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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

This is fantastic news for the residents of San Francisco. Now the police can watch in real time from afar, so they aren't at risk of spilling their donuts and coffee in the car while watching close by as residents packages are stolen, car windows broken, and petty theft runs rampant through no enforcement of the law.

We should all be proud of what technology has achieved for society, further reducing the risk of being a police officer. What great benefit to the residents of San Francisco. Many more officers will make it to retirement age to make use of their oversized pensions since they won't even need to worry about possibly being cajoled into action and having to foot chase a thief when they can simply watch crime occur unabated from the comfort of their offices and homes.

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> Now the police can watch in real time from afar, so they aren't at risk of spilling their donuts and coffee in the car while watching close by as residents packages are stolen, car windows broken, and petty theft runs rampant through no enforcement of the law.

This is a direct result of the politicians that the residents elected. When you have a DA that doesn't prosecute offenders and releases them after police go through the work of arresting, gathering evidence, writing reports, booking, etc over and over again you'll start to get police that wont do those things because its simply a waste of their time.

Do you work for the police department?

Nope. Just have been following the /r/ProtectAndServe subreddit the past few years to get a better understanding about their profession and the reasoning behind their decisions and tactics.

What I described above is a very common recurring trend from verified officers that work in major cities like SF that have gone soft on crime over the past few years.

If the police are too apathetic to do their jobs, they shouldn't be getting paid at all. If they don't want to do their jobs then why don't they quit? Actions speak louder than words - they just want the paycheck without the work.

The police are the problem with police, regardless of whatever distractions they say are to blame.

If the person they are arresting isn't being prosecuted because the DA releases them for petty crime/breaking into cars/stealing/etc, then there is zero point to actually arresting them if the cop is going to see them on the street again in 4 hours doing the same shit again. This is a political problem, not a police problem.

If the police honestly believe that, they should quit and stop wasting taxpayer money. Again, actions speak louder than words. You're just buying their bullshit excuses for why they're incompetent.

Many have. Police forces are having issues recruiting and retaining.

And then who will be left, but the dangerous idiots?

> then there is zero point to actually arresting them if the cop is going to see them on the street again in 4 hours doing the same shit again.

the "point" would be in part:

1. Actually doing their job. No one can blame police if the DA or a lawyer or a judge fucks up and a "bad guy" walks. We can/will blame them if they refuse to do the job they are paid for.

2. It gets a "bad guy" off the street for 4+ hours. That's 4+ hours where the people police are supposed to be protecting don't have to worry about the criminal.

3. Keeping the record. Even assuming a terrible DA is letting everyone police arrest go free, someday a non-terrible DA is going to come into office and when a case file hits their desk they're going to want to know if the person arrested has been arrested one time or 20 times over the last x number of years. They're going to want to review reports and evidence from those incidents as well.

If you're talking about the brief 2-year period where Boudin was DA, a) SF cop indifference long precedes that, and b) it's over, he's gone. So maybe you can drop this talking point and get a new one.

I also want to challenge the notion that putting even more people in prison is going to solve these problems. The US has the world's highest incarceration rate. And not just by a little; we're ~5x the UK, ~10x Scandinavia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

We've tried mass incarceration to reduce crime. It does not work. Trying it a bit harder after decades of it not working is not going to suddenly and magically produce a different result.

It is easy to say that while sitting under the umbrella of their service, having never done even the smallest aspect of the job. The hostility towards uniform services in 2020 are paying dividends today. This is what was ordered and you get exactly what you paid for.

Not wanting to do the job. On the contrary, they want to do the job, that's why they become LEO in the first place. The problem is that leadership won't let them do the job, tying their hands and undoing the work they do (by releasing known violent criminals and other predators)

Add in the talent-drain and it gets even worse. Why would a 20 year man stay on for 5 more years to train the new guard when it is just easier to retire now and not deal with activist leadership, people spitting on you, and DAs who let your collars (the one that almost got you stabbed) walk in a few hours?

> The hostility towards uniform services in 2020 are paying dividends today. This is what was ordered and you get exactly what you paid for.

This applies in reverse to the lack of accountability and closing of ranks when police do something that's out of line. Why would police departments expect citizens to treat them with respect when enforcement of the law within their own ranks is so poor?

That's a nice lie you have there.

The problem is that crime is not being prosecuted as it should. The fault lies with the DA's office. Any other "solution" you offer will not actually resolve the effects of the problem until that problem is solved.

Once that problem is solved, I can guarantee you will see arrests increase. Maybe you're one of the ones who don't want that?

Why are the only two packages on political offer "don't prosecute" and "beat up innocent people?"

This is a mischaracterization of what occurs in the real world.

That’s true, police will still beat up innocent people even when they won’t arrest the clearly guilty to protest prosecutors not charging the exact way police would prefer.

Again, a mischaracterization. There are somewhere north of 3,000,000 police-citizen interactions per day. An overwhelming majority of them end without event. Rarely are 'innocent' people even restrained. What's most likely is a person will resist arrest after they were suspected of a crime, and will be injured in the forceful arrest.

“Lots of innocent people don’t get beat up by police” is true, but not actually a rebuttal of “police beat up innocent people”.

Because "police beat up innocent people" is a non-argument. You could replace "police" in that statement with just about any group of people and it would still hold true.

Sure, but when anyone not from this specific group beats up someone, the criminal justice system generally prosecutes them. And if the criminal justice system fails to do that, we all still generally agree that the attacker was in the wrong.

Meanwhile, when a police officer beats up or even murders someone, often an entire city has to protest for that violent criminal to even be charged. And their coworkers, purported employees of the public trust, purported believers in law and order, go on and on justifying the assailant's actions as if they should be normalized.

Re-read what I wrote. In the eyes of the court, a person is innocent until proven guilty, but the overwhelming majority of times, a person gets tuned up by police because they are violent and resisting arrest. Suppose we could argue about the meaning of innocent in the context of someone who led police on a chase, committed an assault against another citizen or police or has an active warrant and didn't want to go back to jail. Police are reactive and generally not proactive. They are dispatched to an incident and absolutely do not drive around looking for people to tune up. That's just simply false and is only true in the political theater that put us in this situation in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fajitagate

https://www.kqed.org/news/27731/another-video-from-adachi-ro...

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/former-sfpd-lieute...

https://abc7news.com/sfpd-sf-cop-makes-racial-slur-police-ch...

I come from a law enforcement and fire service family and I can say I've heard similar things from family and friends in uniform service. The two biggest problems are letting the bad ones walk and the drain of talent & experience as a result of terrible government policy nuking morale.

I think there is more to this as well - it seems like policing is seen more as a source of revenue for cities than it is about protecting or serving the citizens of the city. I used to live in Lynnwood, WA and they added ~20 new officers in 2015 or so - by far the bulk were on "traffic". They had just spent 25+ million on a new rec center and updated library and needed to get that money from somewhere. Around that time my house was broken in to and the police saw it 100% as an insurance issue. I think A LOT of people don't see local police as anything other than another form of tax on the local citizens, and I believe it has changed the TYPE of person that wants to BECOME a police officer - from someone that is interested in helping their fellow citizen to someone that likes the feeling of power they get over others.

If that’s a waste of their time (setting aside that they don’t get to decide that), what are they doing instead?

Monitoring, that's what the TFA is about. They just don't take action because the DA won't take action.

Why open yourself up to liability, danger, just to have the DA let the person off and back out.

Fix the issue from the top. It's specific DA's in specific areas that are the problem.

You really don’t need many cops for monitoring, especially when they won’t investigate or arrest people for crimes. Why spend money on employing them?

The police don’t get to decide whether people are guilty or can be convicted in court. Whether the DA prosecutes people adequately is a political problem. Whether the city spends millions employing cops that don’t do anything is also a political problem.

Yes, it seems certain areas have two conflicting political problems.

The DA is either letting too many people go or the mayor is keeping too many police.

Personally I believe certain DAs are completely out of line and don't reflect the will of the people, but the will of certain donors.

> They just don't take action because the DA won't take action.

But they were already successful in their “get paid while on strike” protest to overthrow the D. A. in favor of their favored alternative, so shouldn’t their defenders at least come up with a new excuse for their continued nonfeasance?

I guess we'll see how the new DA performs.

I'm curious, do you think the previous DA did a good job or did you support the recall?

-- EDIT @dragonwriter --

  > I think that debate is about as relevant to the law enforcement problems in San Francisco as a debate over the china pattern in the first class dining room is to the problems with the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic.

Okay... so you don't want to answer the question if you supported the DA or not.

It's very much relevant as we were talking about the performance of the DA and you brought up the recall itself.

You could have easily voiced your opinion of the DA instead of spouting off a silly analogy.

-- EDIT2 @dragonwriter ---

  > since apparently you’re doing upthread edits in lieu of responding

Yes unfortunately I hit a post limit so I opted to respond in an edit because this conversation is interesting, thank you for adapting.

  > No, its not relevant to the point that SFPD apologists 
 blaming the past DAs prosecutorial approach for why SFPD won't arrest people now after they succesfully got that past DA thrown out and replaced based on that argument makes no sense.

  > It doesn’t really matter if they were right about Boudin when he was in office, that’s moot when it comes to their current (in)action when he isn’t.

You act like it's been awhile since the DA was recalled for not doing his job, it's only been a couple months and old cases are still being reviewed. We'll see if the crime in SF lowers, or how the new DA handles cases in the very near future.

I find it very interesting that you have no problem trying to put blame on the SFPD, who have little control in policies other than striking for change, which they did, while not even wanting to comment on the previous DA which generated the problems which led to the recent recall.

  > It doesn’t really matter if they were right about Boudin when he was in office, that’s moot when it comes to their current (in)action when he isn’t.

It certainly does matter as these things take time to progress, they aren't instant. The problems of SF today are the problems because of the last two DAs, not the one that just got in, depending on their actions.

It will take time for the negative incentives to influence the criminals. This is why it's important to always enforce the law and not just let people out.

> do you think the previous DA did a good job or did you support the recall?

I think that debate is about as relevant to the law enforcement problems in San Francisco as a debate over the china pattern in the first class dining room is to the problems with the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic.

EDIT:

since apparently you’re doing upthread edits in lieu of responding:

> It's very much relevant as we were talking about the performance of the DA and you brought up the recall itself

No, its not relevant to the point that SFPD apologists blaming the past DAs prosecutorial approach for why SFPD won't arrest people now after they succesfully got that past DA thrown out and replaced based on that argument makes no sense.

It doesn’t really matter if they were right about Boudin when he was in office, that’s moot when it comes to their current (in)action when he isn’t.

>> what are they doing instead?

Watching crimes happen via security cameras.

Garbage men pick up the trash every week. Yet, every week there's more trash. I fix bugs even though more bugs will inevitably be found.

If what you say is true, what police officers are refusing to do is their job. And it's not that different than many other jobs out there. They're not elected officials, it's not their job to legislate or choose who to prosecute.

Neat analogy, but you didn't finish it. It would be like if the garbage men took the trash out and at the end of the month and the person in charge of the dump released it all back out on the streets. Certainly you would have a garbage strike, which is what happened, and the dump manager (DA) was recalled.

When you arrest the same person over and over again and they are just let out by the DA, you may just not arrest that person again.

You aren't refusing to do your job, you're listening to an elected official that has more power than you do.

Do you have any criticisms to direct at the DA, or do you agree with their actions?

Most of the sanitation workers I know would love it because of job security.

Maybe if we treated cops like people with jobs, we'd be able to hire some that work.

>When you arrest the same person over and over again and they are just let out by the DA, you may just not arrest that person again.

Great, so everyone agrees the current approach doesn't work. Now we need to come up with a better solution.

Option 1 is to throw these repeat offenders in jail and consider the situation fixed.

Option 2 is to take the money that we are paying the cop that now refuses to arrest anyone and instead pay someone who is willing to work with this repeat offender and help get them a home, job, treatment, or whatever else they need to stop living life like this.

Soon we will have colonies on other planets and there will be an option 3.

Police that refuse to do their job because the DA's office is politically indoctrinated are not helping anything. It's almost immature. Police have unions and associations, political connections (even today), connections with the press (even today), so we're not talking about some powerless sector of society.

The mature response is for SF police to do its job (because if we do the math, it is also wasting the time of criminals), and have its organizational arms make a stink about it in the public space. Publish statistics and weekly 'wtf DA?' blog posts. I mean it's the 21st century.

Ah yes, the classic "all criminals are just misunderstood and will stop committing crime if you give them money" argument.

What is the counterargument? "All criminals are just evil people and will never stop committing crime unless they are thrown in jail"?

The original line of argument was that crime went up because punishments went don't. This implicitly is built on the belief that criminals are rational actors responding to a changing incentive structure. We can therefore reduce crime by changing the incentives again so that crime is a less attractive option. There is no reason why that change needs to be the reintroduction of harsh punishments. We can also change incentives by reducing the positive benefit of crime by making sure people's basic needs are satisfied.

You assume people need external incentives to commit crime, which is completely wrong. People need external incentives to NOT commit crime, because most crimes already include inherent incentives. For example, stealing comes with the inherent reward of gaining whatever it is you stole. You don't need to be homeless and starving to want more money or physical goods.

I am living a comfortable life, all of my basic needs are satisfied, and I have never stolen anything. But if I could just walk into a store, grab things and walk out with the knowledge that I was not going to be punished for it in any way, I absolutely would. Why wouldn't I? Because it's "wrong"? I'm sorry but the world doesn't work that way. If I didn't, someone else would.

> People need external incentives to NOT commit crime, because most crimes already include inherent incentives.

That's a pretty cynical view of human nature that I don't share.

> But if I could just walk into a store, grab things and walk out with the knowledge that I was not going to be punished for it in any way, I absolutely would.

I absolutely wouldn't. I mean, zero-consequence thefts seem to be a true state of affairs for many places like pharmacies in SF, and yet I don't feel any desire to walk into a Walgreens and start walking out with stuff without paying. Sure, I'm pretty comfortable financially, and that's a factor. But I would have to be pretty hard-up financially, like "I'm going to be out on the streets if I don't steal" levels of hard-up, to consider stealing at all, let alone habitually (and I'd still feel guilty about it). And I frankly can't blame people in that position; in many cases society has failed them, so I can't fault them for ignoring society's rules.

> Why wouldn't I? Because it's "wrong"?

Yes! Laws only work because people agree that they're a good idea in general, even if we may not agree with every individual law. I agree with laws around theft because I think it's shitty to deprive someone else of something that's theirs. Maybe it's a little muddier in the "personalization" aspect when we're talking about goods for sale owned by a huge corporation, but massive, ongoing, consequence-free theft from a particular store means that store is eventually going to shut down, and deprive regular people from jobs and their livelihoods. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

> I'm sorry but the world doesn't work that way. If I didn't, someone else would.

Ah, yes, the "if I'm not an asshole, someone else will be, so I might as well just be an asshole and reap undeserved rewards" anti-morality play. That's reprehensible; I strongly suggest you re-evaluate your approach to being a human.

>And I frankly can't blame people in that position; in many cases society has failed them, so I can't fault them for ignoring society's rules.

You remind me of the dude who made that one bike comic. If someone stole something you own, you'd be happy because "society failed them"? I assume you've never actually been victim of or even witnessed any kind of crime, because you'd probably change your mind if you did.

>Laws only work because people agree that they're a good idea in general

No, laws are created because most people think they're a good idea, they work because they are enforced. A law that is not enforced is a law that effectively does not exist.

>Ah, yes, the "if I'm not an asshole, someone else will be, so I might as well just be an asshole and reap undeserved rewards" anti-morality play. That's reprehensible; I strongly suggest you re-evaluate your approach to being a human.

The only reason you don't agree with this is because you're not surrounded by other people reaping undeserved rewards. It's very easy to say "I would never do that!" in an environment where nobody else does it. Have you ever heard of "looting"? Because that's literally what I described in action. If people know for a fact they can get away from stealing from a store, there will be no shortage of people willing to do it. If you'd stand there and watch while everyone else gets their free stuff, knowing the store will be cleaned out by the end of the day regardless, good for you, but your own morality does not change the facts.

> And I frankly can't blame people in that position; in many cases society has failed them, so I can't fault them for ignoring society's rules.

Society doesn’t owe you anything; you owe society.

How is this asymmetry justified? By how pithy and strong the statement sounds?

>You assume people need external incentives to commit crime, which is completely wrong. People need external incentives to NOT commit crime,

These are the same thing. There is one decision, either commit crime or don't. There are positive and negative incentives on each side.

>For example, stealing comes with the inherent reward of gaining whatever it is you stole. You don't need to be homeless and starving to want more money or physical goods.

Sure, but if you are homeless and starting your motivation to steal go up because that money represents a greater marginal improvement to your life. Would you disagree with that?

>But if I could just walk into a store, grab things and walk out with the knowledge that I was not going to be punished for it in any way, I absolutely would. Why wouldn't I? Because it's "wrong"? I'm sorry but the world doesn't work that way. If I didn't, someone else would.

It is always funny to me when someone admits they have no morals and think that means no one else has morals. There have been studies that show most people don't operate this way. For example, a majority of people will try to return a lost wallet and that percentage goes up when the amount of cash in the wallet increases[1]. How do you explain that?

[1] - https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734141432/what-dropping-17-00...

>Sure, but if you are homeless and starting your motivation to steal go up because that money represents a greater marginal improvement to your life. Would you disagree with that?

No. I never claimed that nobody has ever committed a crime due to being poor or homeless. All I'm saying is that the claim that solving homelessness and poverty would also solve crime is objectively wrong.

No one said this is a solution to "solve crime" just like throwing all criminals in jail doesn't "solve crime". There will always be murderers, rapists, and just generally evil and deranged people. The goal isn't for San Francisco to have zero crime. That is impossible. The goal is to reduce crime. Reducing homeless and poverty would lead to a reduction in crime. Do you agree with that?

  "How do you explain that?"

That can also be a selfish act. The feeling of happiness and pride from being gratuitously thanked exceeds the feeling of happiness from getting extra cash. Social validation and feeling wanted is a powerful driver of happiness, because being popular in your tribe leads to reproductive success. Clear selfish motive there.

So that doesn't map onto anonymously stealing from a store which many people, if not most people, would do if there were guaranteed to be no criminal or social consequences. Empirically the correlation between income and shoplifting wasn't that high, last I checked. And studies of people cheating show it is more common than not, last I checked. Almost everyone eats meat, despite the knowledge it's morally reprehensible, simply because it's still within the Overton Window for now. Eating meat is more morally reprehensible than shoplifting, the only reason people do the former and not the latter is social acceptability.

By design, people are intrinsically selfish creatures. Any motivations that present as altruistic are either cultural mind viruses, disingenuous virtue signalling, or strategies (such as popularity and recognition seeking) we unconsciously selfishly employ to improve happiness (proximate reason) and genetic fitness (underlying reason).

There's no societal difference between "people are intrinsically good" and "people are intrinsically selfish, but perform good acts for social credit". When the rubber meets the road, people are performing good acts.

Even when using stunted amoral analysis of human behavior, who cares what's the reason people are justifying moral acts?

I agree. Let ICE round up the (mainly Honduran) migrants dealing drugs to pay off the cartel for their transit into the country. Note: that doesn’t mean cooperating with ICE on raids on the rest/majority of the migrants who are actively contributing positively to the city. The current policy is to simply hand these people “no go” orders, which are essentially a polite request to not go back to Civic Center/the Tenderloin.

It’s an absolute joke and it is typical black and white American policy making that’s causing this situation to be far worse than it needs to be.

Some criminals just need opportunity and support to see the light. Some are just horrible people who can't realistically be saved and should just be thrown in jail forever. Most are somewhere between the two.

I think what we need to do is to reintroduce short-term but painful punishments (a day in the stocks, public caning, etc) for moderately severe offenses. Some people need more than just a slap on the wrist to change, but don't deserve to have their life ruined forever by a 30-year jail sentence. Physical pain and public shaming have worked well for millions of years (literally) they still work today in many countries, and they are far more compassionate than a long jail sentence. Humans are just another animal species, sometimes animal incentives are what we need.

That's a good idea. At least give convicted criminals the option. Will save taxpayers a lot too. This could apply to non-violent offences where the person doesn't need to be confined to protect other people from high probability reoffense.

I don't think that's what the person you're replying to said, but yes, that is true in some cases, especially when crimes are perpetrated out of need, drug addiction, or because of feeling disenfranchised and excluded from society.

That's certainly not everyone, but I suspect if we were to deal with the subset that is "misunderstood" in a more productive way, SF crime would be a lot more tractable.

Ugh. No, that's just another strawman. The argument, which is supported by research, is that actually helping people to reintegrate into society, helping them find homes, get jobs, and get mental health treatment stops them committing crimes. That's because putting people in a place of stability reduces the need to commit crime.

I prefer Option 3 - executions - but I'll settle for Option 1.

Some people are too far gone for Option 2, but don't deserve 1 or 3. Like serial shoplifters, first-time drunk drivers, non-violent drug dealers…

We used to know how to deal with these people, and many countries still do. Corporal punishment and public shaming have been the go-to solutions for millions of years. We should bring them back. You can make a criminal deeply and viscerally regret their crime, without destroying their life.

> Corporal punishment and public shaming have been the go-to solutions for millions of years. We should bring them back. You can make a criminal deeply and viscerally regret their crime, without destroying their life.

People have a hard time with the idea that caning or standing on the street with a sandwich board detailing your crime can be the empathic answer. Better than letting you hurt others, and letting the crime harden you until you need harsher responses.

> Like serial shoplifters, first-time drunk drivers, non-violent drug dealers…

Then non-violent drug dealer has to mean someone selling something that can't kill or seriously injure you. Fentanyl dealers might as well be selling arsenic and should be treated accordingly.

Drunk driving kills too. The intent here is that small-time drug dealing, like drunk driving, is something easy to slip into—especially if you are an addict yourself and in debt. Of course the bigger dealers should get worse.

The problem is that lack of enforcement leads to criminals that act not out of desperation, but because they analyzed the rules of the game and realized that the reward for a criminal career is better than the reward for a legitimate career, with few downsides.

Why work 20 days a month and make a modest living when you can steal and rob 3 days a month, fence on the 4th, and live in relative luxury?

Throwing people in jail doesn't help with crimes of despair, but it does help with such calculated crime, because it suddenly is no longer worth it.

> they analyzed the rules of the game and realized that the reward for a criminal career is better than the reward for a legitimate career, with few downsides.

I don't think you realize that you are agreeing with me.

There are benefits to committing crime.

There are benefits to not committing crime.

There are downsides to committing crime.

There are downsides to not committing crime.

These all come together to help influence a person's decision. We can impact that decision by tweaking any one of these 4 results. Yes, increasing the penalties for crime is one way to address it, but we can have the same influence be decreasing the benefit of committing crime or increasing the benefit of not committing crime. I happen to think that is the morally superior choice because the result is fewer people in jail and the US already jails more people per capita than any other country.

How do you want to decrease the benefit of committing crime or increase the benefit of not committing crime?

Without punishment, the benefit of stealing $1000 is roughly $1000.

Again, I'm not talking about crimes of desperation, I'm talking about "I want $shiny_expensive_thing and stealing it/stealing for it is going to be an easier way to get that than working for it".

As you said:

>Why work 20 days a month and make a modest living when you can steal and rob 3 days a month, fence on the 4th, and live in relative luxury?

What if that modest living takes 10 days of work instead of 20. Do you think that will impact the number of people who turn to crime?

1) Sure, an utopia of abundance where everyone has everything they want would solve most crime. It's not realistic though.

2) If the modest living takes 10 instead of 20 days, it will reduce the number of crimes, but not to a level where it would be ok to just ignore without enforcement. And once your 10 days (or many times 10 days) of honest work disappear in one criminal act, and you see that crimes pay and aren't punished, you'll also be tempted to go the easy way.

I'm not talking about a utopia. I am talking about basic measures of inequality that is unique to this area. A family in San Francisco with two people earning minimum wage can't afford to rent a 2-bedroom apartment. They would each need to be working 70+ hour weeks for that to even be feasible. A city is broken if the people who work in the city can't afford to live there. That inequality is likely a bigger contributor to crime than whoever is elected DA. Very few people pay attention to local politics. I doubt most San Franciscans can name the DA, but everyone knows when they can't afford diapers.

It also doesn't matter what the punishment is or isn't, most people aren't going to steal a bike off the street. Most people have morals. Most people don't want to view themselves as a bad person. Most people require some sort of personal justification before they steal something. Desperation is a strong justification. Societal unfairness is a strong justification. The lack of punishment can't be used justify the crime from a moral perspective so it won't impact the way most people behave. It will only impact the people at the margins who were already open to committing crime.

"Throw them in jail to rot there forever" vs "slap on the wrist, coddle them and give them money" is a false dichotomy. We used to have a third option; it worked; many countries still do and it still works.

We should reintroduce short-term but painful punishments (a day in the stocks, public caning, etc) for moderately severe offenses. Some people need more than just a slap on the wrist to change, but don't deserve to have their life ruined forever by a 30-year jail sentence. Physical pain and public shaming have worked well for millions of years (literally) they still work today in many countries, and they are far more compassionate than a long jail sentence. Humans are just another animal species, sometimes animal incentives are what we need.

Option 2 is not a "slap on the wrist, coddle them and give them money." It's solving the actual problem. This is supported by research. Stop strawmanning. Even the DoJ agrees: https://www.justice.gov/archives/prison-reform

Which part is "predicting the DA's decision" in a police officer's job description? Why hasn't it been replaced by ML?

For a different analogy, at a startup, the pm changes the requirements every so often, therefore the engineers are fine to play foosball all day?

It's not about predicting the DA's decision, it's about enforcing the current laws that were decided upon by the people.

The problem was the DA was letting people off even though they were breaking said laws.

You're presuming the outcome of the charge. DAs often don't prosecute because the arrest or paperwork is deficient and the case won't stand up in court.

It’s the job of police officers to arrest people that won’t be charged?

you'd not be fixing bugs, you'd make pull requests that never get merged.

Now that there's been a new DA for a couple months who appears to be tougher on crime, it doesn't seem like anything has happened yet. Chesa was in office for ~30 months. How long do you believe before we should expect a change in behavior?

The SFPD superfans will likely continue blaming Chesa Boudin for every past, present and future instance of crime, spilled milk, and bad weather for generations. He’s an incredibly useful boogeyman for people that want a complete and sovereign police state installed in that city.

As an actual SF resident, this is categorically wrong. The SFPD, pre and post Chesa has been utterly useless, which is supported by historical crime and arrest statistics. In fact, when Chesa was still DA he had to assemble his own team to act on the fencing ring after the SFPD refused to shut it down.

yeah but pre-chesa it was George Gascon, who by all intents is exactly the same ideologically as Chesa. You need to go back before George Gascon(who is now DA of LA and was also under a recall). And honestly SF knew who they were getting in both of them so they deserve the out of control crime that is plaguing the city now.

If that's an accurate description of the situation then why are you still an SF resident?

San Francisco, believe it or not, is still a great place to live, despite all of our issues.

Not the person you're replying to, but in the same boat.

Personally, "effectiveness of police" isn't a make-or-break criterion for me for where to live. I agree that petty property crime is out of control in this city, but I never feel physically unsafe. And regarding property crime itself, my car is garaged, and when it's out and about I never leave anything in it visible from the windows. As for my home, I live on the 4th floor and have two big heavy doors, one with a deadbolt, between me and the street. Home break-ins are pretty rare in my neighborhood anyway, but even if someone did want to break into a home around here, my home is not the low-hanging fruit that a burglar would zero in on first.

Effectively poor local policies hurts lower income people the worst.

The ones without garages, without strong security systems, in worse off neighborhoods, etc.

Unfortunately higher income people only act when it reaches their doorstep, which happens more gradually.

To be fair, most of this work load doesn't exist in a well functioning Society. Police serve to plug holes and fix cracks in the damn that is Civil Society.

Their tools and tactics simply can't hold back a catastrophic failure anymore than an engineer with a shovel.

In a functioning Society, 99% of the crime prevention is done by citizens. This takes the forms of community support, cohesion, self-respect, and having something to lose.

Btw the thing that blocks water is a dam. Damn is short for damnation which is what happens to anyone downstream of a damned dam.

Non-sense. Why is this anger channeled to individual police officers? The people of SF voted for the policies that they're now suffering from.

Most of my ire (as a non-resident) is because I am forced to sometimes spend time in San Francisco, and it is a worse experience than nearly any other city I've visited in the world, which are many, most of them in vastly poorer and more generally corrupt societies, that somehow manage to be more functional and cleaner than SF.

At some point it begs the question if it is a problem with the police or with the people. I have spent time in some incredibly poor countries where police are essentially non-existent. Theft is low because people individually believe that it is unacceptable Behavior. They are raised this way and a critical mass of parents, friends, and acquaintances perpetuate this value. Individuals themselves reject thievery as a solution to their problems.

I don't know how to get back to that from where we are today

I concur with your assessment, and I'll add one additional thing to that assessment, most of these incredibly poor countries are religious and use the church as a community third-space. I believe San Francisco has replaced it's reverence for God with reverence for meaningless politics, and there is no third-place for the community. These may not be the causative factors, but certainly they speak to some differences that may affect the outcomes.

I don't think that religion is the only source of self respect, but do agree that the loss of community 3rd spaces with community values is a big part part of it. This shift is not confined to religion, but can be seen in almost every non-digital community that exists.

They left a vacuum which was filled by anger, jealousy, narcissism, entitlement, and even more consumerism than before.

Yeah, at a certain point, if you see everyone(or every cop) doing or not doing something, you need to ask what the incentives are or what is wrong with the system which they are working in.

I'm not familiar with SF, but in my little liberal-city-overrun-with-homeless-drug-addicts, the cops want to arrest more criminals, but the people they arrest get released immediately back out to the public again, so it's sort of like, why even bother?

No, complete misdirection. Scapegoating and loathing over cops is barking at the wrong tree. It also takes crucial attention that’s much needed to correct terrible progressive policies and further perpetuates them.

This is a time for introspection of the type of government structures and leadership, not knee-jerk reaction. Probably feels satisfying to call cops pigs and donut munchers but that’s the lowest blow you can strike.

It is time for progressives to start looking inwards and resist the urge to scape goat Capitalism, Cops, Inequality, etc. Study from how good governing cities look like and learn from it. Educate the public. Purge administrative class that delivers nothing for the taxes people pay.

I recall once, I believe it would have been around 2014, watching approximately 50 SFPD officers, in full riot gear, patrolling a socialist worker's march--of less than 100 people--peacefully walking down Mission St.

I have no idea from what perspective your argument comes from. Frankly, I don't think you do, either. But I think in speaking to any resident of San Francisco you will hear many trends like this relating to lopsided (mis)use of police resources, and it comes in many flavors.

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