Wanting more policing and wanting to defund the current system are not oppositional. I want more cops doing shit that matters and less of the current police department.
Pulling over more people for expired tags and other pretext stops is hardly what we needed more of. I once had an officer decline to take a copy of video of my vehicle being stolen since he said it wasn’t going to be investigated anyway. How does a department like that still have time to hand out turn signal tickets, and pop people for going 10 over at the bottom of a hill?
In places where it has been dialed down are crime rates that different when looked at over a long time period?
There is quite a lot of fuss about a crime wave right now, but we are at historical lows in a lot of places. In SF shoplifting actually peaked in 2014. In SF the murder rate has risen since the pandemic… to 2017 levels. There were some high profile smash and grabs on the national news, but having your car broken into in San Francisco is something that has been a thing for a LONG time. There’s nothing new about the tenderloin being a shithole.
I think that to call the current conditions a “crime wave” is a bit too non specific considering the massive societal upheaval we experienced since 2020. What specific numbers, or measurable trends concern you?
> There is quite a lot of fuss about a crime wave right now, but we are at historical lows in a lot of places. In SF shoplifting actually peaked in 2014. In SF the murder rate has risen since the pandemic… to 2017 levels. There were some high profile smash and grabs on the national news, but having your car broken into in San Francisco is something that has been a thing for a LONG time. There’s nothing new about the tenderloin being a shithole. I think that to call the current conditions a “crime wave” is a bit too non specific considering the massive societal upheaval we experienced since 2020. What specific numbers, or measurable trends concern you?
The crime wave has affected the entire country, not just SF. It’s also a violent crime wave—the number of homicides in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population had been declining for many decades and we reversed much of that in a few years time. So we aren’t just talking about a bit of shoplifting (though what’s going on in San Fran is absolutely novel). It also begins around 2014-2015, not merely since 2020. This violence also disproportionately harms communities of color, which should concern people who were vehemently impassioned in 2020 that “black lives matter” considering how many more black lives have been claimed in a single year by this crime surge than have been taken by police in the last 30+ years.
But this is not a practical real world option. In the present, you fight crime with the police system you have.
The Americans I do know who really hate defund are the very definition of latte swilling liberals complaining about crime going up in their nice suburbs in SF, Portland and Seattle while... complaining bitterly about rich white liberals.
The one supporter I do know lives a few blocks from George Floyd although the slogan seems to mean something different to her (transfer funds and responsibilities for mental health to social service departments).
If you have to keep explaining "when I say X, I really mean Y", you should maybe stop saying X.
When polled, poor black people want more policing, despite also agreeing with much of the defunder critique.
Knowing both options, they prefer flawed policing to being ruled by criminal gangs.