> 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 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?
> 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.