On the other hand, broad and flat-footed anti-police sentiment has increased and has manifest as either explicit depolicing policies or unofficial pressure on police officers in the field to avoid routine stops and other preventative policing efforts, as well as pressure on DAs to be seen as “soft on crime” (not intending any sort of disparagement with this term). Which isn’t to say that police don’t need reform—I’m one of the 90% of Americans who think some kind of reform is necessary, but perhaps something a little more sophisticated than “defund the police” is in order (better training for police officers, weaken police unions, increase protection in vulnerable communities while increasing funding to other social services, etc)?
As for whether the pendulum will swing too far against crime, when was the last time that happened in SF? I suspect SF’s robust corps of progressives have successfully prevented the pendulum from swinging even to the center for the last decade or two.
I do think this is the root cause of the shoplifting examples in the article. Stealing handbags from Niemen Marcus is, I think, unrelated to mental health issues.
These people know that you don’t do that in DC without consequences, so they go up to SF.
Oh, yes.
Yup. People alive today look back the three strikes law and think “how could the voters ever wanted that?”.
But you live long enough and the the cycles start to emerge. If crime gets bad enough in the cities you’ll see a repeat of the 70-90s where law and order was priority #1.
The root cause being the federal laws governing involuntary committal for mental healthcare and lack of federal resources for mental healthcare which is super pricy for obvious reasons. In addition are widening income/wealth gap and the temperate climates exacerbate the issue in some places more than others.
So the solution at the state and city levels is to use police to push people that are likelier to cause problems around so they are not comfortable being around, and incarcerating them and keeping them in the system for various offenses.
Then the police and politicians get heat for being prejudiced or biased or unfair, and they relax the rules, and then the problems return, and people will complain about thefts and property crime and etc until it gets bad enough that there is once again political will for a crackdown, and rinse repeat.
Note that I am not saying there are not legitimate prejudices and biases that need to be addressed in the police/judicial system, nor that society should let minor offenses go and make police think about the political ramifications of every interaction they have.