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Comment by jjcon | Hacker News Reader

> San Francisco authorities hit back at Elon Musk and others who had used Lee’s killing to criticize law enforcement in the city.

Tagline is kinda weird... isn't murder kinda indicative of a law enforcement failure?

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I suppose this was a case of a failure of law enforcement insomuch as the SFPD has failed to find/hire a trio of precogs.

You think precogs are required for any level of crime prevention? No wonder people are fleeing SF

No, I think precogs would have been required to prevent this case, which is why I used the words “this case”.

Also, I’m not following, people are fleeing SF because bandyaboot on hn thinks precogs are required to prevent “any level” of crime? I didn’t know I had that much clout! And my clout transcends temporal cause and effect!

In what way would precogs have absolutely been required here? This was out in the open in a public place. Ever considered that if there were ample police people wouldn’t be so brazen as to commit murder in public, better yet, police could have potentially prevented it from happening or assisted after the fact. The fact that many SF can’t even imagine another way this could have been prevented is exactly why they can’t fix it… and exactly why people are fleeing. Don’t delude yourself.

Either the killing was pre-planned in which case Momeni would have found or created an opportunity to carry it out regardless, or it was a fit of rage situation in which case you would need to have multiple police per city block at all times for there to be a reasonable likelihood that an officer could intervene in time to prevent incidents like this. Random crime you can police your way out of to some degree. This? No.

Of course this is all assuming the arrested individual did it.

SFPD: precogs wanted:

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bob-lee-was-confronted-b...

No. Law enforcement's job is to arrest and punish murderers, not prevent murders.

You can't possibly be serious, right? So what is the point of police patrol? Adjusting police presence in different areas? Community initiatives? Prevention is definitively a key component of modern policing at least in every city and country I have lived in.

If that isn't the case in SF I'd say then that they have obviously failed on all levels at enforcing the law. Not to mention, punishment is definitely not the job of law enforcement.

Police departments have fought legal battles specifically to avoid having any duty to protect civilians or to prevent a crime in progress if they so choose.[0] I do agree with you that they (not just in SF, but across America broadly) have in fact obviously failed on all levels, though.

[0]: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/do-the-polic...

Legally obligated to protect != Prevention

Not sure how that is relevant

You don't see a link between a police force which actively rejects duty to protect and a police force that doesn't value prevention? It certainly seems to me that a police force which refuses to prevent crimes that are being carried out literally in front of them is one which places low value on prevention.

> a police force which refuses to prevent crimes

That isn’t what the law has determined though. The law has only determined that police can’t be sued or imprisoned for failing to assist. It can be my job to pick up trash, but that doesn’t make it my legal obligation even under threat to my own life.

What level of police ubiquity are you proposing, such that it would have prevented two people from two other cities from driving to SF in the middle of the night and starting a fatal altercation inside a car?

More than SF currently has… clearly

Yes and no. Law enforcement's job is in its name. It is to enforce. It is to be the visible arm of otherwise ephemeral law that we agreed upon as society through, hopefully, some sort of consensus. And yes, their presence also serves that purpose, but they are not there to punish ( although I am sure we are all tempted to tip scales at times ). That job is typically the domain of another public institution.

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