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by verteu 1081 days ago
They have a much higher murder rate too. Murder is not caused by "cops observing crime."
1 comments

Murder is just one crime. Take for example Wage Theft. Which accounts for as much as $50 billion a year ^1 (more than robberies).

And yet, you won’t see cops arresting a manager at a store for stealing from their workers.

[1](https://inthesetimes.com/article/wage-theft-union-labor-bide...)

Wage theft is also not the type of crime that is caught by police on patrol. Having more cops in a neighborhood wont stop wage theft. Wage theft requires reports of misconduct and an investigation.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

That's the point, though. That "these are where police arrest a lot of people" isn't necessarily "these are where the most crimes or the most criminal damage happen".
Police could absolutely patrol for wage theft. It would look somewhat different from how police patrol for other crimes, but we know where it happens and how it is committed. In fact, because wage theft can only happen in specific places and only be committed by a small subset of people, it would be much easier to prevent wage theft via patrol than almost any other crime.

Yet we treat it as a report-only crime, to be prosecuted after the fact rather than prevented by policing. It seems like that's mostly a matter of police priorities.