The guys post is interesting to sort of see the change in society.
Times were that the shop owner would physically stop shop lifters. Now we mostly have low wage employees in shops. Understandable that they don't want the risk of injury and liability so they don't stop shoplifters.
Ok, so we hire specialized employees ostensibly trained in security. But due to liability reasons they aren't allowed to physically stop shoplifters. That makes them basically useless.
Ok, so well there's always cops. But they have a similar cost benefit analysis as the other parties with the same result. It's not worth it to the individual cops to intervene. Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff?
The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff? And why risk the blowback of a police brutality incident?
> Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff?
I'm sure that's a factor, but physical altercations also bring risk to the cop. I don't know how generous their disability pensions are, but I suspect it's better for them and their family to still be able to work. Also, anyone in the US can be armed which tends to raise the stakes that cops perceive with every interaction - look at their training material/propaganda sometime and it paints a very adversarial picture.
"The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff?"
It's not their money, so many of them have no problem spending it.
That's not to mention those who personally benefit from putting more people in jail because they have investments in the prison industry, get some sort of bribe/kickback, or just have an easier time getting elected/appointed because they're "tough on crime".
These are professional criminals who raid multiple stores a day, every day.
You don't have to catch and convict them every time to be effective. If you caught and convicted even 2% of the crimes, crime would be massively lower within 6 months, because it's the same people doing it over and over.
That assumes that they are actually convicted and put in jail. The DA doesn’t believe that putting people in jail is effective at reducing crime, and so just doesn’t.
The DA you are referring to was removed from office five months ago and replaced by attorneys who quit his office in disgust and led the effort to recall him.
SF still has a lot of work to do but Chessa Boudin is no longer running the SF DA's office.
how does the cost of this compare with say UBI? bearing in mind there's a cost to illegal/legalized civil forfeiture theft, or caging more people, as well
Are you laboring under the delusion that these same criminals wouldn't happily pocket the UBI in between shoplifting raids for which they face almost no consequences?
I think the rest of the developed world provides good evidence that you can punish people for crimes without abusing civil asset forfeiture. It's pretty bad-faith to conflate the two.
We’re talking about America where it is part of policing by policy and norm. I’m responding to calls for increasing police in America. It’s pretty bad faith to defend calls for increasing police in America by saying they could steal less if they were in other countries
Except that's just not true. The US has thousands of mostly independent police departments. Some use civil asset forfeiture (fewer, now that the supreme court has stepped in). Many don't.
What a small town in Alabama does has no connection with what the SFPD does.
You don't need that. We have physical police officers who are sometimes present in some places and they don't do anything. They are on a tacit strike and have been for years.
If you look at SF compstat, larceny-theft is on pace to be about 34,000 citywide this year, which will put thefts for this year lower than every year 2013-2019, and higher than 2020-21, which were exceptionally low (pandemic).
If you look at the FBI UCR report you'll see that clearance of theft is on a 40-year-long monotonic decline. Theft rate was about the same around 1990, but the SFPD clearance rate was 3-5x higher back then. This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs.
You make a good point that political propaganda is driving this conversation about crime, largely because Fox and TPTB of conservative media think they can blame crime on Democrats to increase Republicans' chances of winning in the midterm.
At the same time, I've lived in US cities for the past 7 years. 6 months ago, I moved to a small town. Why? It wasn't because I don't like city amenities, or I can't afford city prices. I moved because the city I lived in didn't feel safe. Between the rampant bike theft, the rampant auto theft, the break-ins, and the muggings, I did not feel like trying to walk and bike around my city any more. It just felt too risky.
> This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs.
Maybe...but the two might be related, no? After some years of the police observing that the people they arrest are released with no charges and no prosecution, why would they bother to keep arresting people? It sounds demoralizing.
Times were that the shop owner would physically stop shop lifters. Now we mostly have low wage employees in shops. Understandable that they don't want the risk of injury and liability so they don't stop shoplifters.
Ok, so we hire specialized employees ostensibly trained in security. But due to liability reasons they aren't allowed to physically stop shoplifters. That makes them basically useless.
Ok, so well there's always cops. But they have a similar cost benefit analysis as the other parties with the same result. It's not worth it to the individual cops to intervene. Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff?
The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff? And why risk the blowback of a police brutality incident?