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Comment by NeverFade | Hacker News Reader

> When risking getting caught stealing is more attractive than working then it's safe to say the working opportunities for those people aren't worth almost anything.

Except when these thefts are de-facto decriminalized in Califronia, and police is either defunded or directed not to fight these crimes, the "risk of getting caught" is effectively zero.

That means that unless you start handing out iPhones for free in local malls, the thefts will continue.

Let's stop pretending these thieves are "starving". Starving people don't pull up to a Gucci or Louis Vuitton in a Porsche and casually steal a luxury handbag for their girlfriend.

If all work is slavery to you, how about the people who produced all these iPhones and LV bags?

We're dealing here with people who are happy to steal the products of other people's work, instead of doing any work themselves.

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there has been no meaningful defunding of police in any major metropolitan area in california and no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades. you are regurgitating authoritarian propaganda with no evidence.

California passed a proposition that theft of property under $950 will not be prosecuted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

That means criminals engaging in such thefts cannot be legally arrested or prosecuted.

And we haven't even started discussing LA's new DA Gascon's aggressive move to decriminalize a very large set of offenses:

https://abc7.com/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-attorney...

> no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades

If there's no directive, why is property crime not pursued?

Because it’s work and the cops are lazy? No one’s on their ass to go after it either unless it happens to someone with money or connections.

California passed a a proposition that theft of property under $950 will not be prosecuted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law. Passing such Propositions then blaming cops for rising crime is sinister.

From this article

> It recategorized some nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors, rather than felonies, as they had previously been categorized.

It’s still a crime. Police’s job is to respond to crime. Can you imagine if you were tasked with a job and then just stopped doing it because your thought your boss needed to take it more seriously? Any place I worked you’d get fired.

Especially if you started lying to everyone that your boss made it a rule that the problem can’t be dealt with when in reality you just think the consequences aren’t high enough

> No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law

They could patrol the streets and respond to the crime. The court system and prosecutors office decides if it needs to escalate from there. This is the LAPD however so they’re probably too busy forming gangs and engaging in crime themselves

a century of propaganda has led everyone to think that the police spend a lot of effort 'solving' crimes, but a cursory look at clearance statistics will reveal otherwise.

to the extent that police are an effective anti-crime tool, it primarily stems from their physical presence (racially profiled harassment) as a deterrent. outside of homicides & some PR-useful drug enforcement, police departments spend most of their time discouraging people from filing police reports after actual crimes, harassing poor people, and meeting traffic citation quotas

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