It's true in LA at least. Petty crime is unenforced and people are well aware of that fact. I've seen people smoking crack or shooting up in broad daylight plenty of times this year, sometimes in front of city workers who do not care. Seems like there is an assault or a stabbing or shooting every day in Hollywood now. People getting drunk every weekend playing with guns on Hollywood blvd watching some other drunk dumbass do donuts at the intersection and the LAPD doesn't care. 17 year old bystander was killed at one of these events in the summer (1). Yesterday a 70 year old man was killed in Venice when someone tried to steal his bike from him (2).

It's been getting worse the last couple of years, but noticeably more amped up since covid killed a lot of foot traffic and therefore community surveillance that seemingly kept a lot of this belligerent behavior in check. Not sure how things are going back east, but it's getting pretty gritty over here.

1. https://abc7.com/hollywood-shooting-street-race-fatal-teen-k...

2. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/73-year-old-man-die...

> Petty crime is unenforced and people are well aware of that fact.

a. The evidence just doesn't back up that enforcing petty crime in some way makes cities safer. Peaks of petty crime enforcement were in periods like the late 80s and 90s, which were when violent crime exploded.

> there is an assault or a stabbing or shooting every day in Hollywood now.

b. Crime statistics also don't back up the idea that violent crime is much worse now, especially when you consider the fact that we're talking about a comment comparing with the 80s/90s.

Do these things occur? Yes. Is it much worse than it has been historically? You've provided no evidence of that. Is it something likely to happen to you? Not really at all.

We ended the war on drugs and "broken windows" policing for a reason - it had huge negative impacts on people caught up in it and didn't actually succeed in making people safer. It would often create cycles of policing that made violence worse.

The crime in most cities has not substantially increased, if at all, the number of affluent, white people from suburbs who demand heavy enforcement against minor crimes in the city has.

Not enforcing petty "crime with a victim" is a SoCal thing. You don't really have those issues in NYC, heck even in Baltimore, Newark or Trenton the cops won't pass up an opportunity for an easy arrest if they see someone prowling a bike rack with bolt cutters (and it won't be catch and release either, it'll be enough to make that kind of thing not worth the risk of doing flagrantly)

Regarding the public drug use and other publicly visible low class behavior shenanigans, there's a large portion of the public that just DGAF.

> Baltimore, Newark or Trenton the cops won't pass up an opportunity for an easy arrest

Don't know about the others, but this is not true of Baltimore.

Honestly, the largest predictor of how often I hear about "rampant, unenforced crime" seems to be the proportion of people in the city who moved from the suburbs and are unused to cities.

> Regarding the public drug use and other publicly visible low class behavior shenanigans, there's a large portion of the public that just DGAF.

I'm one of them - visible poverty is sad, but it doesn't make me fear for my life or feel like more jailing is needed.

To me, as someone who grew up in a Baltimore-adjacent city, SF just seems like a city full of people who are city-inexperienced.