> some reason driven by something other than actual facts on the ground
Maybe Citizen and NextDoor's adoption is made up. I don't think it is. People are responding to something. It's not racism.
It's stuff like the state of Venice Beach in Los Angeles, people getting stabbed to death by homeless people, in their own homes. It's the absolutely insane number of bike thefts in Cambridge. It's the constant scam phone calls to your parents and grandparents. What do you want me to say, that the experience and trauma of getting shit stolen from you can't be reduced to a number? It's a fucking arson. The property crime is ultimately going to be connected to violence.
We are spoiled today by an environment where, if your LTV exceeds the cost of Amazon just replacing your stolen package, sure, it doesn't matter. It is truly a profound awakening for rich people, when they realize that whether or not the credit card company gives you money in a dispute has nothing to do with the merits of what you're saying and everything to do with whether you'll be LTV positive after they pay you back. We are relying on being rich to solve problems rather than solving the crime.
Property crime is a regressive tax on society! Amazon can't afford to replace poor people's packages, because a poor person will never make the money back. Credit cards can't service poor people fairly in disputes. Don't you see that property crime reduction serves poor communities much more than rich ones? They are the ones who can't park their cars in garages, who can't replace the $20 in a stolen wallet. They have more to lose!
It is racism, and it's been amplified by news media which selectively report on crimes ("if it bleeds, it leads") and fear-based social media like Nextdoor and local Facebook groups which give a megaphone to every overly suspicious neighbor and self-appointed "neighborhood watch" member.
What's changed isn't the amount of crime. It's the amount of it you get told about.
Real people are having real crimes committed against them. Wanting a society where that doesn't happen is as far from racist as you can get. The people who stole $9k of my former startup's equipment were just as likely white, anyway.
Its a pattern depressingly similar to Artificial Intelligence (after all, Elon Musk has made the compelling argument that companies are just AIs of a different form). If you train an AI to predict future possibility of committing a crime based on someone's face, using data of past crimes/arrests/etc, the output will likely, unfortunately, disproportionately rate Black individuals as likely to commit. When deployed improperly, this would lead to increased surveillance and enforcement, more crimes are noticed, more confrontations, accidents happen, and the prediction is suddenly true.
The past does not predict the future; it writes it, and humanity is the pen. The outcomes these predictions promise aren't intrinsically true; they become true because they become recursive inputs into some networked intelligence system, whether that be a computerized artificial intelligence, a company, a government, a market economy, or even humanity as a whole, which then, in adversarial situations, optimizes for self-preservation.
Boredom, I'd venture.
https://sfgov.org/scorecards//public-safety/violent-crime-ra...
The upward trend is apparent in linear statistics despite a large drop during the COVID-19 pandemic. That said, I do find it hard to believe that people being angry about crime could conceivably coincide with a decrease in the probability an individual crime is reported. Among other cities I checked, Portland also shows an increase, while NYC, Seattle, LA, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta and Boston show declines.
Anecdotally I had my bike stolen a few months ago and last year my car was broken into and my laptop/dashcam/wallet stolen, and didn't call the cops because as you said I know exactly how useless they are for that kind of stuff.
I don't understand this; the King County Prosecuting Attorney was elected, just as the mayor and city council were. Why should any of them be able to pressure the others when they're all 'hired' by the people, not each other? And if the people of King County elect ideologically compromised mayors and city councils, isn't it likely they elect politically compromised DAs too?
I do believe crime is under-reported in this city because it goes unpunished. But I'm just not buying this "DAs as victims" narrative. I think they're as much to blame as the other elected officials.
Next step: Hard to tell if people gave up on reporting stuff because they don't think the police will try or because the police are unable to solve most of the incidents even if they did try.
Seriously though, how are the police supposed to solve most random break-in smash-and-grabs or stolen bike cases? What's the ask here? Constant surveillance of everywhere? Something close-to but less than that? Batman?
I’m simply making the point that property crime may not be going down.
Perhaps people have a valid concern about crime independent of trends that Spurs a desire for these types of services.
Maybe this isn’t the solution, but I think it is unfair to call people batshit because they are tired or scared of having their property broken into, even if it is less than the 90’s
This app, Ring, and a good portion of the media are fear mongers looking to make a buck.
They're attempting to explain people's mindset, and you've quoted general statistics in response.
When someone has their car stolen, they do not take solace in the fact that, in aggregate, less people in America overall are getting their cars stolen. There is no comfort in this issue generally improving and that they were just unlucky.
Instead, they are responding to the widely apparent increase in police apathy towards enforcing the law against these criminals for these property crimes.
Policing criminals is not just about decreasing statistical crime. It is also about holding together the contract of society where people should not seek their own justice independently. Why? Because historically, people seeking their own justice (aka vigilantism) often do it in an unbalanced and usually cruel manner.
We trust in the state to act fairly and justly when we are wronged by another. Otherwise why should we not seek to harm those who have harmed us? This is the balance that is upset by the perception that the state is not performing its duty to enact justice on all wrongdoings, no matter how they less often they are happening.
But people aren't responding to their car being stolen, are they? They (we?) are usually responding to a story about someone else's car being stolen. Or a story about violent crime against someone we've never met. And that's what the statistics do show - there are disproportionately far more angry people than actual victims.
We're getting outraged because we hear regular stories about unfair things happening to people we've never met.
And I'm not suggesting these events don't matter just because they're happening to others. But it is incorrect to conflate what are effectively random and unlikely events happening to strangers as some sort of unacceptable level of threat to ourselves.
This is a challenge rooted in human nature that I don't pretend to have any solution to. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to reject any of this as an excuse for outrage or the vigilantism that Citizen promotes.
If that provokes an increase in vigilantism, then the police will have something to be less apathetic about. Arrest the vigilantes.
I do believe that it's quite likely that people are angry "everywhere". And much of that has to do with people focusing on being mad about places where the do not live -- not because they're angry on their behalf but because they've been seeking out things to be mad about.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191208/reported-cases-of...
We can definitely do better -- I'd particularly love to see them start taking death threats on the Internet seriously -- but if people are becoming increasingly incensed despite the fall in the crime rate, it's because their perceptions are for some reason driven by something other than actual facts on the ground. And in particular, there is less of a need for vigilantism, not more.