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Comment by bosswipe | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people blame SF's prosecutor but that makes no sense, this is a policing problem. The police is lazy and won't do their job. The police union sees their role as deflecting blame while working as little as possible and collecting their six figure salaries. The reason to defund the police is because they're awful at their jobs, throwing more money after bad won't help.

I know I'll be downvoted here because people already have their police-good progressives-bad narrative all set. But if you actually looked into SFPD's clearance rate you would know they're incompetent.

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Honest question, why would police arrest people that won't get prosecuted as a matter of fact. It's effectively not a crime if the AG officially states that he won't prosecute an entire category of crimes. But even if just arrests (followed by immediate release) alone were enough of a disincentive for petty criminals, it would be the police arresting people for the sake of arresting people, for what is effectively not a crime.

The role of the police is not to "punish" in a judicial sense so it's disingenuous to blame the police for not doing the job of the AG. & it's a weird way to deflect the responsability from the population who voted exactly to not allow that "job" to be done.

Police should do their job because we pay them to do it. If they're involved in some kind of work slow down because they don't agree with the prosecutors policies then they're playing a dangerous game with public safety and they should be fired.

My point is that it isn't their job to create laws or decide what is or isn't legal. This is like saying prosecutors should just do their job, and get bad people into prison no matter what pesky judges decide. It's not a slowdown or a conflict, it's the prosecution saying those crimes are defacto legal now. It's very dishonest to pretend it's just "work slowdown".

And btw I probably... Dislike the police more than most, a lot more even. But I also don't like prosecutors. I also think that you have to live with the consequences of whatever policy you want. So you can't basically vote for situations like these to be "legalized" to then scapegoat the police. It's fine to think some property crimes shouldn't be punished, but you have to accept that it leads to stuff like this. Now if that's a good trade-off for SF residents then I honestly don't see the problem.

I would agree with this seeing public statements by LASD (Villeneueva) here in LA and his colleagues in Riverside and Orange Counties, as well as counterparts in police unions, and also unofficial chatter on twitter and elsewhere. It's not so much "progressive policies: lax on crime" vs. a reform prosecutor is in town, and I suspect there is deliberate pullback by the police unions, to let crime increase and get them voted out and replaced by a more cop-friendly prosecutor.

Factor in a not insignificant dose of squeamishness among police rank and file due to the pandemic (not unreasonable since first responders are at a higher risk of exposure) and policing isn't really optimal at the moment; at a time when the current economics foster desperation.

yeah, not seeing how a $950 threshold for felony theft is causing a problem for the theft of $6000 of photography equipment, and I think that sounds like a pretty common limit for most areas.

I think there is a definite element of the cops slow-walking enforcement to make a point and get a DA who they perceive as "having their back".

Actually, no, the problem isn't so much with the police as with the district attorney's office. The police can arrest these people, but it's entirely pointless when the DA won't prosecute them and they're back on the street in 24h with no penalty for their crimes whatsoever. I can't blame the police for not even bothering to arrest people they know will be let go immediately.

How is this a remotely justifiable idea? Police are paid to their job, if they're not doing it because of political disagreements that is unacceptable. We the voters determine the policy not them.

Policing problem? SF police is explicitly forbidden from arresting anyone for most misdemeanors. Criminals just get a citation, a court date, and are set on their way.

Has defunding happened in SF already since the protests? If there has not been a significant defunding, then this is the police failing at the one thing they were hired to do. Why is no one else in the comments section here asking why the police are not responsible for cleaning up this mess but instead it is all the fault of "progressive politicians?"

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