[Karrot_Kream]

Cops are expensive. You can run a bus line all day for the cost of 3 officers. If you want cops everywhere, aside from the fact that the HN demographic is much more open to this than lower income folks, you're gonna have to deal with a much more expensive transit system which will cost taxpayers more.

The disconnect is frustrating though. Middle and low income people do not trust the police. Don't believe me? Just listen in on any public meeting. Multiple community members and community groups call in to talk about how much they hate the police. Nobody calls in about how much they were helped by the police, unless they live in a wealthy district.

[janalsncm]

So what. The Bay Area is one of the most economically productive places on the planet. Tax payers are more than capable of handling it.

The public transit system is frankly an embarrassment across the country. If Morocco can have bullet trains, the Bay Area can have a safe, smooth intercity transit system.

[c_crank]

A lot more of the lower income segment is more pro-cop than higher income segments. Those individuals may not trust the police, but they still typically prefer their presence to a lack of it.

[Karrot_Kream]

That's not what comes out in public meetings, and local government makes decisions based on who speaks up at public meetings or who takes the time to contact their local representatives. I was listening in on the Oakland Budget negotiations that happened the other day and multiple speakers talked about how they mistrust the police and do not want to offer them additional funding. The pro-police crowd almost always come from the wealthier district, and in Oakland it's fairly obvious because a couple districts are much wealthier than the others.

[hitsurume]

Your comment is really misguided. Anyone in lower income does not have time to attend meetings or pay attention to local politics. Think about it this way, crime does not happen in affluent areas because they will more often generate much more attention to police their neighborhood for safety. Lower income areas are ALWAYS where the crime is because the population there does not have the time or resources to form a safe community, nor do they even believe they will be listened to because they are always neglected by government action.

A few years back the city of San Francisco was trying to buy a local hotel in Japantown to use as a lower income housing / shelter. They tried to sneak fast track the process but were still required to have community meetings. I was in these meetings as its my neighborhood and ALL the people who were PRO on this project were OLDER people who were retired or in good places in their lives and wanted to interject their good feelings on a neighborhood they DONT EVEN LIVE IN. All the people against the project were all people who LIVE in or work in the area. It was just incredibly infuriating hearing these people who had no business being there but wanted to give their woke justice opinion.

[Karrot_Kream]

> Your comment is really misguided.

I think you're reading something into my comment that isn't there, probably because the nature of this site lends itself to reply opposition. I'm not against police enforcement. I'm trying to say, this desire you speak of isn't visible.

While what you say is true about lower income residents, plenty of community groups who perform outreach to lower income communities show up and comment against the police. Pro-bono law forms, homeless volunteers, soup kitchen folks, they all claim that low-income people dislike the police.

All I'm saying is that this disconnect is frustrating. Fundamentally low-income people are just being spoken for. On this site it's high-income people who claim to know what low-income people think, and in public meetings it's community groups who claim to know what low-income people think. I myself grew up low-income but am high-income now and I'm wary (my skin color is dark) of but overall positive (I mean what's the alternative? Lawlessness?) toward the police, but again I'm a high-income earner in a high-income district.

All I can say with certainty is that cops are expensive and that nobody seems to be excited enough to secure the tax revenue needed to fund them. If the only point of contention here was policing attitudes that would be one thing, but transit agencies don't even have enough money to maintain service let alone hire officers.

[hitsurume]

> Fundamentally low-income people are just being spoken for. On this site it's high-income people who claim to know what low-income people think

That line is spot on. Your comment on the data in the original comment felt like it was trying to paint that low income people don't want police. I think if we take a step back, we both agree that the data itself might not be an actual representation of how people in their area/district/transportation system actually feel.

I do think Bart, San Francisco, and of the like are going to now need to think of how to make people want to use and be active in the systems they created. They use to have the privledge of people being forced to use what was provided and didn't care about the quality or level of service it needed to have. But now people have a choice. AThey don't need to ride bart to go to work and feel uneasy around unsafe people. They don't need to go shopping in downtown SF because they can just amazon everything they need and don't need to interact with shady people outside the west field mall. People are speaking with their actions and hopefully governence are paying attention to why.

[RoyGBivCap]

Think about who has time to go to public meetings.

[sagarm]

Roads are similarly unpoliced -- but the lack of enforcement mostly harms vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists rather than the people driving. This creates a cycle where driving is increasingly the only safe option.