I'm sure any US west coast tech startup would kill to operate in some quaint old town in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately the venture community infrastructure / legal etc. is stuck on west coast - and AI is only reinforcing that
This is done for a good reason, it's to make sure that everybody can get a good service (otherwise imagine older people, if their doctor can't speak).
You can fully live and work without speaking a single word in Estonian.
It's totally normal here to speak English. Even in the cinema, movies are in English, subtitled in Estonian and Russian. When you go to shop, many products actually have labels in English (or in German).
Estonian is a difficult language, Estonians know about it.
A bit generalising, but to get the idea: Estonians don't want to speak Russian, Russians can't speak Estonian well. So you have this society fragmented in half.
So overall, everybody settles for the easiest language that doesn't upset anyone: English (and German as a fallback).
It's easy to find schools in English too.
Even the tax board speaks to you in English, all the website for public services ( https://www.eesti.ee/ ) is all in English, even all the laws are officially translated in English ( https://www.riigiteataja.ee/ )
To IT foreigners, the country is very welcoming and very very easy-to-settle in my opinion. To other foreigners, it's not true, because it's considered stealing jobs, bringing criminality, etc (basically same stuff that you have to prove when applying for an H1-B in the US)
To get a flat, real estate agents all speak English. They won't get offended if you speak only English, it's normal for them.
Telecom companies speak English. All apps (taxi, food delivery) are in English, because most startups and apps are not made for the local market as its too tiny.
From a political perspective, the country is now pushing more and more English; they'd prefer that you learn English than Russian.
So some shops are even removing Russian, and some administration now addresses you in 3 languages: [Estonian, then in English, and then Russian] (whereas before it was [Estonian, then Russian, and then English]).
The country is very well managed and organised, main issue with the country is:
- Darkness (coldness is fine, but half of the year you essentially live in the dark, almost like if it is always night). Summer is awesome though because you get day and sun almost all the time.
- Fucking huge unstable neighbour country.
- Taxes are going to raise in order to fund the war.
but otherwise it's a really good place to live and raise a family.
One thing of note, with the caveat it's been a few years since I lived there (although I stay closely in touch with friends and visit often... actually I am typing this from my airbnb in Tallinn) -- you might get some looks if you're brown or black. From my experience this is mainly from older people and it's pretty benign, but it's not the most cosmopolitan place and most people of color you see are "students" for visa purposes who have been there for many years and work for gig startups delivering food or driving Bolt (Uber equivalent). I never felt unsafe or anything, but there were a few uncomfortable moments during my time there as a person of color.
Estonia is a NATO country, so you should be good unless WWIII happens.
It doesn't necessarily mean that Washington would attack Moscow, and vice-versa or that they would be war outside "disputed" territories.
If tomorrow they have to choose between saving Tallinn or San Francisco, they'll make some choices, but not irrational ones.
The main TV channel in Russia openly threatens of an hybrid-scenario like in 2014 in Ukraine where they sent soldiers without bearing insignias or flags (so officially it was not an attack).
Let's say Estonia is in a situation in some way similar to North Korea vs South Korea.
Very peaceful and nice country inside but with a risk of getting into a dangerous military situation and some support guaranteed by the US and other allies if things goes bad.
The ambassadors of both countries kicked out each other in harsh ways, the customs don't collaborate together anymore, etc.
No panic, but still good to keep in mind, just in case.
https://www.factcheck.org/2016/05/whats-trumps-position-on-n...
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/3/pd...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
"Estonia is in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.
The Russians aren't gonna necessarily come across the border militarily. The Russians are gonna do what they did in Ukraine.
I'm not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St. Petersburg"
Unless I misunderstand, I already see the speech: "we saved millions of Americans thanks to my mastermind diplomacy, we send our prayers to all our allies, good luck!"
> cops and 'community orgs' dedicated to keeping certain people in their place
Come now, that's as exaggerated as saying coastal states have no law enforcement anymore and have taxpayer-funded abortion factories. If there is such a thing as drinking Fox News koolaid, what you're saying is the MSNBC equivalent.
Do you spend a lot of time in the South? I live in a Deep South state as an immigrant and visible ethnic minority. People of different races get along very well here. I used to live in a major coastal metropolis that had BLM signs on every other lawn but effectively zero black people actually living in those neighborhoods. Here? Effectively zero BLM signs, but black and white and other races rubbing shoulders as neighbors every day.
For the past few decades, if you asked black professional athletes what city they were most likely to face overt racism in, it was Boston, not a Southern city.
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/san-antonio-...
https://nypost.com/2022/02/01/dashcam-shows-florida-man-open...
Your two anecdotes, by the way, show no evidence that the people involved were of different races.
Not to say there aren’t great places to live in the rest of the US. Aside from the sometimes idiotic politics at the statehouse I’ve been fine living in Ohio, for example.
Car accident risk exists in both places, the stabbing risk is higher in some.
Not saying that we should not try to mitigate and and reduce them.
Shootings, stabbings and muggings are things that require intention.
Unless he accidentally fell on the knife 37 times...
In terms of probability of getting hurt, car crashes dwarf being stabbed so a flight to safety that requires more driving is almost surely increasing your odds of being harmed. Likely the numbers are underreported as well. But headlines get attention. Family of four t-boned in an intersection by a drunk driver just doesn't get the clicks that CTO stabbed in San Francisco does.
Not to say there aren't problems, of course.
I also really enjoyed learning about all the little places, and it's a bonafide research rabbit hole if that's your sort of thing: weather, taxes, sports, politics, culture, economy, transport, food, history, lifestyle, geography. There's such variety and distinctness! I mean, you can cut the pie anyway you like and I bet there's somewhere in the US to suit you.
These folks aren’t all dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0
Source: I lived there from 2016 until last year and I still have a house there.
I moved out of state late last year.
I do love the burbs of Forsyth county though.
People moving into Forsyth over the last decade are transplants from up north and other parts of Atlanta are part of the “professional class” as the population has grown. They are the “college educated white suburban” group that have completely different attitudes than the people who have been in Forsyth forever.
Overland Park, KS
Minneapolis, MN
Colorado Springs, CO
Plano/McKinney/North Dallas, TX
Asheville, NC
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Bellingham, WA
SF is a pretty nice place, but you have to avoid tenderloin and soma.
But even with such nutcases, who you can safely ignore, because they’re just out of their heads clearly, I really like LA.
I find the street people in LA are not as dirty or aggressive as the worst street people in San Francisco. It’s like a Street people in LA still see you is kind of kin. But the street people in San Francisco: you guys are on two sides of divide like you’re from different worlds.
I remember Street people from both cities but I can’t remember like the specific places. I just recall that during the day, San Francisco is a lot worse than LA. More street people more aggressive, more dirty.
This was pre-pandemic, though, so maybe things have changed a lot. Hopefully for the better in all aspects!
DA's have a budget and a limited number of assistant attorneys. They have to manage their office's caseload, and keep cases they do pursue moving through the pipeline. Even then, they must compete with the priorities of the judiciary and individual judges to reduce their caseload and keep cases moving.
It was not uncommon for judges to periodically advise prosecutors, public defenders and other key defense attorneys to convene a forum for the expeditious resolution of cases (essentially a fire sale with lots of bartering) to lessen their load and improve their KPIs.
So I think it is fair to say, Chesa Boudin, in his capacity as managing attorney responsible for setting his office's prosecutorial discretion policy, refused to prosecute the case. No different from any other prosecutorial discretion decisions made by countless prosecutors around the country daily.
The new DA’s office has made a lot of promises but there’s been no substantial progress. Their continued increasing rates of prosecutions on violent crimes gives me a bit more hope that they’re truly battling through an immense backlog - but I’ve simply run out of patience and energy to fight the system in order to compel them to simply do their jobs.
What trouble did the DA's office give you?
Since Boudin left, they have been much more responsive and have intimated they well get to my case. I just haven’t seen any action yet - but they have been far easier to communicate with.
Their accusation against Boudain could be correct but they could just as well be lazy and blame it on what the DA's office may or may not do in the future.
The police achieved their objective of getting Boudin replaced by a DA who would let them continue to act with impunity. As you seem to have experienced yourself, fighting (non-Police) crime does not seem to have changed much.
What would it take for it to change? Really? It is never too late to change.
But right now, the SF tech travel agents here and in the comments section are going to have a hard time at pitching that the city is 'safe' for them and now have to admit that it has gotten worse.
But maybe we should start with identifying the 'problem' which has something to do with 'who' is running those streets and seeing if there is a patten in other cities in the US...
Once you know, you will find your answer.
Putting criminals in jail and keeping them there.
a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
I’m worried that there’s going to be a massive collapse of the tax base long before any serious reform attempts.
That’s not how it works. After being arrested, you press charges against them.
It’s incredible when there are so many stories of the police doing nothing and statistical evidence of the previous DA not prosecuting cases, that you choose to, at best, accuse me of being imprecise with my terminology or, at worse, claim that I’m lying about one of the most traumatic events of my life.
(It's worth noting that Boudin was recalled nearly a year ago, and so perhaps the SFPD will have discovered the will to cooperate with the new DA.)
In the US, The police are so empowered and do it all the time. I am unsure why gp thinks otherwise. They are not required to nor do they simply get arrest warrants in every case they think they have probable cause. Anything else would be silly. They would get an arrest warrant, arrest, it would get dismissed without charges at the initial hearing a day later.
If the DA is involved already or they know the office policy, Cops will not get an arrest warrant if the DA is not going to back them.
If DA is not yet involved they may do it for various reasons, but again, they usually aren't going to touch it if they know the DA won't back them. They have too much to do to be that passive aggressive.
As for the other part, Whether individuals can get arrest warrants actually varies from state to state, though it is very uncommon no matter what.
You know, folks get charges without being arrested - and folks get arrested without getting charged. These two aren't actually connected.
It isn't just that, but you - the private citizen - aren't really the one that determines whether or not someone gets charges against them. Sometimes, if you won't testify, they won't follow through. This happens in Domestic violence situations. But other times, they simply don't take the case to court or they take the case to court even if the victim doesn't want it.
That's not how it works.
You, as a private citizen, can't "press charges". The DA presses charges. And they have (so far, according to OP) declined to do so.
In colloquial terms, "press charges" means 2 separate things:
1. File a civil suit. Doesn't really work if the offenders are indigent.
2. Agree to cooperate with a criminial investigation. Can't do this if the DA won't initiate one in the first place.
The OP's argument is likely that the police didn't arrest an attacker because they knew that the DA wouldn't do anything. There is the plausible alternate explanation that the police were engaged in a bad-faith work stoppage or slow down. The third explanation--nonunique to DA--is that the police were overworked or incompetent.
In many of these cities, these DAs are propped up with insane campeign funds, get elected, and refuse to charge, or push for no bail, so someone gets arrested for a felony, they end up back on the street the next day. Just read some of the cases where some people are arrested over and over and keep reoffending before their trial date.
It's a bit of a leap from there to conclude that attempted murder would not be prosecuted.
Does it say anywhere on that memo that attempted murder would not be prosecuted? Of course not. Do these policies generally increase the feeling of lawlessness in the jurisdiction? Yes. Might that precipitate higher degrees of lawlessness? You be the judge.
Surely this can't be the blanket cause?
Yet virtually all these countries have far better outcomes than us on most social issues, including violent crime and rehabilitation.
So perhaps the issue isn’t left wing policies?
I hope against hope that you aren't acting in bad faith, because I'd hate to see discussion on HN further degrade into oversimplified sound bites.
- allowing arrested thieves to walk free without charges
- removing advanced math classes from high schools in the name of equality
- legalized racial discrimination in school admissions and hiring
- allowing transgender men to compete against women in sports
Everything I've been able to find indicates that crime statistics are trending downwards and are already much lower than historical levels.
People generally are uncomfortable with crime being up 50% in 3 years, even if it's still down 30% from 1991.
Where did the 50% number come from?
Q1 2023 appears to be down nearly 10% on Q1 2022 and 25% compared with Q1 2017.
2022 as a whole was lower in most areas than 2017 with 9,000 fewer incidents.
[0] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
Underreporting seems like a huge problem, even here with our blooming crime rate. I've had to call the police twice since covid, once because by house caught a stray bullet from a car chase/shootout, and the cops said that the only people who bothered to report were myself and the elementary school down the street. The folks in the other house that took rounds had no desire to interact with the police.
However, I work in the physical security space (eg: cameras, video AI, access control, etc.).
Overall, it does not feel like actual crime rates are down, but there are many things that are simply going unreported. Thus, the stats might look better, but they are not always a representation of reality.
As one example, loss prevention departments have always been busy, but they could usually get a response from the police. Now you have retail theft gangs/rings openly walking out with thousands of dollars of product, getting into a stolen vehicle, driving off, and police more or less just not even returning a phone call in many areas.
This is not everywhere at this point, but a lot of major metropolitan areas are seemingly observing significantly increased "petty" crimes, which are going unreported and unresponded to.
The push to shut down private prisons, especially in California for example.
By proxy that made it a right leaning thing.
I’ve heard my more right wing friends suggest that a big Democratic donor has been specifically backing DAs who do this type of thing. I have no references for it at all, but I know that Desantis even mentioned it in the press while discussing the Trump charges in NY.
Have the private prisons been replaced?
It's a weird social phenomenon. Groups based on trait X will tend to choose the most radical and forceful members for trait X as their leaders. To the point where trait X is actually warped beyond recognition.
2017-2022 [0]:
* ~9,000 fewer incidents in total.
* Rape halved.
* Robberies decreased to 2/3 of 2017 numbers.
* Burglary/Motor vehicle theft increased but Larceny theft decreased by more than both combined.
Q1 2017/2023 [0]:
* ~4,000 fewer incidents in total.
* Only Motor vehicle theft and Arson were slightly up on 2017 levels.
Q1 2022/2023 [0]:
* Total incidents down by 9.7%
* Burglary down by 11.2%
* Motor vehicle theft down by 8.5%
* Larceny theft down by 12%
* Assaults did increase by 2.2%
* As did Robberies by 13.6%
[0] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
See, that's the thing about crime stats: they only tell you successful convictions. They do not factor in police inactivity, people not reporting, police not filing, plea bargains to misdemeanors, DAs not prosecuting, cases getting dismissed.
Homicides however mean a cadaver is involved, and that can't be policy-washed: it is there in the morgue on file with the medical examiner.
Homicides are included. If you had kept reading you would've seen that the next sentence is:
> Homicides reflect the number of victims and are not based on the incidents.
It appears that homicides have generally been below, and haven't risen above, 2017 levels.
> See, that's the thing about crime stats: they only tell you successful convictions.
It's not mentioned specifically but it's implied that these are reported incidents rather than convictions:
> Incidents that are unfounded or unsubstantiated have also been excluded from the dataset.
My car was broken into 3 times in 10 years. I reported it once because “what difference does it make?”
DAs are elected, so notionally, Boudin, the DA for SF, is representating the will of the people by not prosecuting criminals deemed to be "low level crimes".
U.S. Attorneys prosecute people for crimes that violate federal law, convictions which often result in time in federal prisons.
In the US, victims can’t press criminal charges; only the government can.
> what's the prosecutor got to do with it? Isn't it a police decision?
Usually, it’s both. Ideally, the prosecutor decides whether to prosecute, but if the police never pass information along to the prosecutor, the decision is effectively being made by the police.
The same is happening in Philadelphia too. Its sad, because the city was on the upswing in the first half of the 2010's and making a lot of progress on reducing crime. Then a new DA came in and did a complete 180. Now its worse than ever. Look up videos of "Kensington, Philadelphia" on Youtube. Its like Mad Max these days.
Some call it slums, some call it nice
I wanna take you through a wasteland I like to call my home
Welcome to paradise ~
Another problem I see is that in some cities (mine) people see racism at any attempt to alleviate the crime problem in lower income areas. I used to use the public transit system but it is now filled with drug users and people who enjoy terrorizing others. Police do nothing about it partially out of a fear of being called racist.
For whatever reason I get the sense that police are either extremely violent or extremely passive.
What consequences do they have from perceived racism that they fear it so much? Again as you noted, they are rarely punished for anything at all. They also do a lot of pretty unambiguous racism without apparent concern over this.
> For whatever reason I get the sense that police are either extremely violent or extremely passive.
It's both, and the reasons are interrelated. Passivity in some areas protects their right to do violence in others. Public fear of crime, avoidance of public spaces, these are results that benefit them institutionally. What incentives do they have for not working towards that result?
When the white liberals (like me) of my city unite with poor people of color and decry an action of the police it does affect them. They are human and criticism does affect them. It especially affects them when the whole city is up in arms over something they do. Mostly white liberals in my city don’t think about policing issues until something egregious happens. My experience is that when the whole city is up in arms about their actions then police respond like a petulant child by refusing to enforce the law.
Public fear of crime, avoidance of public spaces, these are results that benefit them institutionally. What incentives do they have for not working towards that result?
I grew up in the Canal Zone in Panama and remember the time during Noriega when he and the U.S. were opposed to each other. I remember the way I had be when dealing with Panamanian police during that time. Even though I was a white American I had to be very careful when dealing with them. I feel the same way around American police as I did when I dealt with police of a dictatorship.
My experience in America is that it is considered suspicious if a group of people are just hanging out outside. Four black kids walking together in my neighborhood would have the police called on them. We are, in essence, a nation of building dwellers who only go outside for the purpose of getting into a vehicle to drive to another building. It is as you say a situation that benefits police.
We don’t really have civil rights in the U.S. because police can, with impunity, fuck you up for exercising them.
My childhood friend's dad was a cop in a riot of historic significance in my country.
Protesters greatly outnumbered the police, and they threw stones and pushed them into a corner. Shots were fired, nobody died. They really thought they were going to be stoned to death because of all the anger. The few dozen cops left the event with PTSD and a handful never worked again.
As an individual policeman there is very little you can do about an agitated crowd who starts chanting.
So while a harsh reaction to police brutality is understandable, every single policeman carries the recent collective history of violence and knows they could be the subject of retribution. So the healthy thing for them, as an individual, is to not engage, because previously only potential perpetrators would engage in violence, but with enough heat, even bystanders may. Maybe the non-racist cops can't hide behind a collective, when entering a public conflict, as well as they could before.
1. Laws and adherence to laws are required for a society to function.
2. Policing is necessary to enforce the law.
3. Policing, as a job, sucks. It's the tedium of TSA + the rare but lethal risk of being in a combat zone.
4. Policing, as a job, is made worse by politicians abusing it as a panacea, where other, less politically- and financially-palatable solutions would be more appropriate. Trained mental health professional intervention, drug programs, etc. Instead, cops are put in situations they shouldn't be.
The issue is thus not that police fear being accountable in the same way the public is held accountable. It's instead two-part:
A. Police feel they are owed a different sort of accountability than the public, both in service to and as a reward for doing a job the public doesn't want to do.
B. Effective police work requires a different sort of accountability than the public, as criminals doesn't operate in a vacuum and exploit known police limitations.
C. The most effective police work, for both police and the community, is deterrence -- the prevention of crime from even happening, by simple virtue of police presence. Deterrence requires respect and/or fear, and impoverished people without economic opportunity and living in communities where might makes right aren't deterred by gentle policing.
All of the above are contradictory with civil rights (and also with themselves).
Ergo, the appropriate level of accountability for policing is "what gets the job done, with the resources the city/state/federal government are prepared to invest in it."
Which makes it a multi-variable optimization problem.
Clearly, SF's current values are not producing an acceptable result.
A lot of cops went to the ju-jitsu gym I used to go to. They assumed that I was an ally so to speak and were quite candid and about beating suspects. The whole system is rotten. Part of the problem is your point 3. The number of guns in the country makes it prudent for police to treat every encounter as if they could be shot. I imagine that alone puts quite a lot of stress on the mental health of police officers.
But I'd put the "optimal" (in the efficiency and good-social-outcomes sense, as distinct from a morally good-bad action perspective) amount at >0.
A credible threat of violence by police is a powerful deterrent. Especially to people who don't see the world in more nuanced light.
If someone like that is afraid of the police and so doesn't commit a crime, then everyone wins -- the potential perpetrator (who isn't exposed to the criminal justice system), the victim(s) (who don't have a crime committed against them), the police officer (who doesn't have to be in that situation and can focus on better parts of the job), and society as a whole (who save the substantial cost of dealing with all of the above: incarceration, rehabilitation, salary, lost productive economic activity).
The more nuanced discussion that tends to get lost in the weeds is "How do we simultaneously allow police latitude to do the job we want them to do, while also ensuring that latitude isn't disproportionately employed against minorities or political out-groups?"
In other words, police may need to crack a few hard heads. But those shouldn't be statistically-over-representative person of color heads.
Of course, fold in that economic situation is also racially biased, as a consequence of historical inequities, and actually accomplishing statistically-fair policing seems intractable. :(
But at the end of the day, people getting stabbed isn't good for anyone.
Even from an anti-police perspective, it builds support for "hard policing" policies among the general public, and eventually an election swings someone they support into office.
--
There was another comment in here that asserted that cops commit domestic violence more often than the general public.
Which immediately made me think "Why?"
Obviously, the acceptable amount of domestic violence is zero, but (if those statistics are true) there's something causing police officers to commit it more frequently than the general public.
It's probably partly that policing selects for "tough" people, by virtue of the work...
... but it also speaks to cumulative trauma caused by the job, and the effects of that.
You can't watch humans be shitty to each other, repeatedly, without it changing you. :(
It feels like we need a more complete lifecycle than "police for life," that includes cycling through various related components, some of which provide an opportunity for healing.
E.g. also stints helping defense and prosecuting attorneys, legal defense funds, partnering with mental health professionals, EMS, fire/rescue, etc.
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2017R1/Downloads/Comm...
I agree with what you wrote and largely agree with it. It’s a tricky situation and I don’t pretend to know of any realistic solutions. I’m a keyboard warrior spreading the gospel against illegal police violence. Such voices are needed if we are to keep excessive police violence from being normalized and accepted. Voices are too needed in support of police. Extreme outcomes on either side of this issue are bad.
But yeah, to me, if I see police officers are 2-4x more likely than the general public to engage in domestic violence, that engages my curiosity about the job rather than the people.
You don't pick bad apples at a reliable 2-4x rate across the entire country.
And so much police reform (when it happens) seems to start and stop with the individuals. 'Find the officers who are doing bad things and apply more consequences to them,' etc.
Part of the solution, to be sure, but IMHO we should look equally closely at what all these super-offenders have in common -- the same job!
"How can we change the policing job to one that doesn't cause its employees to perpetrate domestic violence and employ excessive use of force at greater rates than the general public?" is a question I don't see much.
As an analogy, farmers commit suicide at far higher rates than the general public. Yet somehow I doubt it would fix the problem to identify only the suicidal farmers and just help them. The root cause is the stress and challenges of the profession, shared by all, even if it only ends tragically for a subset.
You can kneel with protestors.
A cop tried this at a BLM protests I was at, which was peaceful including when the cops inexplicably arrived in riot gear. His buddies yanked him back and we never saw him again.
So you're right, very little cops can do when the system selects for bad behavior.
This is one hell of a claim. Can you share some good sources that verify it?
Not sure we got the least worst.
Individual results will still rightly depend on voters. You can blunt the attraction of extremism, but hearts and minds need shifting before voters will take a fundamentally different approach.
I'd support that if it were coupled with multiple-choice position forms that were required to be filled out by each candidate, covering core issues and options. That is, no free response, not-an-answer answers.
But yes, I totally agree with your proposal. I can even see it helping with cutting through all the boilerplate verbiage candidates are having to use to pay respects to various things, and return some focus on actual policies.
Which is a shame, because "knowing what you're voting for" seems like a critical component of democracy, and campaign ads are useless (and expensive).
The rightward view of american policing is basically they're functioning as intended but are not powerful enough to achieve their desired effect and must be reinforced to succeed.
The leftward view is that they're functioning as intended, the violence and fear they cause is success, and so the entire thing must be dismantled.
The "centrist" view is I think something like the goal of policing is good & correct but the system is malfunctioning and must be adjusted. Neither side will agree with that: the right doesn't agree that it's malfunctioning (except so far is that it's held back from achieving its goal) and the left doesn't agree that its goal is just.
There's no neutrality or inherent virtue in a centrist position: it's a side like any other and you don't get credit just for inhabiting it. That doesn't make anyone calling you a nazi or communist justified in doing so or correct in their assessment. But it does indicate that neither considers your stance a compromise or allied position in relation to their own.
I don't know what it would be like to select political goals based on their likelihood in the face of such incredible violence and injustice as we create. I'm grateful I can't lathe my soul in such a way. Seems chill though.
The Overton window can move surprisingly quickly, and policies which you consider extremist now won't be in a decade.
NYC shows you can have broken policies AND do a better job on homelessness.
NYPD brutality, stop-and-frisk, broken windows, "it's Giuliani time" -- the cruelty of the NYPD is long-standing and well-documented.
Yet, NYC has done a massively better job directly addressing homelessness than SF.
SF is not a liberal city. This is where a homophobic psychopath murdered the mayor and supervisor and was hailed as a hero by many residents. This is where massively corrupt machine politicians like Willie Brown feathered their nests. This is a city with some of the worst-managed public housing in the country, and neighborhoods like Hunter's Point awash in toxic chemicals.
This is a relatively tiny city with economic inequality and effective segregation unlike cities many times it's size.
Just because they've elected a progressive DA here and there (and then recalled them LOL) doesn't change the ugliness underneath.
(I do think there’s probably an indication there about the attitudes of “old San Francisco” - but how much of that generation is left at this point?)
It's relevant because at the time, like today, SF was seen as exhibit A of liberalism run amok, and yet couldn't unite against a homophobic assassination of their own elected officials.
Now, the zeitgeist insists that SF's broken homeless policies come from misplaced liberal compassion as opposed to a long history of neglect and corruption, which was particularly acute toward hispanic and black communities.
It's a faith, backed by power and media. You can't fight that with reason, especially when you are being silenced.“ https://twitter.com/vdarejamesk/status/1643462162776567808
This article is about a different kind of “police pullback,” but the underlying phenomenon—cops won’t work when they’re challenged—is the same. https://www.propublica.org/article/what-can-mayors-do-when-t...
But no #M4A for the proles, because that's SOCIALISM.
No one is complaining when a cop uses force, they are complaining when a cop goes out of their way to murder, torture, and beat the shit out of normal citizenry who often put up little to no fight.
They are complaining about when the cops drop flashbangs into baby's cribs and getting no charges. https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/us/georgia-toddler-stun-grena...
If this is the conditions the police would like to return to, they should all go to jail.
What a totally normal democratic thing to say.
It is disheartening that you appear to be so willing to go along with with whatever police do all in the name of safety. Do you really view the world in such a way that you can’t comprehend having a police force that does it’s job without beating suspects who are already in custody?
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/2/3/22263444/new-chicago-p...
Note that Burge was arrested for lying to a jury during a civil lawsuit not for torture.
In most states, anybody can use force to arrest criminals,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest#United_Stat...
Of course the devil is in the details. I wouldn't risk my own neck by attempting a citizens arrest in a place like SF, because I think the prosecutors/etc there would be more interested in making an example out of me for daring to care, than punishing the actual criminal. Evidently the police of SF feel similar.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery#Peop...
In fact, by treating the two as the same, you commit a deep injustice, because a violent action does not get judged the same as its violent reaction.
I don’t think you understand the implications of what you just wrote. I thank you for stating this because it means we are in complete agreement. When a cop breaks the law they are in fact a criminal and, as you just stated, prosecuting criminals gets a high priority.
We agree. Criminals ought to be prosecuted. I’m glad you are in favor of prosecuting police who break the law.
You are taking what is written and applying an interpretation that clearly is not intended or made. You act as if those wanting reform seek out the most extreme, nonsensical standards. You are unreasonable in your responses. I hope for you that you may one day learn and understand logic and nuance.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...
This isn't just limited to intelligence. Police departments will not hire people who will do the job properly, and they'll force out the people who maintain high ethics. That's why people say there's a systemic issue with policing in this country.
> New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.
This is visibly not about "refusing to hire people who are smart enough to do the job well", but
> a rational way to reduce job turnover
Furthermore, since they interviewed only people who score higher than 20, where 21 is said to be equivalent to an IQ of 104, then those aren't stupid people.
Finally, I will say that the conspiracy theory that police departments are pro-crime and try do their best to do their job the wrong way seems out of touch with reality.
This is, actually, completely impossible. A very simple example: an active shooter situation requires an immediate non judicial punishment. Therefore, the laws need explicit carve-outs for cops.
> When one of their own is treated by the law like anyone else would be they retaliate by refusing to work
was incorrect: if you were going to be arrested for killing an active shooter, then you would not do it. And it would be wrong to charaterize this as a retaliation, as it is a rational decision.
Please read what is written in the context it is written in.
Pure invention, if you want to restrain your context then use precise language not a large variety of hyperboles like "It’s possible for police to do their job without needing to beat whomever they want, whenever they want."
In the end, I will sum up this discussion from my POV: you view cops broadly as criminals waiting to get caught (they are domestic abusers after all!) and if I were one I would never want to police your neighborhood.
I suspect this all comes from you living a sheltered life, and because your view of police and, especially, of criminals is informed by TV shows. And yes, "gotcha!", those aren't the same, no matter how many screenwriters enjoy subverting expectations.
It's quite clear to me that the application of your ideas has given this headline, so I'm comfortable ending this discussion on this note: I hope that your anti-cop views are eliminated ASAP through the voting booth.
I wonder how the boot tastes. Probably like crack considering the arguments you are coming up with
1 - The police is absolute and can do anything they want, and unless you have a magical police force in your pocket you can't complain.
2 - The police doesn't exist and every city is covered in excrement and random stabbings.
There's no gaslight going on, we just don't see everything in black and white like you.
I don't think "let them hold us hostage by refusing to work" is the right answer.
After a few years of having retired, he came out being a cop.
These two quotes seem to be at odds with eachother. A cops job is only to arrest criminals, if they are prosecuted should not be their concern.
Good thing the psych eval for cops has questions that relates to this, and someone with your sentiment would not be selected for training.
Are you saying they shouldn't value their own lives, but instead behave as instruction-following robots.
"A cop should uphold the law they swore an oath to protect, even if it means putting their own life at risk"
2. You're still asking him to take a small chance with his life.
Can and have. Because if I didnt then I am still at fault, just like these police.
I know you were contrasting arrest with prosecution, but "only arrest" is still an idea that shouldn't be put forward even in that context. A cop's job is to preserve public safety. Sometimes that does and should mean arrest, whether or not that arrest leads to prosecution. More often it should mean prevention. That might just mean being visible as a deterrent. It might mean intervening to arbitrate or de-escalate a situation before it leads to a criminal act. It might mean investigating suspicious activity. It might mean helping a desperate person find the aid they need before their desperation turns into criminality. The possibilities are almost endless. If police did their job according to Peel's original principles, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that the DA's actions are irrelevant.
Police departments don't have enough resources to arrest every criminal, so they should try to maximize their effectiveness and avoid wasting what resources they do have by deprioritizing arrests of criminals who they know won't be prosecuted.
Over the last 7 years, arrests by sfpd have gone down. This includes before the election of the prosecutor that "legalized stealing" (how?).
Chesa specifically complained about this a few times, trying to work with sfpd on why they were simply bringing less criminals to his office.
The common argument is that the police were doing as they promised: the union came out hard against Boudin during his election, and then held public safety hostage until the public finally recalled Boudin.
Now he is recalled and crime continues to rise.
How does your argument square with the data?
It shouldn't be surprising that the DA’s office and police need to work together.
Because prosecution was never supposed to be the primary goal of policing. See Peel's principles.
https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/welcome/crimj408/history...
Prevention is deservedly mentioned first. Prosecution is not mentioned at all, though the last point could be read as a veiled rebuke of those who believe it's a primary goal.
"The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."
There's plenty for police to do in preventing, protecting, and investigating, even if no prosecution occurs. The problem with US policing (and the associated justice/prison systems) is that these original principles have been completely replaced by a punitive and largely anti-community attitude or approach. And it doesn't work. Just as higher medical costs don't correlate very well with better health outcomes, intensive policing and imprisonment as they're practiced here do not lead to better public safety. Sometimes it's not enough to do more of what you're already doing, and a paradigm shift - by it's nature something that can feel very scary and might even produce worse results in the short term - is necessary.
If you just remove prosecution from the equation of policing, without making any other changes, you won’t be left with a better system but a worse one.
Agreed. To be clear, I think a blanket refusal to prosecute is a terrible idea. I was responding to a specific question - "why bother arresting" - in a context where arrest would have been easy and at least locally beneficial.
> If you just remove prosecution from the equation
Nowhere close to anything I suggested or implied. I was merely pointing out that successful prosecution is not the only or even primary purpose of policing. My interlocutor's implication that we can only continue policing with a focus on prosecution or give up on policing at all is a pernicious false dichotomy. We can police differently. Prosecution is a part of that, but only when alternatives have been tried and failed.
We don’t disagree, but so far humanity as a whole has been unable to find as efficient prevention method as prosecution. Indeed it would be a better society which could abandon the measure without negative repercussions.
It's not hard to see why they stay in the car and keep driving if the arrests don't even lead to prosections.
Additionally, being a cop is a pretty safe job! It’s not even top 10 most dangerous jobs. Most injuries are because of the cops own traffic violations or, more recently, Covid.
No, my commits are perfectly fine, as are the vast majority of my peers' code. Only an extremely small number of complaints are generated, across a number of commits many magnitudes larger -- and not all of those complaints are of equal merit.
> If you felt that way, quit so someone who is willing to do the work can get hired.
Unfortunately, recruiting is down across most (maybe all) major cities. Maybe the would-be recruits see it differently than you -- with nothing to stake -- do?
Unfortunately, the matter of fact is, the police force decide to stop enforcing laws when they’re criticized for problems the police force caused. It’s childish. Police steal more money than actual amounts of theft in the country through civil forfeiture. Police are more likely to commit domestic violence. Police hired defense to argue that they don’t have any obligation to protect individuals or intervene in crime, instead of punishing cops who shirk their work. And then when any cops are critiqued the entire force stops doing their jobs and blames the critics for it.
The question is: why aren't police making as many arrests (commits). And the answer I'm proposing is: because DAs are reverting their work.
They are not reverting their work only in the cases of supposed police misconduct, so your counterpoint about bad commits is a diversion from the point. The DAs are not doing their job because they believe, frankly, that criminal justice as constructed cannot work. They don't believe a lot of crimes should be prosecuted even. For example, in DC something like 60% of gun possession cases are dropped. In Chicago and Philly it's higher than 90%. That has nothing to do with police brutality (bad commits) [0]
(And btw, these are the same people who think guns should be banned flat out)
What that means is the PM (district attorney) has the developers working on a product they have no intention of shipping (actual justice). Police are people too, and nobody is going to do purposeless work. You wouldn't at your job, and neither would they at their much more dangerous and stressful job. Nor is anyone in a great rush to sign up for this job, despite offered salaries being very high right now.
Police misconduct is a distraction from this point, unless you think 90% of gun possession charges were generated abusively -- which would be a completely innumerate claim.
0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/29/us-attorn...
Nevertheless, “risking their life” is what their Job description is. If they are not willing to do it then they should not have been given a badge.
I don't think it's a suitable metaphor though.
Only 130 officers died in the line of duty in 2021.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...
Eg, one police officer interviewed says:
> “I made two arrests two days in a row one week, and both turned into paperwork clusterfucks,” the former officer said. “When you’ve accumulated two or three use-of-force complaints in a week, you’ll say: ‘I just need to stop. I need to stop doing this.’”
The article later interprets it as "police officers opposed to the consent decree that McGinn negotiated [engaged] in underpolicing".
Which is technically accurate, but also... The article implies this is political retaliation, as in "we'll let people commit crimes, that will teach you", while the interviewed officer's reported experience is "when you get reprimanded and asked to fill time-consuming paperwork every time you do X, at some point you stop doing X". (Or you keep filling the paperwork, and therefore spend less time patrolling and responding to calls.)
Don't get me wrong, police brutality is a thorny problem and police often actively resists solving it. But when there's a tradeoff, if you act like the tradeoff only has one side and the other is that the people whose jobs you're trying to regulate are lazy corrupt assholes, you're not going to make a lot of progress on solving the problem.
I also admit that a large part of why I often just walk during lunch breaks at clients instead of eating sometimes ridiculously good lunches might be because I hate collecting those papers/digital notes and have to force them into the accounting system at work.
Don't underestimate the dread of certain kinds of paperwork for certain kinds of people.
And while the officer's stance is not an outright "we'll let people commit crimes, that will teach you", it certainly comes close to "policing our style, or none at all".
Even when police make arrests, they are back on the streets. Any rational police officer is bound to wonder, why make the arrest in the first place that only puts them at risk if nothing after them will actually be done.
There are few jobs on Earth where you fix everything once and it stays fixed forever. Almost everyone is working to keep a type of entropy at bay. Doctors help people get healthy who get sick again, I fix outages that will get caused again, and police need to arrest people who do crimes and will get released again.
It's the job they chose and trained to do. If they don't like it, they can get a new job.
Someone is starting these fires. The police go in and take care of it, the DAs literally release them with zero or nearly zero consequences to the offender and the next day (often literally) they are starting "fires" again.
We are human, not machines, we are not idealized automatons.
It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with demoralization. Most cops simply want to do their job and not consistently be undermined or called liars.
To cops, that means "DON'T QUESTION MAH AUTHORITAH!"
Screw that. If cops policed their own ranks, getting rid of the "few bad apples" they claim are so rare, then perhaps they wouldn't be scrutinized.
Even so, 99% of the US is perfectly happy with the way the police generally operates and are always willing to support the Blue.
However that's not what I meant in terms of undermining. If a DA undermines the work of the police force they are supposed to support that has negative consequences on the actions of the policing body. This would happen regardless of whether or not the policing body were true peace keepers or aggressors. I would argue that in fact the DAs actions affect the PD-types-we-like more than the bully types.
A DA needs to allocate resources towards cases that are significant to the community, aligned with the desires of the people who voted the DA into office.
I have a boss who doesn't always "support" what I think should be done. And that's fine, because he has different goals that he tries to communicate to my team, but in the end, he answers to his boss. I don't have the full picture on why he makes decisions, how he allocates budgets etc. I just have insights from what he tells me and what I see.
But I'm a professional, and I don't get my feelings hurt when my boss tells me to do something different, or to do something I don't agree with. Yet cops are just different. In the US they get kid glove treatment when they break the law, either from fellow cops or the courts. They get idolized by TV shows as the only thing keeping people safe when they do little to actually prevent crime. And they continue to claim being underfunded, overworked, under appreciated and under constant threat of death at the hands of "civilians", since they tend to break communities into three categories (perps, civilians, and cops).
This is not true nor is it verifiable. This is a bullshit political talking point. And it’s ridiculous.
It was explained to me a few times that it wasn’t supposed to be an issue. The police will just as eagerly do their job and arrest criminals. But that never made sense to me. What happened in your case seems a lot more likely. What would be the point in going through all the trouble arresting a suspect if there is a good chance charges will just be dropped.
https://missionlocal.org/2022/04/chesa-boudin-files-more-cha...
You have 1/3 of the people here saying SF needs more police.
You have 1/3 saying the police don't do anything.
You have 1/3 saying other things, dehumanizing homeless people, saying if everyone had a gun it'd be better, etc..
And this probably is not the case of "everyone is right" but rather "everyone is wrong!"
I have video, proof of damages physical and financial, eyewitnesses and the info of the men who attacked me. SFPD will not arrest them because Boudin refused to prosecute. New DA has not gotten back to me despite repeated attempts.
I wanted to build a life and have my family in SF, to contribute and make it the city I believe it to be, but I refuse to put people I love in that situation. I’ve left for Estonia and couldn’t be happier.