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Comment by rufus_foreman | Hacker News Reader

When they find the murderer who killed Bob Lee, it is a good bet that it will not be the first crime they've committed, nor the first crime for which they were arrested.

Almost all crime in San Francisco is committed by repeat criminals. You add beat cops to arrest those criminals, and you elect a DA who will prosecute those criminals when they are arrested, and you elect legislators who make sure there are laws that allow convicted criminals, especially repeat offenders, to be sentenced to long prison sentences.

That process is called "fixing the underlying issues in society".

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California already has overflowing prisons. It's not like people aren't being arrested and put in jail.

Not saying that SFs approach to policing hasn't had an impact, but there are plenty of other cities with bigger or equivalent populations, similar per capita policing, and lower come rate.

It seems willfully ignorant to presume that there aren't other factors that have led to an increase in crime

How would you compare the law enforcement south of the border to California? Do you think Mexico throws too many people in prison in Baja California or not enough? Do you think California is more or less safe than Baja California?

That's a pretty weird comparison. SF is in Northern California, which is basically another state away by distance. Baja California is a 27k square mile piece of land with a widely distributed population. San Francisco is a densely populated city, and California is both huge and not what we're discussing.

I.e. I wouldn't compare SF to a rural part of California and use that as a metric for how good / bad SF's law enforcement policies are. I would compare it to other large, metropolitan cities throughout the US and the world.

Choosing such and out-of-left-field comparison makes it seem like you have a specific agenda that you'd like to make a point about.

We have a different view of what the underlying issues in society are if you think the solution is just more cops and longer prison sentences.

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