[Veliladon]

SF went from $668 million in 19/20 to $661 million in 20/21 for the SFPD, mainly due to police not being required as much at SFO.

If the police can't stop crime and enforce the laws of 47 square miles and 874,961 residents for the princely sum of $755 per person/year or $14 million per square mile/year what exactly are people paying for? Like if I told you that you pay $62/mo for a police subscription and this was the service you were going to get for it, would you still subscribe to it? Probably not.

It's a protection racket. Lower the police budget even in a non-meaningful way just a little and they hold the city to ransom. Just scrap it and start again from scratch, perhaps trying Peelian principles instead of relying on the corrupted outgrowth of slave hunter patrols.

[speedybird]

Police aren't good for much if you don't have a competent prosecutor who sees fit to prosecute criminals. Catch-and-release policing is a waste of everybody's time. And when the police misbehave, who is it that frequently neglects to prosecute them? The prosecutors, again. Who elects shitty prosecutors? Who elects shitty sheriffs? Who elect city councils and mayors who nominate shitty police chiefs?

All fingers point back to the electorate.

[pas]

> Catch-and-release policing is a waste of everybody's time.

No, it's not. Putting away repeat offenders requires to know who are they. It helps victims to have a report they can use for insurance claims, etc.

[readflaggedcomm]

You can only confirm they've offended after examining the evidence, which the DA refuses to do. Arrest isn't proof.

[nostromo]

This has nothing to do with policing and everything to do with local prosecutors, judges, and city leadership.

[wahern]

A lot of SF judges have been elected on a platform of being less harsh on defendants, and stricter with prosecutors. I don't know this particular judge's politics, but one SF judge recently opened up in open court on the incompetence of District Attorney Boudin's office that resulted in it dropping a criminal case: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-judge-blasts-DA-C...

Boudin and his defenders have been trying to spin the rebuke (including the apology, which was actually to the trial attorney, not Boudin), but the comments are perfectly consistent with this critique of Boudin's office from earlier this year: https://www.marinatimes.com/why-colleagues-say-district-atto...

Boudin famously fired at least 7 veteran prosecutors immediately after taking office. (https://www.kqed.org/news/11795676/why-did-san-franciscos-ne...) I'm not sure how many more prosecutors were fired or left after that, but as far as I can tell 7 is about half of the total number of prosecutors. And he seems to have replaced them with public defenders and fresh law graduates who have no experience prosecuting cases. (Boudin himself had never prosecuted a case.)

Boudin doesn't deserve all the blame. His predecessor, Gascon, made several changes that already made the San Francisco District Attorney's Office one of the most lenient in the country. People compare Boudin to the reformist D.A. in Philadelphia, but the better comparison is Gascon; Boudin took things to a whole new level, far beyond the reforms in Philadelphia or in the national conversation.

I've always been on board with Boudin's push for more lenient sentencing. But that's just a small part of his agenda, much of which simply translates as no sentencing. And because of general incompetence he's flubbing everything, resulting in him becoming defensive, spinning and lying about cases (e.g. most recently--last couple weeks--a controversy about disparate treatment of some pedestrian death cases that resulted in his firing the office's victims' advocate) that really should have seen both better attention by his office and, mistakes notwithstanding, a better defense in the media.

[chrismcb]

I thought it had more to do with the fact that <$950 shoplifting is considered a misdemeanor, and basically not worth the police's time to enforce it... because the prosecutor doesn't prosecute.

Burning it down to the ground, and rebuilding will of course create pretty much the same thing, and probably worse.