> be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020
This was tried. It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose.
To the extent police reform has historically worked, it’s been by rebooting a police department. (Think: replacing the Mets with the NYPD.) Not replacing police with a hippie circle.
> This was tried. It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose.
Crime has been on a downward trend for a generation, outside of a few areas. In San Francisco specifically, crime also increased due to police officers quietly going on strike against policies they disagreed with. Now that police officers are actually doing their jobs again, shockingly, crime is rapidly falling.
What has actually increased is sensationalist coverage in the media, which you're right, has created a significant political backlash.
> In San Francisco specifically, crime also increased due to police officers quietly going on strike against policies they disagreed with
If I recall correctly it was the DA refusing to prosecute just about anything.
Far from it. On one occasion, when the DA in question went after a notorious fence (buyer for stolen goods), he had to rent a u-haul truck because the SFPD would not supply a vehicle to transport the arrestee.
https://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-c...
You have to look past the hype. Media on a national scale ran a character assassination program against that DA for trying to rebalance his organization's efforts against the organizers of crime instead of individual delinquents.
This is standard inter-agency nonsense. The arrest was made.
It doesn’t absolve Chesa’s various failures to enforce the law. (I say this as someone who started on the police reform side.)
This was the sensationalist media narrative, yes. Chesa got kicked out. Brooke Jenkins took over to much fanfare. Aaaand nothing material really changed, either with enforcement or with prosecution. The media stopped talking about it though.
SFPD hadn’t been doing their jobs for far, far longer than Chesa’s tenure. I moved here in 2013 and their non-enforcement practices were already legendary. Blaming Chesa for being in office for like 10 months in 2019-2020 is a hell of a cop out (pun intended).
Even if it were true, it wouldn’t in any way excuse the police for choosing not to do the job they’re paid to do.
I can’t speak credibly to San Francisco. But in New York there was a visible rise and drop in what I’ll call nuisance crime. Petty theft forcing the toothbrushes into cages, homeless people yelling in the middle of the night, subway jumpers, graffiti, et cetera.
The nypd is better funded than many state’s armed forces. Any funding changes would have been minimal and not caused that increase in crime.
The obvious cause of the increase was the pandemic job losses and general societal decay. Oh and the cops quiet quitting because they were upset people hate them.
> the cops quiet quitting
Why would it be better if they were overtly fired?
It would discourage LEOs from being useless. As it stands, many police departments are absolutely worthless, on purpose. They believe it's some sort of protest. The police got a few years of bad press and now, like children, they're playing the silent treatment.
When I drive I almost never see LEOs. I can go months on end without ever spotting a police car. Where are they? What are they doing? Evidently, they're not responding to crimes. And they're not on the roads. But their budget has increased quite a lot! Am I paying for people to sit on their asses and eat donuts? It kind of seems like it!
To me, it's very simple. If you want to avoid bad press you don't have to stop policing. You just have to stop executing innocent people in public. Seems easy, I do that every day and I don't even think about it.
It sort of gives me the impression the police are so morally bankrupt as a system that they just can't help themselves. So, they have to detach instead. Yikes... that's not good.
To second this: LAPD got fired from providing security for the LA Metro public transportation system, and crime rates fell through the floor in the three months since the LAPD officers were replaced with security guards.
It turns out that simply patrolling the stations was enough to deter almost all crimes in the system, which makes everyone immediately wonder: WTF was LAPD during the last few decades?
They wouldn't be wasting tax payer money doing nothing.
And do you think this was a result of a ~3% reduction in police officers, or could it have been something else?
> do you think this was a result of a ~3% reduction in police officers, or could it have been something else?
It was a combination of the weird post-Covid crime boom. And the various police reform efforts cities experimented with in the wake of George Floyd.
Be specific. Which police reforms resulted in an increase in nuisance crimes in NYC?
…you seem to have an agenda in these comments versus exploring in good faith.
Like, is your standard of proof legal citations?
> nuisance crime ... homeless people yelling in the middle of the night
Is it a crime to be mentally ill in public in your world?
> Is it a crime to be mentally ill in public in your world?
Yes, yelling in a residential neighbourhood in the middle of the night is a disturbance of peace. The fact that it’s caused by unchecked mental health is somewhat separate. (In many cases, I don’t think it was a mental health issue. I think Rob on the corner got drunk.)
Not sure if "recall" was a pun or not... But the recall campaign for DA Boudin started a month after the 2020 election, so he was effectively DA for 10 months at that point, including during the heart of the pandemic. Interestingly, it was also right after he started trying to implement police accountability reforms in response to the Floyd backlash that year. He did de-prioritize drug prosecution right at the time of major fentanyl spikes in SF, so not a good look.
SF did not reduce police funding. They quiet quit anyway.
Quiet quitting does not make the position legally vacant, such that the employer knows they need to fill it. The employer has to notice that the employee is not performing, and then replace that employee. Those steps are often harder than you’d think.
SFPD has plenty of unused budget for hiring; they aren't hiring either.
"Defund the police" was never actually tried. (This is not a defense of defunding -- I agree it would have similarly bad outcomes! But you can't just point at changes that weren't defunding the police and say it was tried.)
> "Defund the police" was never actually tried
Isn’t this a No True Scotsmen problem?
Police budges were trimmed. Police forces were cut. Police remit, in the form of decriminalisation, was reduced. No jurisdiction abolished law enforcement (though San Francisco de facto got close). But I’d say those count as defunding the police to an extent.
Even then, we got disaster. Shockingly quickly. Shockingly powerfully. There is no threshold theory that suggests you get magical results cutting the police force by 30% instead of 3%; it’s thus reasonable to extrapolate and assume you get more of the bad.
> No jurisdiction abolished law enforcement (though San Francisco de facto got close).
What year did that occur on their budget chart?
https://x.com/chrisarvinsf/status/1399863666938310663
De facto, not de jure. SFPD went AWOL for a few months. One can’t complain about that and then claim it would be better if they were fired.
(Also, your own chart shows a ‘20 dip.)
“De facto abolition of policing” or “dip”? Pick one!
Cops throwing a tantrum over a dip would seem to prove a point, too.
But cops throwing a tantrum causing a crime spike proves their worth.
You can’t advocate for abolishing cops and also complain about cops self abolishing.
> Isn’t this a No True Scotsmen problem?
No, this is a "this didn't actually happen."
> Police budges were trimmed. Police forces were cut.
Where were police budgets trimmed and forces cut? They weren't; that's the crucial thing you're describing that did not happen. Otherwise, I agree -- lots of reform changes that sounded good on paper led to bad outcomes. But there's no need to inaccurately call other reforms "defunding."
> Where were police budgets trimmed and forces cut?
NYPD’s budget was slashed by over 5% [1]. It was restored by ‘22.
[1] https://cbcny.org/research/was-nypd-budget-cut-1-billion
Crime did not rose, crime has been in a downward trajectory for decades, this is likely one of the reasons the crackdown on illegal immigrants is so bad, prison owners are noticing they might lose their cash cow and needs a new population to imprison.
Crime rose significantly in the US over ~2020-2022 or 2023. It was on a downward trend before 2020 and is on a downward trend since 2022/2023. But you can't ignore that period.
Did anything else happen around 2020 that might be a confounding variable?
(We see similar crime trends in other countries without BLM/George Floyd/police reform movements during that time period.)
It is almost as if something world shattering had happened in between those years.
I don't know what point you're trying to make. Yes, obviously it's covid-related. So what? It can't be ignored.
But you can largely ignore it. It was a relatively short term small blip in a decades long trend in the right direction, with a clearly rare and unusual cause.
Interesting to historians and public policy folks. Outside of that, the pearl clutching about it probably did more damage than the spike itself.
In addition to what JumpCrisscross said, illegal immigrants are not going to be long-term prison population; they're going to be deported. (At least, that's the campaign promise.) So I don't see how that benefits prison owners.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/04/nx-s1-5417980/private-prisons...
> Nearly 90% of people in ICE custody are held in facilities run by for-profit, private companies. Two of the largest, Geo Group and CoreCivic, are working to increase their ability to meet the administration's demand.
CoreCivic used to be called the "Corrections Corporation of America". GEO Group used to be "Wackenhut Corrections Corporation".
It should be unsurprising that the folks who make money building and running large, secure facilities to detain people would be interested in doing the same for ICE.
Oh yeah, they benefit. What I’m calling nonsense is the idea that Geo Group is the reason Stephen Miller is in charge. There are more fundamental roots to the anti-immigrant agenda than a convenient corporate bogeyman.
I'm onboard with that.
I'd imagine they do their fair share of lobbying and "crime scary!" PR, though.
The administration is already talking about indentured labor and slavery, these will soon be work camps where the prison owners will rent the labor to farm and industries.
> Crime did not rose
Murders didn’t rise. Petty crime and open-air drug use absolutely did.
> prison owners are noticing they might lose their cash cow
This is nonsense.
Where was it tried? My understanding is that even Minneapolis didn't follow through with it.
> Where was it tried?
Chesa Boudin. New York with cashless bail and non-prosecution of petty crimes. That fuck in Chicago.
Defund the police was a marquee policy and messaging failure that underlined why radical minorities capturing the Democratic Party cause it to lose elections.
>>> be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020
>>This was tried. It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose.
>Chesa Boudin.
Chesa Boudin is not a police budget, that's a completely unserious nonsequitor. SF's police budget rose throughout the defund the police movement, just not as high as initially allocated. https://abc7news.com/post/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-depa...
> New York with cashless bail and non-prosecution of petty crimes.
What does that have to do with "defund the police"? Bail money doesn't go into their pockets.
It was part of the police reform initiative. I supported it. But it massively increased the street population of recidivist bastards in a way I didn’t expect.
It was never about the recidivist bastards and always about the normal guy with a job he doesn't want to lose not losing that job when he can't come up with bail for a DUI. At least where I was it was considered kind of a given the recidivist bastards would get out on bail and that the bondsman getting paid really doesn't affect outcomes.
> It was never about the recidivist bastards and always about the normal guy with a job he doesn't want to lose not losing that job when he can't come up with bail for a DUI
And that’s why I supported it. But for every one of the latter there are many of the former because they started cycling through arrests so fast.
Keep the recidivist bastard in jail, on the other hand, and they are incapacitated for the time being. I’ll admit I didn’t see the utility of that until it was too late.
Bail bonds exist.
And yet, there are plenty of people who can't rustle up a couple hundred bucks for them, and wind up in jail for months/years awaiting trial.
Conflating "police reform" and "defund the police" is disingenuous.
> Conflating "police reform" and "defund the police" is disingenuous
In New York they were one and the same. The latter simply representing the most extreme expression of the former.
I remember dropping into a leftist conference in Philadelphia years ago where several folks who would become the face of post-Covid police reform were there, including Boudin. At the end of the day they all conceded that their goal was abolishing this, that and the other thing.
> In New York they were one and the same.
As a NY resident: lol.
I don't doubt you'll find activists espousing both "defund the police" and "end cash bail" policies at the same time. That doesn't make them the same policy.
> That doesn't make them the same policy
Oh, they’re totally different policies. But they’re basically the same politics. And they both generated a backlash, one against messaging (because it was too stupid to implement) and one against policy (because it created more visible crime).
A leftist conference? I don't think actual leftists have much say on policy.
Chicago did not defund its police department.
==That fuck in Chicago.==
Not sure what this is adding to the discussion, but eliminating cash bail has been a success in Illinois. That’s why you don’t hear the right talking about it anymore. Crime in Chicago has fallen every year since it went into effect.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/cash-bail-illinois-one-...
It also allowed those with petty crimes to be released, while those with say, homicide charges, to be held.
Previously, if you had lots of liquid money, you could bail out for murder no problem.
I was locked up in Chicago with guys that had $50 bail and nobody to pay it for them.
It was not tried, and saying that it was is a fundamentally false claim that is actively pushing public opposition to the idea supported by lies. It’s as reasonable as saying don’t vote for democrats because they have a pedophile office under a pizza store. Are there a bunch of people who were convinced by this lie? Yes. Does that make it anything other than a manipulative lie to say? No.
> It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose
With "the left" you mean the SF DA?
No, the entire police reform agenda and I’d argue progressive wing of the Democratic Party as a whole. “Defund the police” was a monumental fuckup.
It was a branding fuckup more than a policy fuckup. The idea that we want types of response units other than armed gunmen available to respond to certain types of emergencies isn’t exactly radical.
We don’t send the police for medical emergencies or house fires. We send personnel with dedicated training for those types of events.
> It was a branding fuckup more than a policy fuckup.
And frankly, the folks who turned "liberal" into a dirty word can make any branding into a branding fuckup. That's what they have Fox News for.
Modern liberals made "liberal" a bad word.
Maybe... but something doesn't sit right with that assertion.
Anyone against concentration camps now gets the "liberal" slur thrown at them. Why is that?
As someone who grew up with a dad who listened to conservative talk radio, "liberal" has been used as an epithet for at least thirty years. I was genuinely stunned in high school when I met people who would willingly refer to themselves as liberals.
You'll have to pardon me for rolling my eyes at the notion that modern liberals have somehow made the term a bad word given the general path of conservatism over the last several decades, not to mention the last eight years specifically.
Yes but I don't think we can judge the progressive wing from the antagonistic media coverage and bilateral party disdain of them.
Like, more proactive work for less policing is not some sort of lunacy.
Making them sound naive is so easy. Especially if you choose the protagonists.
> don't think we can judge the progressive wing from the antagonistic media coverage and bilateral party disdain of them
No, we can judge by the actions and results. Police reform in New York was a failure. Education priorities in San Francisco were a failure. The entire activist-interest group orientation is broken.
> proactive work for less policing is not some sort of lunacy
It’s not. But the people who attempted it were lunatics.
Defunding the police is dumb. Rebuilding police departments from the ground up is not. Unfortunately the latter requires being realistic about the occurrence of crime and criminals in a population. (They’re not all victims of circumstance. And they can’t all be community organised into a sculpting job or whatever.)
In Los Angeles, crime on the Metro public transportation system has fallen by almost 70% in the three months since the LAPD was booted off the job and replaced by...security guards.
This is pretty good evidence that high crime rates in cities with large police forces are directly related to the police force not actually doing the job it's already being paid to do.
(LA Metro was forced to use LAPD for security a few decades ago, at which point crime rates went from very low to skyrocketing. LAPD serviced the Metro contract exclusively with officers that were in overtime hours (1.5x pay) so at best could only provide 2/3rd of the contracted manpower. That changed earlier this year; the contract was terminated for cause and LAPD was replaced with contract security guards. The contract security guards make substantially less than LAPD officers, so Metro is currently able to field a security presence about 5x the size as the LAPD force. Metro reported this that crime has fallen dramatically in just 2 months.)
For what it’s worth, I agree with you. We need different police. Not our existing police reformed. But also not no police.
There is a vocal minority of idiots who want no police. At all.
Don't speak bullshit. There was more media outrage hullabaloo around the idea of reducing cop funding than there was any actual reduction. Especially because the cops went on strike to ensure that no cuts would happen.
Police forces across the US have never seen higher funding rates.