Don't kid yourself, that absolutely happens all over the place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr.#The_...
And while it does feel uncomfortable to think that the laws of the land just come from what amounts to low to high levels of mass hysteria, it also means that we can enact and/or ignore/repeal laws which just don't work.
Imagine a law which looks good on paper and is "proved" to be "good" with stringent mathematical underpinnings, but which fails to serve the people due to some higher order outcome which we simply do not have the cognitive or mathematical understanding to explain. You had better hope that "felt necessities of the time" lets us do something else.
[Of course 'felt necessities of the time' can also do some really messed up stuff. I have no defense. I only argue that just because something happens due to feelings or mass hysteria instead of reason, mathematics, or logic doesn't mean it has to be bad. The feelings or hysteria might be coming from some issue which we cannot otherwise verbalize.]
Garbage. The city has a serious theft problem that is obvious if you go visit a number of places (and then go visit the mission or other sales locations to see your stolen goods).
> Come to San Francisco, ask me or any of my long-time neighbors if we feel safe? We will talk your ears off. The data calestenics you've done means zilch.
This essentially comes down to "I feel unsafe, your data be damned." Feelings do matter, but we don't make laws depending on what the media is trying to make people of the city feel like.