri...
This is typical of Weiss. She's made a second career out of "radical left" scaremongering since getting fired from the NYT.
I'm in CA and am surrounded by neighbors with guns, for better or worse. If you think CA is devoid of gun owners you're sorely mistaken.
For example, approximately 1 in 10 adults in PA have a license to carry a firearm. Compared to about 70k CA CCW in a population of about 39M people (didn't find adults only). CA also mandates that guns be stored locked up and unloaded when not on their person. This can prevent some of the safes or lock boxes designed for rapid deployment.
you're not safe from these people in SF unfortunately due to new jurisprudence around 2A post-heller.
As always, there's laws, and then there's enforcement of those laws.
You're completely delusional if you believe nobody in SF has guns at home because the law says so. Ask yourself how on earth such a thing would be enforced without police searching everyones' homes on a regular basis.
My connections to the city have waned in the past decade or so, during which it sounds crime has only worsened. I'd assume there's even more gun ownership in response to what seems to be a police force unwilling to enforce laws and a continuous stream of growing area crime reported in the news.
Out by me which is rural desert CA there's just guns all over the place. Technically it's illegal to fire anything other than a scattershot round in a shotgun openly around here (Morongo Basin), yet on any given weekend you'll hear all sorts of semi-auto and even full-auto shooting without any police response.
Is this a deliberate strawman?
In a place like SF there's a lot of pressure to conform, and it's not in a pro-gun right-leaning trajectory. So what I mean to say is there's plenty of presentation of conformity, and it's often inauthentic. The stakes are high in a place like SF. People will keep their mouth shut or even fly the opposition's flag in the interests of preserving/increasing their salaries and stock refreshes until they can GTFO with their spoils in tow.
Most folks on my street own a gun.
First of all, I probably wouldn't have time to wait for cover, make it to my safe, pull a gun, take the safety off, make it to a safe position, aim, and fire before the threat left.
But set that aside.
No way in hell me or any of my neighbors would return fire at a moving target in a residential neighborhood. That's 100% how you accidentally kill someone (or get killed yourself).
"Apparently, in the Bay Area right now, you can walk up a residential street firing your gun into houses, and you still won’t be able to compete for attention with all of the other sensational crimes."
And, maybe I'm unreasonably reasoning from stereotypes here, but I think maybe a guy named "Leighton Woodhouse," who describes himself as a "progressive" and hires a "nanny" to raise his toddler, possibly may know too little about drive-by shootings to know what he doesn't know.
And... what? standing still? People use their feet to MOVE. (Also, drive-bys are so called for reason...)
If I shoot across my street, that bullet is either going into:
1. a (small, and, again, MOVING) human target, or
2. my neighbor's house.
Have you ever shot at a target moving at 6-10+ miles/hour roughly perpendicular to your line of fire? Shit's not easy. If I let off more than one round, odds are high that at least one bullet is going into my neighbor's house.
Oh. And if a bullet is shot into my house, that shit is coming into the house. Or did you think think glass panes/drywall stop bullets? So where the hell am I even going to take cover when exchanging fire?
> There is risk in any action you take
Basement. Lock door. Find cover. Wait. Rule zero of self defense: don't get into gunfights in an open street, and don't depend on drywall as a bulletproof barrier. (Actually, that's not even rule zero because most people aren't stupid enough that it has to be explicitly stated.)
The biggest problem is every time there’s any suggestion that maybe the police aren’t actually doing a good job, police stop working and then blame any change in crime of lack of money.
This is ignoring the non-theft crime caused by police (pedofile ring in Oakland PD, fraud, murders, etc). they also change their reporting of crimes to inflate or deflate the rate of crime as necessary.
Hell they’ll even create their own crime wave if necessary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Boston_arson_spree
Despite being the most significant cause of theft in the US.
The west coast's crime problem has nothing to do with money and everything to do with executive policy (to not do much prosecuting, to the point where crimes that were formerly opportunistic are now low risk enough to become reliable sources of income for those so inclined) that's slowly being copied in more and more cities hence the overall trend.
Like seriously. You're scared that there are gunshots and people dying in your neighborhood? Are you scared for the people in the projects who have been living like that for years? Where is this "effective police force" for those people?
The Ezra Klein Show / Why Is Murder Spiking? And Can Cities Address It Without Police? / November 23, 2021
Regardless of whether defunding is good/bad for crime, this is the core justification for existing funding in this article and it is quite thin.
Edit: I am unclear on why this is getting downvoted. Almost nothing in that paragraph is adequately substantiated anywhere in the article. I am not married to any particular perspective on this topic, but remain unconvinced of the author's conclusion.
Intuitively it would make sense that locking up criminals would reduce crime (making them unable to commit more crime), that increasing the chance of a criminal getting locked up would reduce crime (via incentives), and just seeing more police officers around would reduce crime.
I would be really surprised if for the past 1000 years, civilization was tricked into believing in a criminal justice system was necessary when in reality it wasn't.
Are there any studies where they dramatically reduced police presence and crime wasn't affected?
The Nordic countries have a better system of rehabilitation
http://morganwilliamsjr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Chalf...
Mods, This should be removed from HN as a pure opinion piece with no factual info. Gross.
Are we talking about the libertarian thing were you literally don't have the police anymore, and then you have a posse of ordinary citizens come together to execute arrest warrants and a high rate of private firearms ownership to deter crime? That would have been a weird thing to hear from progressives, I would think. And did anybody actually do this anywhere?
But if it's not that then the whole thing comes down to the details of what you're actually talking about.
That's kind of the problem with the whole movement. You have some really quite serious problems with the criminal justice system. Police unaccountability, perjury, prosecutorial misconduct, overcharging, the plea bargaining system. Civil asset forfeiture. Traffic fines used for revenue generation, creating adversarial interactions between ordinary people and the police and needlessly increasing the opportunities for things to go very wrong. Over-criminalization of everything, causing the US to have the largest prison population in the world. The War on Drugs. Things that really need to get fixed.
But then we have a video of a white cop killing a black man and a media narrative that says it's all about race, even though the statistics don't bear that out.
If you misidentify the problem then you're going to come up with dumb solutions.
In other words, the intent is to fundamentally remove the institutional potential for cases like "I called in a noise complaint and then an officer showed up, shot my neighbor's dog, and kicked my child" by making it so that police are no longer the unfettered monolithic response for every possible civil disturbance.
The thing you're asking for is too reasonable and the reason it hasn't happened is political corruption.
Because the reason the police have military vehicles isn't because anybody thought it was a good idea. It's because companies that make military hardware lobby for funding for law enforcement to buy their products. So you say "police don't need MRAPs" and everybody says "no kidding" and there is no debate to be had because there is no one really defending it. There is no controversy to cover, no story, because what are you going to say? Everyone we interviewed thought this was stupid?
Then you turn around and it's happened again because some Congressperson needed some campaign contributions they could only get by sticking that funding into the omnibus bill.
And of course anything that would actually reduce the need for police, and therefore their number, would be fought hard by police unions.
The best solution I can come up with to problems like this is the double ox goring. Police unions are Republican things, so if you want to get something that benefits the public at their expense, find some thing that benefits the public at the political expense of the Democrats (e.g school choice), and then do them both together so it cancels out. In other words, so you can pass it with 60% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans instead of 100% of either party.
The Bay Area includes San Jose (25 murders a year), Oakland (normally 110 murders a year), San Francisco (50 murders a year), and dozens of other cities which are mostly more peaceful but contribute several dozen more murders a year to the total. So it has roughly one murder every day. There's a nice historical overview of the statistics at https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Homicides-increase..., explaining that Oakland's murder rate has gone up 45% in 02021. The Merc has a great homicide map at https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/06/bay-area-homicides-20...
A murder a day is plenty for the local news most of the time. So it's hardly surprising that a drive-by shooting that failed to actually shoot anybody wouldn't make the news, because things like that happen every day, and have been for thirty or forty years. This is not, in itself, a symptom of anything unusual in the SFBA this year.
(Of course, there are many unusual things in the SFBA this year, since it's the second year of the pandemic, but a crime wave doesn't seem to be one of them, except in Oakland.)
scrollbar points out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29503928 that in fact Oakland increased their police budget this year by US$39 million. So, if we're supposed to infer a causal relation from police defunding to homicide rates from these data, it would be the opposite of the one Weiss (or Leighton?) arrived at: increased police funding "caused" a huge jump in the homicide rate. This is not entirely implausible, but it seems unlikely to pan out on further investigation (for reasons Leighton mentions later in the story).
You can see from the SF Chron story I linked above that Oakland's murder rate has mostly been between 20 and 40 per 100,000 residents per year for half a century, peaking above 40 from the leaded-gasoline crime wave just after 01990. This is very much in conflict with Leighton's portrayal of Oakland as being full of "areas where crime and violence are more of an abstraction than a daily reality", as is the Merc's map. The corresponding number for the US as a whole from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... is 5.0. Oakland is more like Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa than it is like the US; its spectacular murder rate puts it in the neighborhood of the top 50 cities in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate. On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b..., it was #23 by murder rate among US cities in 02019, before the current crime wave, with a historically very low rate of 16.24 (and #3 for robbery, and #2 for motor-vehicle theft.)
I remember one afternoon, early in the current millennium, when I went to visit a friend in Oakland. I was having a hard time finding a place to park on her block. Her neighbor across the street was practicing martial arts with weapons in his yard, but he was kind enough to interrupt his practice long enough to push someone else's car along the curb a few meters, making space for mine. For me, that memory defines Oakland more than the memories of lovely afternoons on the grass at Lake Merritt.
I don't know how you are supposed to take a writer seriously when they write things like this.
> Even in the absence of a viable alternative, they demand that existing law enforcement structures be torn down.
And this actually just isn't true. The author has time to read academic papers on policing issues but he doesn't seem to have read any of the material that police abolitionists have written.
He also references Michael Shellenberger frequently, a man who has also written "Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All" and "Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalist". I think Shellenberger had to put aside his 'liberal' credentials a long time ago.
> Today, with few exceptions, there is no more involuntary treatment for serious mental disease or drug addiction. But nor is there a humane alternative. There is only jail or the streets.
Maybe this has something to do with public funding for mental health being slashed almost everywhere and also linked to drug laws. So people who are on the streets and self-medicating because they couldn't get treatment can't be placed in the few available options because of their drug intake.
The entire article is a gloss over the issues without any real look at it.
San Fran is indeed a messed up city. So is Oakland. But I really don't have time for white people complaining about a situation that never affects them. He is complaining about his nanny having to move. Not him. His nanny. How does that compare to the police killing your friends and relatives for no reason?
Seeing a lot of unchecked and unexamined confirmation bias despite the complete lack of evidence presented in the article or anywhere else that there is any kind of causal relationship here. Many commenters here on HN are self-aware but in the grass we can find hiding those who paradoxically fetishize rationality despite continually falling into fallacy traps.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-didnt-cut-any-money-from-t...
Do you work as hard when you know management is gunning for your job?
Of course this is totally unscientific, but I think it is interesting and at the very least there is some association. I also note that larger cities tend to be democratic.
NYC crime is way down since Guiliani was mayor.
Los Angeles crime is down since Richard Riordan was mayor.
So maybe the takeaway is that getting rid of Republican mayors reduces crime?
It’s likely not, but that’s the problem with looking at things this way.
Giuliani's heavy handedness in dealing with criminals forced the crime to come down in a way. Meaning, police were forced to deal even with the pettiest of crimes. Giuliani banned all sorts of "unsavory" businesses from Times Square. That reduced crime in the area and helped a ton because it showed that a horrible area can be rehabilitated. One year, the subways were gross, smelly, hot, dangerous and covered in graffiti. And the next, I was riding in clean subways at 2am without fearing for my life.
In Los Angeles, with Richard Riordan, his years coincided with California's "3 strikes and you are out" law, which put away lots of habitual criminals. Crime went down everywhere in the state.
Also crime was already falling when each of them took office so I’m not sure I’d attribute the falling crime solely to their tactics or leadership.
That is possible. I can only speak from my experience. I visited NYC a number of times pre-Giuliani, then moved to NYC after he became mayor. It was like night and day, particularly the area around Times Square where I ended up working.
Edit: Actually, I was surprised to find that the cities with the highest populations didn't necessarily have the highest per capita crime. Compare Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York to Detroit, Baltimore, and Kansas City. The latter are all smaller but have higher per capita crime.
Also, to control for size somewhat, I compared cities in the dataset with population between 390K and 500K (6 democratic cities / 6 republican). Again, dividing in half by per capita crime rate, 5 of 6 top crime cities are democratic, and 5 of 6 low crime cities are republican. The ordered list for anyone curious (low to high crime) is: Virginia Beach Mesa Colorado Springs Omaha Sacramento Miami Atlanta Wichita Tulsa Minneapolis Oakland Kansas City