More on-foot friendly patrols (which should be perfectly doable given much higher density in cities), for example. Or maybe police actually trying to catch actual criminals instead of just acting like insurance agents.
Turning up the pressure to catch stupid, small crimes while letting actual large problems (like consistent theft of wages that outnumbers money lost to robbery 3 to 1) will lead to stupid solutions.
Absolutely and I think there are models of policing that reduce petty crime and obviously people would rather have less petty crime than more. We are all in agreement here.
I just want people to be aware that the policing of their imagination is not always the policing of reality and oftentimes what your gut instinct tells you might work will have pretty large and distorted negative impacts.
I really do think we're all on the same side here. Nobody likes crime and nobody likes police excess. The problem is just that sometimes where we grew up and what experiences we've had can lead us to underestimate one impact and overestimate another.
Not sure how much of an issue this still is, but thieves used to steal airbags. That's a lot more expensive and a PITA to replace.