These organizations have enormous budgets and they can't solve simple, non-violent crimes. Why do they need more funding and resources? Is all of that double OT going to finally stop those "brazen" CVS pickpockets?

American police are hot, smelly garbage.

Most other countries have much more intelligent and professional police forces.

What you've described isn't an innate factor of law enforcement. It's a factor of shit quality, cut price, American law enforcement (the biggest factor is the absurd fragmentation of local police departments).

I mean I could tell you who did a robbery, but proving it to the criminal standard of proof is a very different proposition.

Burglary isn't getting solved without a) CCTV and a subsequent ID or b) DNA or fingerprints.

I work on a busy (and I mean busy) robbery squad. An 11% detection rate puts us head and shoulders above the rest of the organisation.

I suggest you go for a police ride-along or listen to dispatch to learn what it's really like. And police are still at the mercy of the laws and courts which can make their efforts ineffective. You can catch all the criminals you want but it won't do anything if they're let out immediately with no consequences.

This is a slippery slope, I can see it being abused real quick. So I tend to think that police isn’t meant to directly prevent me from getting killed. Police is meant for arresting the culprits, and that would indirectly prevent me from getting killed because it’s not worth the risk.

They do quite a lot of it. Everything from simply having police presence to keeping track of bad actors. But there's only so much they can do before a criminal act begins.

However I recently saw the police raid my neighbor in full swat gear cause someone on Nextdoor said they saw a guy walking down the street with a gun (it turned out to be a cane). About 15 out of shape suburban dads playing operator terrifying children and high fiving each other after literally doing nothing. I don't value this institution very much anymore.

Cleveland PD showed up, shrugged their shoulders, gave me a police report for my home insurance claim (which covered nothing that was stolen) and said there was no chance the crime would be solved.

A few weeks later I had to contact the same CPD district office because someone I sold something to online threatened me with physical violence and showed up at my house at 11 PM to "settle the matter." I went to the police station and was again told directly by the police there was nothing they could do, even though the man was parked outside of my home at the time, waiting for me to engage.

Absolutely worthless institution.

The point is that property crime is still minor in comparison to how serious a crime is, for example homicide. It also means that resources will be less available as a result.

Also most of the problems are due to a lack of prosecution (in the SF area). Police can't do much if criminals just get immediately released without consequence.

Like I said, even if the police do find and arrest this person, it's still up to the courts to prosecute. It's a lot of work between the court proceedings with testimonies and evaluations to get a conviction. Some regions like California are very reluctant to bring charges and just release them instead, which is why police will avoid dealing with the matter in the first place.

That's their problem, not mine. As far as I'm concerned, police should do what they say they do on the tin. What happened was my friend got punched in the face and what we wanted was for the police to at least make it appear like they were interested in reducing the ambient amount of face punchings in their jurisdiction.

> "appear like they were interested"

They're interested but they're not there to appease. As I already said several times before, police need laws and courts to back them up or their work is ineffective. You should contact your maylor and local DA about why that jurisdiction has so many face punchings by the homeless in the first place.

It was a French woman who used some app to track her running habits that also had a social component, where you could interact with people in your area, compare stats, message them etc. There was someone on there who messaged her a couple times asking if they could run together some time, but apparently in a really creepy way, so she declined and later ignored it. She'd run in the evenings along the Rhine river, and one evening she hears someone catching up to her from behind, and next thing she remembers is she's lying in some bushes, a guy standing next to her saying he already called the cops as he saw from a distance someone knock her out from behind, then pulling her off the walkway. The guy started shouting like crazy that he'd already called the cops, and the attacker ran away immediately. When she made her statement a couple hours later at the police station, the suspicious profile on that running app was deleted. The French cops then contacted the company behind the app to get any information possible about that user, some US startup, which denied the request due to privacy concerns. And that's the end of the investigation. It's the closest they ever got to that guy.

Online stuff is hard because it usually requires cooperation of multiple police forces in different jurisdictions. I think it often just comes down to there being easier things to go after closer to home.

I don’t know why Facebook does nothing though.

For example, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article24376685... documents the purchase for a 90,000 resident city in NC of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles for $500,000.00 each.

“I’d rather have the armored capability and not need it, than to need it and not have it,” [Concord Police Chief Gary J. Gacek] said in an email to The Charlotte Observer.

Sometimes you just gotta choose what you go after.

This is strictly not true. The police choose not to have resources dedicated to many kinds of crimes. US police funding exceeds what almost all countries spend on defense. Police in America act as a significant source of revenue for many communities (through tickets, fines, and forfeiture).

Also the US is the 3rd biggest country in the world with a very complex blend of groups and cultures. It's obviously going to have more funding in general by sheer size.

Doing nothing about this does encourage its behavior, especially since there's entire communities around doing it (kiwi farms being one of the worst).

Social networks show their true colors by way of the decisions they make about what to prioritize removal of and what to actively ignore even once they are made clearly aware.

Source: Used to work in this exact team at FB

Sounds great until you find out the threat was sent by someone in a different country halfway around the world. There's a finite amount of police manpower, and I'd be willing to bet that most death threats are practically impossible to prosecute even with a warrant.

Police are local, and have no effective jurisdiction online, excxept when they have a local victim and local suspect.

You need the FBI.

and for every murder with an online threat, there are a million "free speech" death threats with no murder.

Online forums generally don't adjudicate whether subpoenas meet some objective standard of jurisdiction. It's not so much that police cannot investigate a crime for a local victim when the suspect could be in another jurisdiction, it's just that it likely won't lead to a prosecution. But I'd bet that a nastygram on a police department letterhead would go a long way towards discouraging most internet haters.

I'm not pointing this out as a desirable state of affairs (it's essentially government-capital synergy aka fascism), but rather a possibility of where things might head. Burbclaves applying their customary/statutory powers to interactions in the interconnected world, and offering their services up as a point of competition.

Then i remembered the geofencing warrants and surveillance platforms they have access to. I remembered nearly going deaf when the police fired a flashbang at my head for getting too close to a group of nazis that myself and other locals wanted to shoo back to the state they came from.

I remembered the police arent here to protect the vulnerable, they are here to protect freedom of speech.

Dont worry i grew out of my juvenile delusion that i have any ability to influence or refuse to tolerate certain discourse in my city.

Nazis rallying in your city is just a sign of how well protected and safe you are i guess. Ill make sure to stay home next time.

> I remembered the police arent here to protect the vulnerable, they are here to protect freedom of speech.

The police, like every entrenched power structure, are "there to" serve their own interests. Sometimes that's expressed in terms of lofty ideals, but it's fundamentally about power relationships - for instance their casually attacking you with an explosive.

If you were someone "important" - politically connected, rich and looking like it, or even just upper-middle but persistent, it's likely they would have responded to your brother's issue with more attention. And if they mistakenly judged you and didn't, you would escalate to their superiors. That dynamic isn't a free pass, but it informally goes a long way.

My point was this attention could very well shift to putting a priority on policing online threats, perhaps even to the detriment of investigating physical crime.

Strangely enough am family friends with the person likely to become chief. I doubt ill ever raise the issue because i dont think he would be able to have any positive effect without losing the position.

Entrenched.

Taking the tinfoil hat off, I genuinely think that federal governments are disinterested in small time, low hanging fruit.

I also consider the police to be first responders at best. Once a crime has been completed, the perpetrators are likely to straight up just get away with it due to the ineptitude and bloat inherent in a police force.