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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing you live in Texas (as do I), not San Francisco or California, and this is an expression of the "Everything in California is terrible" meme that's popular here.

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I lived in California, near San Francisco. Not everything is California is terrible, but everything to do with SF DA is. SF got really really terrible - and it wasn't like that a decade ago. There are many opinions why that happened but I think "progressive" social engineering experimentation played a large role. I mean, if you decriminalize theft, you get a lot of theft. Who could have thought?

Corruption in Texas is super interesting in fact! The lengths that all of the segments of government seem to be taking in order to avoid taking the indicted Attorney General to trial is probably not unique but it’s interesting to see in real time.

I’m guessing he’s from Texas because his username says so.

But I’m from the SF bay area and he’s spot on. We have massive social issues here (homelessness, drug-related crimes, urban blight, etc.) which are being made worse by so-called “progressive” policies.

Just to play devils advocate: will so-called “conservative” policies improve the situation?

False dichotomy. There’s a whole universe of policy options.

But to answer your question as posed, conservative policies will probably get us out of the mess we’re in, and then we can have the luxury to consider what smarter long-term progressive policies could be enacted.

Example: there is now an organized crime theft ring coordinating smash-and-grab thefts from storefronts in San Francisco because the DA’s so-called progressive policy of excessive leniency for misdemeanor theft. To the point where stores like CVS are abandoning the city. A “conservative” policy of harsh law enforcement is probably needed to reverse this trend. (That’s not the same as saying we should have harsh punishment for misdemeanors as a general rule forever though.)

CVS is abandoning a lot of cities: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/cvs-store-closures-to-shut-a... .

Singapore and Tokyo are large, densely-populated cities that don't have the public-order problems that California cities do. I can't say if their policies are "conservative" or not based on the US understanding of the word, but they do seem to work...

California cities very recently didn't have the public-order problems that California cities do. It's a pretty recent phenomenon, and it's hard not to attribute it to the novel ideas of legalizing theft and "reforming" criminals by just letting them go.

In the case of the former, caning is a widely used form of corporal punishment. That is extremely conservative and not something we should re-create in the US.

I don't think that we should institute caning, but I do think that new forms of punishment are needed.

Jail and prison are terrible forms of punishment. Someone who goes to prison is going to lose their job, maybe lose their house and possessions, and be away from their family. And that's all to spend time hanging out with convicted criminals all day and learn nothing of value.

Compared with this, caning actually starts to look not so bad. It sends a clear message "don't do that again" without destroying someone's life.

Now, caning also can cause serious damage to your body, so I don't think it's an acceptable punishment, but it would be good to have a better method of punishment that sent a clear message but didn't wreck someone's life and leave them with little alternative but to resort to crime again.

I draw the line, myself, at permanently maiming people for petty crime, so the Saudi method of handling thieves is off the table. Birching or caning was used successfully in anglophone countries for years.

Alternatively, something distasteful and uncomfortable, like being dressed in an orange jumpsuit, shackled to other ne'r-do-wells, and forcd to police the side of a highway for litter for 12 hours a day for a month would also work, if it could be applied with dispatch.

...furthermore, consider this:

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/victim-of-hit-and-ru...

Think hard on the developmental stage of the person behind the wheel of the car. Which do you think will have a more lasting effect on him; camp...or a whipping? Do you think the woman in the article is wrong for being outraged at the original sentence?

Some of them - like prosecuting crime and dealing with rampant homelessness - would. Some - like restricting hard liquor sales - probably wouldn't. The key is not to choose correct tribe, the key is to choose correct policy. SF - and CA - government has been consistently terrible at that for years.

There are plenty of boneheaded policies in CA, but I'm not sure what's so "progressive" about cutting tax just because you've owned the house for longer.

It’s not meant to be a tax cut. It’s meant to keep seniors from being pushed out of their home by rising property values.

Yeah, in the same way lower minimum wages are meant to keep mom-and-pop store owners from going bankrupt.

The argument I've heard is seniors getting priced out, and having to move. Considering what happens when a senior has to move away from their social group, doctor and other resources they know, I can see why that would be bad.

But this leaves them as NIMBYs, preventing more housing. Without more housing, there are fewer people to charge property tax. So you're hit with the double whammy of less taxpayers, and less income from many of them.

Well I live in SF and I can tell you for certain it is as bad as everyone says

As another resident, I can vouch there are serious issue but the DA is largely being successfully scapegoated by the troubled police department. Pretty much all the reasons the police cite for their chronic issues and ineffectiveness are utter BS but they seem to have successfully shifted all the blame onto the DA. With the serious police dept issues, pandemic, national trends, and lopsided analysis it’s hard to say how much role the da has had but it’s easy to tell it’s nowhere even close to what most attribute. I think the recall will succeed and the supporters will find nothing changes because he wasn’t the issue.

Can you provide some more details about the types of issues the PD has shifted onto the DA?

As an outsider, the only real issue I'm aware of is the refusal to prosecute theft under $1k (edit: $950), which seems like something that is completely out of the police's hands.

Example: the DA won’t prosecute theft under $950, as you say. So the police will literally stand across the street and watch a street vendor get robbed and do nothing.

Just because the DA will refuse to press charges doesn’t mean they couldn’t have still arrested the guy for the night and returned the property, not to mention intervening in a potentially dangerous situation for the shop owner and customers.

> So the police will literally stand across the street and watch a street vendor get robbed and do nothing.

Are you saying that SFPD is not stopping crimes that are occurring in front of them because they believe that the suspect will not be prosecuted? The police are not prosecutors - if they are failing to stop crimes, the fault lies squarely with them.

Can you provide some examples of when this has happened?

Yes, that exactly is what many cops are doing.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...

Some overlap with the prior one: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...

There was also a video of cops pulling up and watching a dispensary get robbed

There was another account on next door of a neighbor pursuing a robber after a home invasion and had to pleas with the police to even approach the guy, and they basically just got him his stuff back and tainted all the evidence so no DA would be able to actually prosecute. Not even sure if they actually arrested that guy.

And then there is the fairly recent examples of extreme racism of some of the officers that tainted criminal cases leading them to be dismissed. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sfpd-racist-tex...

That $950 limit is a widespread but, to be blunt, nonesense talking point that is a great example of how the police absolve their hands of their inaction and how a lack of nationwide context creates myopic assessments.

For example, In the great progressive bastion of Texas the felony theft limit is $2,500, and also the current DA didn’t make the law.

The police have been caught many times simple spectating crimes in action. That’s not the da, that’s cops on strike.

The police choosing to do nothing because the outcome may not be as they desire is ridiculous. Imagine trying that excuse at your work.

Not to mention the progressive solutions are all half-measures. Where are the solutions to the homelessness and poverty? Just reducing criminal punishment and enforcement does nothing.

More like they’re both terrible. But the police were smart enough to figure out they can blame the DA (who deserves blame, but not alone) and avoid accountability for themselves.

Yeah the pandemic does throw a wrench in the assessment. But letting the police so successfully push all the blame onto the da is only going to embolden them and reward bad behavior. If the option was to recall the top police leaders plus the da, then I’d vote yes. Punishing only one side will make the situation worse.

For folks who think SF and Oakland PD issues are limited to their systemic violence against minorities, video documented violence against protestors & intentionally making current levels of crime seem worse to help the recall it’s worth looking into some of their darker crimes.

Check out their abuse of Celeste Guap, how long it took for anyone to do anything, the number of DAs, prosecutors and AGs that looked the other way, the charges dropped and finally the lone officer to actually face charges and the plea deal they received.

Police in the bay area have been able to do anything they want for a long time. The campaign against the current DA really just stems from him doing what is still far below the bare minimum to e remind police that they are not above the law.

Move to the South Bay or the peninsula?

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