SF is a ground zero test bed for policy making. Other cities will learn from their mistakes and hopefully all of us will benefit. I think we can just agree decriminalizing and not prosecuting "petty theft" is just a disaster.
1. Effectively decriminalizing all drugs
2. Focus on harm reduction instead of police enforcement to reduce drug problems
3. Bureaucracy free disbursement of cash aid to those who need it
4. Decarceration and jail avoidance as a method of preventing structural employer discrimination of people with records from ruining peoples lives
It didn't work. The city is a mess in all of the ways that the harshest critics of these policies predicted. It wasn't hard to predict, but the vision of equitable, punishment-free utopia beguiled the population and led them to mayhem.
We need to reverse course, yet the most vocal proponents are doubling down on their failed agenda.
Actually, it is clear that that local policy either did nothing at all but was simply adopted at the right time to be given local credit for broader demographic (e.g., population bulge aging out of the main crime-driving age band), economic, and environmental (e.g., lead exposure) factors, or it was so successful that it somehow managed to effect places outside of New York across the country that didn’t adopt similar policies.
I definitely remember "tough on crime" being nationally popular (not just in NYC) in both parties through the '90s. Even if it wasn't called "broken windows policing".
Obviously some of the Bratton/Giuliani policies were specifically tailored to NYC and not really applicable elsewhere (no need to crack down on subway fare evasion in Houston for example) but the general sentiment of "the police should aggressively enforce all laws and lock all criminals up" was extremely popular.
This is not to say that any of this was right, or good, or just, or why crime fell or whatever. But it was definitely popular in the '90s outside of NYC.