[icapybara]

We need some way to address the low level crime in the US. If you look at cities in east Asia, they're both much larger than typical US cities and much safer. It -is- possible to have safe large cities. The fact that we don't is a choice.

[rdiddly]

Don't we? Crime rates have been dropping for decades.

https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-crime-rate-in-the-u...

But if the choice is between liberty and safety, then Americans are supposed to choose liberty, that's why America is what it is.

Ben Franklin famously said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

[Cider9986]

Exactly. More people die from cars every month in the US than in 9/11. We value our freedom with cars, we should value our privacy to an even greater extent.

[epoxia]

What's even more amazing is that they had these safe cities without [Flock, Motorola, Axon]. I guess we will never know how they did it, but at least we get the Chinese surveillance state.

[khuey]

My experience in major East Asian cities (predominantly Tokyo and Taipei) is that they have extensive networks of surveillance cameras operated by or accessible to the police.

[kurthr]

Japanese police are very rarely willing to even ask to look at any of the disorganized hodgepodge of private cameras for property crimes or even minor physical altercations. They are far more likely to rely on personal accounts. TV dramas not withstanding.

Although Tokyo does have a system of traffic cameras which log traffic movement and license plates, that's most all that it does. Except in cases of murder or kidnapping (or political influence), it's quite rare to request the recordings of many private cameras. Outside of big cities, it's even more rare.

The largest connected system of cameras I'm aware of are for the subway camera systems (Shinjuku, Shinagawa, etc). Although independent systems, together they can do facial recognition to track individuals. Not a lot of AI yet, though.

In Tokyo, it is not uncommon to see bikes parked on residential streets with keys left overnight in their wheel locks (as if there aren't even mischievous 12 year olds?!). Oh, and outside of the cities, crime is even more rare. It is common in youth hostels for there to be open cubbies where personal items are stored in the front near the door. Nothing is taken. Most common thefts are: umbrellas (considered a fungible public good?), unlocked bikes (in high traffic business areas), women's underwear (off of outdoor drying racks).

[dopidopHN2]

Flock is not the police. Their main customer is Home Depot. Their second one is Lowe's.

Then come the big police department.

Allowing a private company to profit of holding information about me is innerving to me.

I would feel better if it was 100% run by the police. ( better, not good )

[abalashov]

And it's not an accident that Flock cameras were implicated in many ICE raids at Home Depot and Lowe's, either.

[naturalmovement]

Was that because of the cameras, or because illegal day laborers have been known to congregate in home center parking lots for 30+ years.

[ethagnawl]

Then surely they're being used to bust the people hiring them, too ... Right?

[abalashov]

It was both, of course, but it's not an accident they were placed there at scale.

[nerdsniper]

I can’t remember the last place I visited which didn’t. Maybe Lake Atitlan pre-2020?

Still, a few some areas of Asia achieved this reputation back when cameras were still extremely rare.

[khuey]

Yes, there are cultural reasons crime is lower in East Asia too, but I haven't been to a major city there that doesn't have an extensive surveillance system.

[greenleafone7]

It is possible. What keeps japanese cities safe'er', is not the cameras though.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

It’s the culture. Every Japanese person is always aware that they are “a part of society.”

Even the Yakuza participate in society. When they have big disasters, the local mobsters are usually helping people out, before the authorities can get going.

[jchw]

A lot of the neighborhoods where Flock is being deployed aren't even bad by higher standards, so I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.

[naturalmovement]

East Asia built a uni-culture by being extremely racist against outsiders. I don't think you can get away with that anywhere else.

A friend of mine (white guy) married a Chinese woman and when they visited China they were subject to slurs and dirty looks in public.

There's a whole category of videos on social media of Japanese furiously angry at Westerners acting like fools on their subways. They're not happy about it.

[arjie]

I’m an Indian with a Taiwanese-American wife. I’ve never experienced even the mildest amount of racism in Taiwan. Everyone was kind and friendly to me. And Taiwan is very safe.

I’m not going to pretend that an anecdote fully captures a problem but considering I spent over a month there just living a normal life I imagine that if the problem were widespread I’d have many chances to experience it.

My elderly parents were there for two weeks too and they have nothing but positive things to say.

And finally, my wife’s cousin married a White man from Ireland and he has loved the place for the many years he’s lived there.

[infecto]

I don’t know if I would consider a month long vacation as evidence. Taiwan is pretty famous for have lower labor classes that they import from places like the Philippines and while people are friendly, they are still generally looked down upon. Not dissimilar to places like Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. So I think racism is a pretty loaded and broad word and people typically think about it in purely an American context, it’s more common around the world than people think in all kinds of shades.

Ultimately I do agree with the original thesis around monocultures.

[arjie]

Well, certainly my experience on the ground is far more meaningful than someone’s statements without evidence. Just googling around it seems that American policing is generally considered fairly racially discriminatory so performing racism on its own is not getting us less crime. Taiwan doesn’t seem to have that problem as extensively.

And I’m an Indian who grew up in and spent the majority of my life in India as did my parents. I’ve lived in a few countries for years and stayed in many for months. My frame of reference is unlikely to be the American context for racism.

[infecto]

I don’t think anyone is arguing that Taiwan or Japan are uniquely or universally racist. The point is that many highly cohesive societies have clear social hierarchies and stronger in-group preferences than Americans (or other groups) often recognize.

Taiwan’s treatment of many Southeast Asian migrant workers is a commonly discussed example. People can be welcoming to tourists and expatriates while still having structural biases toward certain groups. Those aren’t contradictory observations.

Likewise, we wouldn’t dismiss concerns about women’s safety in India simply because a visitor spent a month there and had a wonderful experience. An individual’s experience matters, but it doesn’t settle broader questions about how different groups experience a society.

My opinion comes from having spent a lot of time around Asia and more than a month of “tourism”.

[arjie]

> I don’t think anyone is arguing that Taiwan or Japan are uniquely or universally racist.

The original comment used this as the explanation for why there's low crime. Here's a reminder of the context we are conversing within.

> > > > East Asia built a uni-culture by being extremely racist against outsiders. I don't think you can get away with that anywhere else.

I think "extreme racism to outsiders" is detectable within a month. I am as outsider as they come - being a brown-skinned South Asian Indian[0]. And the other statement I'm replying to there is

> > > > A friend of mine (white guy) married a Chinese woman and when they visited China they were subject to slurs and dirty looks in public.

My wife's cousin is married to a White Irish man who has lived there over a decade. This is not his experience anywhere in Taiwan, in particular, as opposed to the GP's China experience.

I think his decades of living there prior to and then after marrying my wife's cousin probably provide some experience. There's a lot of Planet of Hats thinking from Westerners visiting Asia. But different countries there are clearly different, just like France and Switzerland are different.

And in the end, if racism is not unique then it cannot explain difference in crime outcomes. To quote the great sage pj evans: "Cars have windows and can move. Houses have windows and can't move. So it's not the windows that make the car go. It's something else entirely."

And as a little epilogue, we may consider other countries with a foreign-born populace similar to Taiwan's: Poland, Argentina, Uruguay, and South Africa. None of them match Taiwan's broad lack of crime while having a similar degree of foreign-born people.

Which brings us again to whether the windows make the car go or not.

0: website in profile, feel free to take a look at my face

[kevin_thibedeau]

PRC has a demographic issue with missing women that engenders resentment of the foreign devils.

[kevmo314]

The pot calling the kettle black…

[infecto]

What are you even trying to say? Why does everything devolve into whataboutism?

[mcmcmc]

Poverty and lack of economic opportunity are the biggest drivers of street-level crime. Good thing we have all these AI layoffs.

[fc417fc802]

A choice that has tradeoffs. Assuming we're talking about the sorts of places that lean heavily into surveillance I don't want to live there and their views on the role of the government is one of the reasons.

[dw_arthur]

You're correct that it is a choice. Flock would barely move the needle on stopping crimes caused by the mentally ill and drug addicted.

[shiandow]

By low level crime you mean unlawful surveillance?

[llm_nerd]

You're getting loads of replies that seem to knee-jerk defend US cities purely to oppose Flock. And let's be real and admit that adding more cameras does little to improve this. My whole neighbourhood has a panopticon of surveillance cameras on every property, yet there have still been home burglaries and several cars stolen.

Many Asian cities are safer -- and they undisputedly are -- for cultural reasons. You can't create culture through surveillance.

[edoceo]

How much of that is addressed by a strong social-safety net? How are addicts and homeless people handled? How about general poverty (a known driver of crime)?

[nosioptar]

My small city was safer before flock.

Before, if the cops asked for witnesses to come forward, they always got someone because they had a good reputation and were trusted.

A few years of the people saying no to flock and the cops and city hall ignoring us has destroyed that trust.

Now, when the cops ask for help, they get told to go flock themselves.

I'd suggest a better way is to reform policing. They need to start working for all the people, not just the Epstein class.

[cr125rider]

That sounds pretty racist though…

Is the anti-prosecution narrative

[kevin_thibedeau]

> much safer

They have severe consequences for criminal behavior and no subculture that elevates criminality.

[FireBeyond]

> and no subculture that elevates criminality

And which subculture, specifically, would you be referring to here?

[goatlover]

What is the trade off though and are Americans willing to make it? What sort of social conditions lead to more low level crime? This sort of complaint is nothing new btw.

[righthand]

US cities are plenty safe. The fact that you think otherwise is propaganda you’ve been successfully served. I live in Nyc and visit other cities often.

[steelbrain]

You must live in a different New York City than the one I visited. I had the safety calibration of Tallinn, Estonia and Dubai, UAE.

The subway was extremely hostile. People were regularly drugged out of their mind. I saw one guy try to drink a Coca Cola upside down and spilled it all in the bus. Another crazy chased my limited mobility Estonian friend who wanted to visit nyc alongside me when she went alone for groceries.

Could it be that your frame of reference is broken and/or you’re numb to it?

[beau_g]

You saw someone try to drink a soda upside down and spill it? We are going to need more than a Flock cam to stop that heinous act, perhaps a Flock robot arm that could grab the criminals arm and turn it right side up, or just restrain them while the authorities are on the way.

[filoleg]

I saw a tall man on L train stomping aggressively through the car and yelling bloody murder that he is gonna "stab the next mf I see", while attempting to swing punches at random people. The whole train ended up getting evacuated, and the train line got delayed. That was last winter. Between then and now, I saw people threatening others on the subway multiple times.

The most recent incident was a few weeks ago on Q train, where a seated man was screaming at the woman across from him (who was trying to do her best to ignore him), how he was gonna kill her and "the rest of her people" (whatever that means).

But please tell me how stuff like this never happens.

And I am not even a subway hater overall, I take it daily, and it is my preferred method of transportation. And no, I am not taking subway into deep and shady parts of bronx or brooklyn, as heavy majority of my rides are contained between Dekalb/Jay St Metrotech (aka dt brooklyn) and midtown.

It just sounds like crazy talk to me, when someone claims that the safety cams in subway cars are not, at least, somewhat helpful. At least newer A/C train cars have those cams now, and, I hope, it will lead to prosecution of serial subway harassers.

[wat10000]

You’re describing a spilled soda as a safety issue. The other person isn’t the one with a broken frame of reference.

[righthand]

These are all lies. Small towns have notiriously higher crime rates than Nyc. We should send the National Guard to your small town and place cameras every where. I dont feel safe in your small town. I moved away from middle America that’s swamped in meth, high murder rate, and racism. Sorry someone spilled a coca-cola though. Your pearls must be powder in your hands by now.

[tr45872267]

This is false. Urban areas have the highest rate of crime compared to rural and suburban. For example look at the years 2020 and 2021 from this report:[0]

Table 8

Rate of victimization, by type of crime and location of residence, 2020 and 2021

Location of residence

Total violent crime Violent crime excluding simple assault Total property crime

2020 2021* 2020 2021* 2020 2021*

Urban 19.0 † 24.5 7.7 9.7 158.9 157.5

Suburban 16.8 16.5 5.6 5.2 90.5 86.8

Rural 13.4 11.1 4.5 4.4 65.6 57.7

You can see clearly that urban has the highest rate of crime, and this has been true for decades.[1]

Also, many crimes are not recorded at all in NYC, which is why many stores have locked down all their items with a key that requires permission from a staff member to access. I haven't seen this in the small towms I've been to.

[0] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv21.pdf

[1] https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...

[Waterluvian]

There’s possibly a fantasy mindset at play where people need a certain identity to be true. As we’ve witnessed on a national scale, humans have great capacity for fantastical thinking to support what a friend of mine calls their “binkie narrative.”

[arjie]

His small town? Tallinn is comparatively tiny to NYC admittedly but Dubai is a fairly large and urban city. I think that it doesn’t quite fit the appellation.

[billfor]

I live in NYC and I don't think it is safe, so there's one person that disagrees with you. Part of the problem in NYC is when you commit a low-level crime the social-justice warriors let the person back out on the street without charging them. This is why when somebody kills somebody in NYC you often hear that the person had been arrested for various things twelve times earlier. Just covering up the "un-safeness" by saying "it's safe" or citing crime stats doesn't change what people can see with their own eyes.

[goatlover]

Are you sure these people weren't making plea deals or having their cases dismissed because prosecutors can't try every single low level criminal case? I'm not sure where "social-justice warriors" comes in to play. It's the legal system making choices about what crimes are worth prosecuting.

[righthand]

This is a bail reform propaganda. If you feel unsafe because we dont put deoderant thieves in Rikers then move.

[naturalmovement]

Can't wait for all the pharmacies in your neighborhood to close because you think punishing deodorant thieves is wrong.

[kennywinker]

In your conception, the only reason any drug store is able to stay in business is because deodorant thieves are getting hard time?

If enough people are stealing deodorant to put them out of business, I think there are some big social problems that jail time isn’t going to fix.

Frankly, i’d 100% of the time rather bare the cost of shoplifters thru slightly higher prices than thru paying ~$100,000 year each incarcerating anyone who shoplifts.

There are “low level” crimes that are predictable signs of violent crime. E.g. intimate partner violence. I’d love to see those taken more seriously, even if it’s just for the downstream effects.

[Waterluvian]

It’s hard to distil to a single comment but I think it might be a poor example given the NYPD takes about double the budget per capita to be less safe than Toronto.

I think the only objective conclusion we can come to in a comments section is that going by “I visited there” vibes isn’t going to be useful.

[righthand]

What about the high murder rate and meth problems of middle America, lets talk about that more instead of the “oh no homeless people” rhetoric all the time.

[naturalmovement]

This type of "there is no problem and any evidence is propaganda" denial is why social disorder like rampant petty theft, open air drug use, and people shitting in the streets is destroying these cities.

[righthand]

What about the meth heads shitting in the streets of the small town? Rampant assault and murder rates. What about all the drinking and driving killing people in America. No, no, it’s Nyc that’s scary.

[naturalmovement]

They have laws against those people.

When meth heads get arrested, there isn't an army of losers protesting the sheriff the next day claiming it's cruel and unusual punishment and demanding the city give them a free house for them to do meth in.

Enjoy your Alcatraz pharmacies while they're still open.

[sarchertech]

NYC is safer than many cities for sure.

But there are approximately zero meth heads shitting in the streets in small towns in the US.

I have never once seen a person shitting in the streets in a small town. I saw it within 24 hours of visiting Portland. I’ve never seen that in NYC either to be clear.

[timciep]

Yes, crime in small towns is bad too. Do we agree?

[derektank]

NYC is quite safe compared to most US cities. It is still more dangerous than most major cities in the developed world.

[nailer]

Really? I lived in Greenwich village until last year and I’d have people threaten to kill me for politely declining to give them change. I live in Park Slope now and there’s violent people on the F line all the time. Maybe wealthy neighbourhoods are super dangerous or maybe you’re just not noticing.

[thisisnotauser]

I've lived in major US cities my entire life and have never been a victim of crime. Do you have any facts to back up this seemingly outrageous claim?

[doctorpangloss]

> If you look at cities in east Asia, they're... much safer.

ah yes, the famously dependable statistics of east Asia, with their famously free press and citizen auditing communities, and the famously dependable impressions of tourists and expatriates...

[monkaiju]

What do you mean we don't? Our cities seem quite safe...