The problem with analyzing based on your own experience is that you don’t experience the crime that you don’t experience. The evidence coming out of this crime wave does seem to suggest that preventative policing works even if it leaves you and I with a bad taste in our mouths when we’re the ones pulled over.

Has “preventative policing” been dialed down, measured how? The “Defund” movement basically accomplished nothing in terms of budget reductions. Are cops now refocused on other tactics?

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?

You’re right that it isn’t official “defund the police” policies that were passed. Instead the pressure to defund the police has had a sort of “chilling effect” on departments. There are various studies which have shown things like preventative policing measures dropping off abruptly and dramatically in cities which experienced large BLM protests and crime rates shooting up commensurately. Criminologists are still piecing together the evidence—it’s not yet proven, but the picture that is emerging suggests the BLM movement has been a major driver in the violent crime wave.

> 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.