Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

“Our residents and small businesses want us focused on keeping San Francisco safe for everyone who lives and works in the City,” Breed said in a statement. “This is a sensible policy that balances the need to give our police officers another tool to address significant public safety challenges and to hold those who break the law accountable.”

Oh my god, the mental gymnastics here are mind-numbing.

Why not just fix the plethora of existing fundamental crises plaguing the city which are directly to blame for rising crime?

Fraud is at an all-time high too, do I get a live feed of the private offices of high-ranking financial executives?

I know the playbook, I know this is Police State 101, but are we really so lazy and pathetic that we still accept this answer as citizens?

When will we finally remember that police and lawmakers are our public servants and not the other way around? This should be cause for protest across the entire tech industry. We can afford to take off work.

What are we going to do about this?

Suggest a better alternative so it takes the wind out of the 'we need this to stop crime' sails.

I'd suggest SF instead create a website where citizens can upload their own private videos of crimes being committed and actually expect a police follow-up.

There are thousands of SF citizens that have the exact GPS location of their stolen phone, bike, etc. You know where there's one stolen item there are likely many more, why not use the evidence we have that citizens are pleading with SFPD to take action upon (to no avail).

The first step, is to actually have consequences to the commission of crimes again. How is it so surprising that when you get lax on penalties, there will be more crime?

You could prevent crime from ever happening in the first place. The more mentally ill, drug addicted and homelessness you've got in a city, without any kind of support for them, the worse the crime is going to get. Punishment doesn't fix anything, just keeps them with nothing to lose.

Interestingly, I think a more effective approach would be to invert, reporting crimes without the expectation for police follow-up, shining a spotlight on the disgustingly lazy SFPD and their handlers.

The only problem with either of these approaches is that it exposes the accused to vigilante action without due process.

Therein lies the problem. You have many thousands of pieces of evidence but limited manpower and resources. Even more so when politicians and residents are pushing to shrink your budgets. Couple that with a DA that is letting some pretty spicy characters walk on serious charges, and you have a recipe for todays conditions. If only someone saw this coming...

> Even more so when politicians and residents are pushing to shrink your budgets.

Besides the public discussion which we all heard, do you have any evidence that policing budgets actually shrank? My understanding is that they largely did not (and mostly grew). So you really don't seem to be arguing in good faith.

So what you're saying is that all the municipalities and cities that cut budgets is not evidence of budgets getting cut? Seems to me that you're not arguing in good faith when all of this is public record, and could be discovered as such with a 10 minute stroll through google results.

I'm not convinced budget is the issue. Many police still perform patrols around the city, and the data does not support the efficacy of that.

Data shows that crime occurs in highly concentrated areas, and those are typically the undesirable areas of the city where police rarely patrol. I also question the efficacy of city-wide patrols now that every citizen is carrying a phone and can easily call in an issue.

How would crime change if we committed just 2% of the 2000+ SF police force on permanent patrol in tenderloin? That's something like 20 officers walking around tenderloin at all times, it would make the open-air drug market significantly more difficult. You could commit 10% or 200 officers to tracking down citizen-sourced live-GPS crime. Car breakins where a GPS device was taken (airtag is present, or cellphone/airpods was taken).

I'd wager that those 12% of officers would make more total arrests than the 88% doing patrols throughout the rest of the city.

> Many police still perform patrols around the city, and the data does not support the efficacy of that.

There's a lot of value in having patrols even in low crime areas. It means that when something does go horribly wrong, or even when residents just need help, that help isn't terribly far away. It also prevents "police free zones" which criminals would quickly discover and be happy to exploit. That said, police certainly should be patrolling areas where crime is more prevalent more frequently.

> Fraud is at an all-time high too, do I get a live feed of the private offices of high-ranking financial executives?

Given the corruption revelations / charges that have come out of City Hall, SF residents should get live feeds (with audio) of all offices of city officials.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm trying more and more to live stream my own dev process, they can do the same.

I was thinking of live streaming my own coding, but I can't think of anything more boring to watch.

What kind of projects are you thinking of streaming? You might have your first viewer right here :)

You can always add an exciting techno soundtrack or just get a mic, a mechanical keyboard, and a loud mouse and you can pull in the ASMR fans.

> I know the playbook, I know this is Police State 101, but are we really so lazy and pathetic that we still accept this answer as citizens?

The number of Amazon ring cameras sold suggests that we'll not only accept it, we'll pay for the privilege of bringing the police state right into our own homes!

Surveillance capitalism just makes you all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't it.

> What are we going to do about this?

Maybe elect somebody different, or run yourself if you feel so strongly about it.

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