So "reactive policing", as you say, can't stop every crime. But consistently catching and enforcing the law on repeat offenders can have a dramatic impact on overall crime rate.
It’s hard to think anyone actually believes that there’s no difference between a society that gives violent criminals free rein and one that actually takes them off the street.
Unfortunately, a lot of elected officials have very strange priorities these days. A few months ago, a teenager was part of a group of criminals carjacking cars in the middle of the night, got into some confrontation with a resident, and ended up shot to death. There was a huge outrage among elected officials, community meetings, calls for justice, etc. When an innocent bystander gets randomly stabbed to death by a violent career criminal that was let free when they were supposed to be in prison? Absolutely zero mention from any of our elected officials so far.
The evidence is so overwhelming I don't know where to begin. How about https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...
The (2nd) greatest deterrent of crime is the likelihood of being caught. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.
https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/1b57c13c04baed2bc1c218...
It has some of the highest rates of income inequality in the world, and it's also one of the safest places in the world.
San Francisco has the 8th highest police budget per capita, and 7th overall, despite being the 18th largest city.
Yes you need some prevention by fixing societal issues that underlie criminal activity, but you also need police and prosecution of crimes to deter them.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Fact is, the vast majority of criminals are dumb, or mentally ill, or both. They aren’t doing an ROI analysis.
It’s a little hard to keep a straight face though.
Additionally, you need to fire every worthless DA cities like SF and NYC have. They deliberately go soft on crime and let criminals right back on the streets to commit more crimes. So, if you want a fix you can start there. Throwing money at homeless people and "minorities" is not a fix.
Almost all crime in San Francisco is committed by repeat criminals. You add beat cops to arrest those criminals, and you elect a DA who will prosecute those criminals when they are arrested, and you elect legislators who make sure there are laws that allow convicted criminals, especially repeat offenders, to be sentenced to long prison sentences.
That process is called "fixing the underlying issues in society".
Not saying that SFs approach to policing hasn't had an impact, but there are plenty of other cities with bigger or equivalent populations, similar per capita policing, and lower come rate.
It seems willfully ignorant to presume that there aren't other factors that have led to an increase in crime
I.e. I wouldn't compare SF to a rural part of California and use that as a metric for how good / bad SF's law enforcement policies are. I would compare it to other large, metropolitan cities throughout the US and the world.
Choosing such and out-of-left-field comparison makes it seem like you have a specific agenda that you'd like to make a point about.
Cops can only show up after the fact.
Crime is a byproduct of poverty. If you give people something to live for, they're less anti-social. If they have mental health issues making those connections harder to make, we need social safety nets for them.
SF crime seems exaggerated. I spent a week walking around that city and the worst thing I saw was an opiate shit the size of a hoagie.