5 ms·

The problem is the differences... IE: Soft on crime policies in large cities. I seriously doubt a lot of these larger cities that are in the "doom loop" will

The problem is the differences... IE: Soft on crime policies in large cities. I seriously doubt a lot of these larger cities that are in the "doom loop" will have the same results with the current differences between 20-30 years ago and today with simply turning buildings into apartments. Just look at New York where businesses are closing all over because of rampant theft. They aren't closing because people aren't there. They care closing because they can't afford to have half their wares walk out the door because New York is refusing to charge criminals because of "justice". The world we live in is vastly different than it was and the doom loops aren't just because of remote workers.

causality0 2y ago
I would be interested in an analysis of how refusals to prosecute are or are not affecting statistics. If you stop prosecuting a certain crime, does it appear like that crime is happening less on paper?
- pstrateman 2y ago
  Yes because the police stop arresting people for it. If you don't prosecute, it effectively stops being illegal.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Most of the time. Certain crimes (eg public intoxication) often have an arrest followed by letting the person go when they’ve sobered up, so no official prosecution but not no arrest.
    - pstrateman 2y ago
      Public intoxication would seem to be the only example of that though. Can you think of any other?
      - selimthegrim 2y ago
        Littering, poaching
      - wolverine876 2y ago
        Protestors (whatever those charges are). Disobeying a police officer. Lots of things. The DA's resources are limited (unless all the Republican critics want to pay more taxes!). Arrest is enough of a deterrent for minor crimes.
        watwut 2y ago
        Yeah, but protestors are frequently arrested and charged with completely made up charges. It is just a tactic how to discouraged protests. The cops doing arrests know about it, prosecutors know about it, defense layers knows about it and protesters know about it. It has nothing to do with deterring crimes or crime rates, it is just politics.
      - outop 2y ago
        Loitering, prostitution, vagrancy.
  - beepbooptheory 2y ago
    If true, maybe. But this very point makes this whole line of argumentation unfalsifiable and in that a little limp...
    - lmm 2y ago
      In the UK crime statistics are collected from a survey of people's experiences of crime that's completely independent from police/arrest records. Does the US not do this?
    - pstrateman 2y ago
      Of course it's falsifiable, start prosecuting again and see if the arrest rate goes up.
      - beepbooptheory 2y ago
        But the point is that would not tell us anything about the relative frequency of the crime when it's not prosecuted! You are saying, effectively, that we know that smoke always comes from fire simply because when you light a fire, you see smoke. You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted. That makes a lot of bad assumptions about the nature of crime itself that I don't think a single criminologist would follow you on.
        wernercd 2y ago
        > You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted. Why couldn't you? Defund the police = less prosecutions, less policing = more criminals... Why wouldn't someone argue easily proven points that more police = more safety (Yes, some corruption does exist but it's not like that corruption goes away when the police do.) https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when-you-add-more-police-to-a-city-what-happens https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when... "...from that perspective, investing in more police officers to save lives provides a pretty good bang for the buck. Adding more police, they find, also reduces other serious crimes, like robbery, rape, and aggravated assault."
  - wolverine876 2y ago
    Do you have evidence of that?
    - zarathustreal 2y ago
      ..my friend, what world do you live in where civilians are gathering their own evidence, of any kind, much less evidence related to police behaviors?
      - wolverine876 2y ago
        You don't need to gather your own. Researchers and journalists do it, and you can find them pretty easily ...
- x0x0 2y ago
  Lots of crime doesn't get reported. The police where I live are transparently useless. Someone tried to steal my car at bart. Even my auto insurance didn't bother asking for a police report while paying out $3k for a repair to the door. Everyone involved understands it's an utter waste of time and not a thing will happen. For at least n=1, no crime happened.
  - causality0 2y ago
    That's very interesting. It would explain why the "high level" takes such as papers and articles keep saying crime is plummeting but all the anecdotal accounts are "crime is getting worse and worse and nobody does anything about it".
    - wolverine876 2y ago
      But that's been true for generations. It wouldn't explain some perceived surge now. What does explain it is what explains many other things that don't match facts, about the economy, vaccines, climate change, election legitimacy, Obama's birthplace, etc. Whatever the conservative message machine focuses on, generally a large portion of the population believes.
    - x0x0 2y ago
      Well, there's also hard data like this: https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/san_franciscans_spend_more_get_less_from_their_police_dept.pdf https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/san_franciscans_... Take a look at the chart on page 2.
  - nathan_douglas 2y ago
    Twenty years ago, in a small college town, my car was broken into and the stereo stolen. I called the police out and the cop said, “okay, what do you want me to do about it?” Well, I don’t know. What should be done about this? I guess I thought my report might be tabulated, that perhaps a pawn shop or two might be called. My wife and I were living financial-aid-reimbursement-check to MGIB check to work-study check at the time. We got the one of the cheapest car stereos we could find, but it still hurt. We had just gotten it installed literally that day, and the next morning it was gone. I’m sorry to have wasted your time, officer. There’s probably a kid with a one-hitter that you could arrest on your way back to the station.
- talldatethrow 2y ago
  I was at a hardware store when someone walked out with a compressor. I said to the clerk "that's a 99-2003 GMC Sierra in case you want to tell them when you call it in" And he replied "oh we don't even call the police.. they won't do anything" I was so angry I called corporate on the way home. Corporate told me "oh yes that's right, that's our policy. We have insurance for that!" I said "that's great you have insurance, but I'd like my police department and newspaper to know my town is going to hell..."
malfist 2y ago
Ah yes, New York, home of "stop and frisk" and it's other soft on crime policies.
- gottorf 2y ago
  NYPD hasn't been stopping and frisking in a while.
- wernercd 2y ago
  "stop and frisk" 1990 called and wants its talking point back. S&F has been "unconstitutional" for over a decade - and that's not counting Defund The Police shenannery, open border policies and stuff like "bail reform". IE: Illegal immigrants attacking police and getting released without bail.
hughesjj 2y ago
Citation needed on all of that. It's not just retail closing up in NYC -- the rent is ludicrous, and no one wants to start renting at a lowe rate lest their appraisal goes down and their mortgage lender/city coffers start putting the pressure on the landlord
- sifttio 2y ago
  Corporate real estate is a different beast. Residential real estate and corporate real estate do not mirror each other in the market. One can be in high demand while the other has excess supply. Residential landlords are also much different than dealing with corp real estate owners. The terms, length of lease, laws and many other factors are completely different.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Perhaps we need to encourage (via taxes?) convertible buildings that can either be corporate or residential with relative ease, similar to how in smaller towns you often have dentists and lawyers operating out of obviously converted houses.
    - choilive 2y ago
      This is primarily a building code issue for residential vs commercial construction. Office generally try to maximize square footage, this tends to result in floor plans that are very awkward to adopt into residential use, primarily because the building code virtually everywhere has some sort of "natural light"/window requirement. This means that purpose built residential high rises tend to be "skinnier" to have more windows per sq. ft of floor space. Not to mention the very expensive changes (hvac, plumbing, etc.) required to support residential use. If the building code was changed so that the requirements for office and residential use buildings were closer then it would make future buildings more easily convertible between those use cases. It does not solve the problem of the existing buildings however..
  - hughesjj 2y ago
    I don't get how any of that is relevant when my claim is that the corporate rental rates is also too high and the financing for rentals shares the same concerns w.r.t rentable price regardless if it's residential or corporate landlords
wolverine876 2y ago
Crime is historically low in many cities, including NYC. Visit and you'll see what I mean.
- wernercd 2y ago
  Crime is historically low... as crimes like theft are decriminalized. It's easy to say there's less crime when you make stuff not a crime. For reference: all the stores closing because of all of the theft not being prosecuted or that's no longer enforced. IE: California where theft of under $1000 is no longer enforced.
  - wolverine876 2y ago
    I'm talking about objective facts. You can make up reasons, but so can anyone about anything - they don't mean anything without a factual basis. Where in NY are these stores closing?
    - chiefalchemist 2y ago
      A Walgreens or CVS closed near my GF's flat in NYC. She's within 10 blocks of Central Park. The chain said it was due to too much shrinkage. It's been discussed on WNYC as well, tho those experts claimed most shrinkage is employee related. I live closer to PHL and hear similar claims / rumours. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/it-s-started-shoplifting-in-nyc-is-up-60-stores-are-shutting-down-and-permanently-leaving/ss-BB1jGu11 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/it-s-started-shoplif...
      - gremlinunderway 2y ago
        Self-reporting on these reasons from the business itself is basically useless. No one's fact checking their claims nor do they provide evidence when making these kinds of social-narrative driven claims like "taxes are too high!" or "too much theft!". Businesses, including chains, fail all the time and the owners/managers have an inherent incentive to try and deflect any blame on environmental factors so they are looked at more favourably by corporate.
entangledqubit 2y ago
I believe that some retailer special interest group put out some numbers that did not support any real increase in shoplifting/shrinkage. Initially they made a claim otherwise but they ended up backpedaling. Oddly, the numbers around shrinkage from self-checkout seems to be persistent though.

causality0 2y ago

I would be interested in an analysis of how refusals to prosecute are or are not affecting statistics. If you stop prosecuting a certain crime, does it appear like that crime is happening less on paper?

pstrateman 2y ago
Yes because the police stop arresting people for it. If you don't prosecute, it effectively stops being illegal.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Most of the time. Certain crimes (eg public intoxication) often have an arrest followed by letting the person go when they’ve sobered up, so no official prosecution but not no arrest.
  - pstrateman 2y ago
    Public intoxication would seem to be the only example of that though. Can you think of any other?
    - selimthegrim 2y ago
      Littering, poaching
    - wolverine876 2y ago
      Protestors (whatever those charges are). Disobeying a police officer. Lots of things. The DA's resources are limited (unless all the Republican critics want to pay more taxes!). Arrest is enough of a deterrent for minor crimes.
      - watwut 2y ago
        Yeah, but protestors are frequently arrested and charged with completely made up charges. It is just a tactic how to discouraged protests. The cops doing arrests know about it, prosecutors know about it, defense layers knows about it and protesters know about it. It has nothing to do with deterring crimes or crime rates, it is just politics.
    - outop 2y ago
      Loitering, prostitution, vagrancy.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  If true, maybe. But this very point makes this whole line of argumentation unfalsifiable and in that a little limp...
  - lmm 2y ago
    In the UK crime statistics are collected from a survey of people's experiences of crime that's completely independent from police/arrest records. Does the US not do this?
  - pstrateman 2y ago
    Of course it's falsifiable, start prosecuting again and see if the arrest rate goes up.
    - beepbooptheory 2y ago
      But the point is that would not tell us anything about the relative frequency of the crime when it's not prosecuted! You are saying, effectively, that we know that smoke always comes from fire simply because when you light a fire, you see smoke. You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted. That makes a lot of bad assumptions about the nature of crime itself that I don't think a single criminologist would follow you on.
      - wernercd 2y ago
        > You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted. Why couldn't you? Defund the police = less prosecutions, less policing = more criminals... Why wouldn't someone argue easily proven points that more police = more safety (Yes, some corruption does exist but it's not like that corruption goes away when the police do.) https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when-you-add-more-police-to-a-city-what-happens https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when... "...from that perspective, investing in more police officers to save lives provides a pretty good bang for the buck. Adding more police, they find, also reduces other serious crimes, like robbery, rape, and aggravated assault."
- wolverine876 2y ago
  Do you have evidence of that?
  - zarathustreal 2y ago
    ..my friend, what world do you live in where civilians are gathering their own evidence, of any kind, much less evidence related to police behaviors?
    - wolverine876 2y ago
      You don't need to gather your own. Researchers and journalists do it, and you can find them pretty easily ...
x0x0 2y ago
Lots of crime doesn't get reported. The police where I live are transparently useless. Someone tried to steal my car at bart. Even my auto insurance didn't bother asking for a police report while paying out $3k for a repair to the door. Everyone involved understands it's an utter waste of time and not a thing will happen. For at least n=1, no crime happened.
- causality0 2y ago
  That's very interesting. It would explain why the "high level" takes such as papers and articles keep saying crime is plummeting but all the anecdotal accounts are "crime is getting worse and worse and nobody does anything about it".
  - wolverine876 2y ago
    But that's been true for generations. It wouldn't explain some perceived surge now. What does explain it is what explains many other things that don't match facts, about the economy, vaccines, climate change, election legitimacy, Obama's birthplace, etc. Whatever the conservative message machine focuses on, generally a large portion of the population believes.
  - x0x0 2y ago
    Well, there's also hard data like this: https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/san_franciscans_spend_more_get_less_from_their_police_dept.pdf https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/san_franciscans_... Take a look at the chart on page 2.
- nathan_douglas 2y ago
  Twenty years ago, in a small college town, my car was broken into and the stereo stolen. I called the police out and the cop said, “okay, what do you want me to do about it?” Well, I don’t know. What should be done about this? I guess I thought my report might be tabulated, that perhaps a pawn shop or two might be called. My wife and I were living financial-aid-reimbursement-check to MGIB check to work-study check at the time. We got the one of the cheapest car stereos we could find, but it still hurt. We had just gotten it installed literally that day, and the next morning it was gone. I’m sorry to have wasted your time, officer. There’s probably a kid with a one-hitter that you could arrest on your way back to the station.
talldatethrow 2y ago
I was at a hardware store when someone walked out with a compressor. I said to the clerk "that's a 99-2003 GMC Sierra in case you want to tell them when you call it in" And he replied "oh we don't even call the police.. they won't do anything" I was so angry I called corporate on the way home. Corporate told me "oh yes that's right, that's our policy. We have insurance for that!" I said "that's great you have insurance, but I'd like my police department and newspaper to know my town is going to hell..."

malfist 2y ago

Ah yes, New York, home of "stop and frisk" and it's other soft on crime policies.

gottorf 2y ago
NYPD hasn't been stopping and frisking in a while.
wernercd 2y ago
"stop and frisk" 1990 called and wants its talking point back. S&F has been "unconstitutional" for over a decade - and that's not counting Defund The Police shenannery, open border policies and stuff like "bail reform". IE: Illegal immigrants attacking police and getting released without bail.

hughesjj 2y ago

Citation needed on all of that. It's not just retail closing up in NYC -- the rent is ludicrous, and no one wants to start renting at a lowe rate lest their appraisal goes down and their mortgage lender/city coffers start putting the pressure on the landlord

sifttio 2y ago
Corporate real estate is a different beast. Residential real estate and corporate real estate do not mirror each other in the market. One can be in high demand while the other has excess supply. Residential landlords are also much different than dealing with corp real estate owners. The terms, length of lease, laws and many other factors are completely different.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Perhaps we need to encourage (via taxes?) convertible buildings that can either be corporate or residential with relative ease, similar to how in smaller towns you often have dentists and lawyers operating out of obviously converted houses.
  - choilive 2y ago
    This is primarily a building code issue for residential vs commercial construction. Office generally try to maximize square footage, this tends to result in floor plans that are very awkward to adopt into residential use, primarily because the building code virtually everywhere has some sort of "natural light"/window requirement. This means that purpose built residential high rises tend to be "skinnier" to have more windows per sq. ft of floor space. Not to mention the very expensive changes (hvac, plumbing, etc.) required to support residential use. If the building code was changed so that the requirements for office and residential use buildings were closer then it would make future buildings more easily convertible between those use cases. It does not solve the problem of the existing buildings however..
- hughesjj 2y ago
  I don't get how any of that is relevant when my claim is that the corporate rental rates is also too high and the financing for rentals shares the same concerns w.r.t rentable price regardless if it's residential or corporate landlords

wolverine876 2y ago

Crime is historically low in many cities, including NYC. Visit and you'll see what I mean.

wernercd 2y ago
Crime is historically low... as crimes like theft are decriminalized. It's easy to say there's less crime when you make stuff not a crime. For reference: all the stores closing because of all of the theft not being prosecuted or that's no longer enforced. IE: California where theft of under $1000 is no longer enforced.
- wolverine876 2y ago
  I'm talking about objective facts. You can make up reasons, but so can anyone about anything - they don't mean anything without a factual basis. Where in NY are these stores closing?
  - chiefalchemist 2y ago
    A Walgreens or CVS closed near my GF's flat in NYC. She's within 10 blocks of Central Park. The chain said it was due to too much shrinkage. It's been discussed on WNYC as well, tho those experts claimed most shrinkage is employee related. I live closer to PHL and hear similar claims / rumours. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/it-s-started-shoplifting-in-nyc-is-up-60-stores-are-shutting-down-and-permanently-leaving/ss-BB1jGu11 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/it-s-started-shoplif...
    - gremlinunderway 2y ago
      Self-reporting on these reasons from the business itself is basically useless. No one's fact checking their claims nor do they provide evidence when making these kinds of social-narrative driven claims like "taxes are too high!" or "too much theft!". Businesses, including chains, fail all the time and the owners/managers have an inherent incentive to try and deflect any blame on environmental factors so they are looked at more favourably by corporate.

entangledqubit 2y ago

I believe that some retailer special interest group put out some numbers that did not support any real increase in shoplifting/shrinkage. Initially they made a claim otherwise but they ended up backpedaling. Oddly, the numbers around shrinkage from self-checkout seems to be persistent though.