What do you mean, they “know there’s no point in arresting criminals”? The point is that it’s their job. They literally get paid to do it. If my employer pays me for a certain amount of work and decides to only use half of it, I don’t thereafter get to only do half the work because there’s “no point” in doing the rest.

That's not how police departments are run.

"Chief Anthony Batts listed exactly 44 situations that his officers will no longer respond to and they include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism. He says if you live and Oakland and one of the above happens to you, you need to let police know on-line."

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/suffer-these-crimes-in...

Guess what happens when you fill in a form online? Maybe it turns in to an entry in a database, but that might be the end of it.

That appears to be an article from 12 years ago, and the quote is about downsizing in the police department. I feel like I'd need to see a citation that this policy is still in effect before I could even begin the consider the real issue about whether this is just maneuvering in a political battle or an actual lack of proper funding to be able to handle those crimes.

The point is that the police departments face constraints (budgetary, management, laziness, etc.) such that many crimes and police reports simply are not investigated at all.

Some first hand examples: The four times my car was stolen, no investigation or arrest, including the one time I even was able to give them the name of one of the people who did it.

Usually they don't explicitly announce these policies because they are unpopular, but every police department has some threshold beyond which they do nothing.

Management and laziness aren’t really “constraints”. Police know they can simply refuse to perform the job they’re ostensibly paid to do — and not only will there be no consequences, but people will even demand they get more money.

Okay, and what’s their excuse for that? Again, they’re literally paid to respond to those crimes. What is the point of police if they’re ignoring reports?

There’s a budget, and they prioritize certain crimes. I feel it’s how police departments are run everywhere. My home was burglarized some years ago. The police in Utrecht will not come if you call them, it’s an insurance case. However, in my case I was at home, and there was a fight. In that case, it’s not just burglary, but home invasion, and when my partner called, police arrived with three cars in about 5 minutes.

Sure, but the claim here isn’t that police don’t have the budget to respond. It’s that they’re not bothering to do their jobs because they think it’s “pointless”.

I would actually love for police to harass thieves even if prosecutors, in the end, would refuse to prosecute them. If nothing else, many criminals are dumb; they might do something dumb while interacting with police and either get prosecuted for that, or get put down on the spot.

However, the problem of prioritization by police is exactly that. Police could be doing any number of things; if the outcome of arresting someone is nothing happens, literally any other remaining work, including the kind that could be expanded a lot - e.g. patrolling - becomes higher priority. But ofc Seattle police for example is so under-staffed that they have trouble with 911 calls and sexual assault investigation backlog.

> Again, they’re literally paid to respond to those crimes.

Eh, this part is dubious. They have no duty to protect, and no duty to respond to a crime.

> What is the point of police if they’re ignoring reports?

Lots of people asking this question lately. It's a good one.

That's the whole point of the system. Your reports are ignored, but when it hurts the bottom line of someone actually important, then:

"Breed has repeatedly promised to catch the perpetrators and even incentivized residents with up to $100,000 rewards for information leading to arrests."

Like they say, not their job anymore. Sort it out yourself.

That’s a good argument for defunding the police. If it’s not their job, I certainly don’t want my tax money paying them to not do it.

There's more work for police departments to do than there is time to do it all. Arresting shoplifters gets deprioritized when everyone knows they'll all be immediately released.

How do we know the crimes are still occurring if people have stopped reporting crimes?

Videos of the crimes taking place.