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It's beautiful irony that the most capitalist place on earth has Boudin as DA. I don't have anything against him for hs background or the fact that he is proud of it. None of that precludes him from doing a good job. In fact it could indeed be beneficial because he has awareness of issues from a perspective few do. That said the proof is in the pudding and it is unconscionable that the city that is the engine room for creating new wealth suffers from the problems described so often here. What's going on? It makes no sense from the outside. It just looks like a social version of asset stripping.

The "special brand of lawlessness" includes having hit an all-time-low robbery rate in 2019, the latest data available.

Here in Seattle, people just stop reporting when they know nothing will happen.

Just to add some colour to this:

    This. I moved outside of Portland a few months ago
    after three serious incidents on my property involving
    violent vagrants. In all three cases the police took
    over an hour to show up and did absolutely nothing.

    I had a man trying to break in to my backdoor. When
    I confronted him and demanded that he leave, he began
    swinging punches and pulled out a knife. I managed to
    restrain him and the 13 year old girl next door called
    911 (in hysterics). After keeping this guy pinned
    for 30 mins while waiting for the cops, I gave up and
    released him. He then attempted to assault me again. So
    I pinned him for another 15 mins, the neighbors called
    911 again. Still no cops. So I let him go and kept
    kicking the guy in the ass (literally) until he left
    my property.

    The cops show up about 75 minutes after the first
    call and said "Our hands are tied. We can't do
    anything." They didn't even bother to look for the
    guy. They just wanted to leave.

    I've seen this happen first hand in developing
    countries. You know what happens when law enforcement
    doesn't do its job? Violence escalates due to rise of
    vigilantism - as communities are left with no choice
    other than to employ street justice.

    After three incidents (none as bad as the first) I found
    myself concluding "The next time one of these guys tries
    to break into my property or threaten my family I am
    simply going to kick the shit out of them... There is
    no point calling the police."

    I am a peaceful person that has never even been
    in a fight. That's when I knew it was time to leave
    Portland. Who wants to live like this? I don't want to
    assault anyone, but I also want to live in peace and
    feel assured my family is safe.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/krk5la/how_are_yo...

Next time, say there is a dead body and you heard gun fire. In the UK you'd get every cop for miles and the TV news.</s>

This is the way to get the cops to come in New Zealand too.

Otherwise, it’s the old “can’t do anything until you’ve been assaulted” routine, and hours of waiting.

But mention you heard gunshots and the Armed Offender Squad boys roll around in no time.

Don't be surprised if it backfires and puts you in legal hot water over making false statements to police.

How would that situation be improved if cops were required to spend time and energy pursuing cases where a kid stole a packet of gum from a convenience store?

The fact that cops aren’t responding to cases of violence has nothing to do with the shoplifting laws passed in SF, and frankly, that law should explicitly open up more resources for cops to be able to investigate such violent behavior.

What exactly in Portland prevents them from acting on violent vagrants. Depending on the timeline, this likely has more to do with the fact that police unions across the country deployed a deliberate don’t do police work policy because people decided to protest against the minority of police that were killing in percent civilians merely because of their skin color of the zip code they were arrested in.

Not pursuing "small" - quoted because up to $950 is rather big chewing gum really - crimes creates wrong incentives, and it skews general culture of (dis)respect to law, and property. Essentially normalizing bad behavior will inevitably affect bigger crimes happening. Taking into account that it especially influences youth (breaking rules is cool enough when you're teenager, if you can shoplift without punishment it starts to look like an invitation) we are witnessing a crime problem growing for a at least a generation ahead.

EDIT: "chewing gun" to "chewing gum". Guns are usually not chewy for certain.

San Francisco high in property crime but low in arrests:

"San Francisco has by far the highest property crime rate in California, with more than twice the number of reported thefts per capita than Los Angeles or Santa Clara counties, according to a new report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

And when it comes to arrests, San Francisco is 50th out of the state’s 58 counties."

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/SF-ra...

Did I say arrests?

Where is your data from if not arrests?

FBI UCR is based on reports, not arrests.

It’s always a bit problematic to compare SF County to other counties like LA. SF City and County are the same geographical area where, Los Angles City and Los Angeles county are not. LA county includes 60+ suburbs. Santa Clara county has San Jose metro but also 14 suburbs.

Put it this way LA county is 4000 square miles, Santa Clara is 1300. San Francisco is 47. I bet if you target the most urban areas of those counties the numbers get a lot closer.

>who convicted of felony murder for killing two policemen

That seems improbable. Why would anyone be charged with felony murder if they killed someone? It seems like a contradiction in terms.

Edit: to be clear, it's easy to look up that yes, his parents were convicted of felony murder, and no, they didn't kill the police officers. That's how felony murder works, so I wonder if the comment above is preaching to people who think "felony" is an intensifier for "murder" or whether it's an honest mistake.