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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

In America, going to the police isn’t that easy. They will issue you a police report number for your insurance claim, but they are under zero obligation to investigate or prevent any crime.

They’ve been quiet quitting across the country since the George Floyd protests and they are working less than ever. Police interventions have been going down, crime has been going up, but staffing and funding has been mostly flat. They’re just not doing their jobs because they know if they hold out, funding will increase.

Also sometimes they just kill you.

Even if I were a victim of a major crime I wouldn’t contact the police in the USA unless I needed a police report number for my insurance claim. They’re probably not going to do anything and they might make things a million times worse.

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This predates the BLM movement and such.

I’m aware of maybe ten or so property crimes committed against friends, family, and employers, with damage and theft ranging from low-thousands (2024 dollars—some of these were decades ago) to $20k or so. I’ve never once known the police to do anything but scoff at the notion and treat you like an idiot if you go in thinking they’re going to investigate anything at all, no matter how much evidence is available.

And all the people concerned were/are white and middle class, for the record. Even then, nothing.

It’s one of the reasons I tepidly support the more extreme end of “defund”. Let fucking wal-mart or whoever’s getting actual value from the cops pay for them. Me and mine surely aren’t getting our money’s worth.

Indeed, "the cops won't do anything if you get robbed" is a meme among even the most conservative average people. Yet the "back the blue" support persists. Can you imagine if firefighters took your emergency call, never showed up, and still had half the country support giving them MORE funding and less accountability?

Hell, the clearance rate on murders is %50, and that includes a substantial chunk of people incorrectly found guilty despite the cops having DNA evidence that would exonerate them.

According to FBI data, crime is actually decreasing year on year in almost every metric despite police dereliction of duty. Ironically this is creating a stronger case for further police budget cuts and moving that money towards non-traditional policing alternatives. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/29/us/crime-data-fbi-homicid...

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