‘Keep the streets safe!’ ‘Stop scaring people away by standing around all the time when there is no trouble!’ ‘Enforce the law!’ ‘Don’t arrest grandma because she was driving drunk, you’re scaring the old people’
They pragmatically have to pick and choose what to do based on what actually works. If the DA won’t prosecute something, arresting someone for it is just a bunch of paperwork, time, and effort that doesn’t accomplish anything most of the time, so will get deprioritized.
If the police were refusing to do their jobs, ultimately it would be the city council held to account, and you’d see rather different types of political pressure being applied.
It seems instead that folks want a different DA.
How we got there and whatever finger pointing was happening and if it was justified is of course part of the debate we’re having.
It’s called discretion. It’s also used to not arrest someone who may technically have committed a crime, but for when it would be a injustice/unfair/politically untenable to arrest them for it.
It’s not supposed to be abused of course, but people are people. It would be impossible and undesirable for them to no have it however, in real life. You’d end up with the worst of Barney fife type behavior at the best.
Did they quit? If they are still recieving a paycheck then it is quite literally still their job.
Instead of doing their job, the police decided to try to do the DA’s job, which is deciding which cases should be prosecuted.
But if they are doing the rest of their job, but not arresting people for crimes the DA won't charge, that is doing their full job.
Assuming that there are legitimate grounds for arrest, this is what it means for police not to do their jobs. AFAIK, there is no "aw, what's the use, anyway?" exception.