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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34134 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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What are some good ideas, as an individual, for decreasing street crime in highly Democratic-leaning cities, other than just moving away? Recently I have been getting more and more fed up with the failure of my local government to provide basic safety - which is, after all, reasonably speaking the most important purpose of government. I want to apologize to @2rafa for having yelled at her about this kind of stuff a year or two back. Perhaps she was simply more aware of the problem than I was at the time. At this point I am reaching near Bukele levels of willingness to crack down hard on the problem.

I am a techie, I do software. I've recently thought that well, given my concerns, maybe I should go work in law enforcement. I think that at this point I am probably too old to become a cop, but I could probably provide useful services in other ways. What stops me is that I quite simply disagree with the laws against recreational drugs on a very fundamental level. I am sure that I am not the only one. I cannot in good conscience side with the cops who enforce such fundamentally illiberal laws. On the other hand, if one has to choose the lesser of two evils, then I do, despite all my disagreements with the justice system, see the cops as being a lesser evil than street criminals, even despite the fact that they enforce the anti-drug laws that I view as fundamentally wrong. This is not something that should be seen as me praising cops, it is just that street criminals are such scum that even cops are vastly better.

My problem with the drug war is not just rooted in my libertarian-esque attitudes about the proper bounds of government. It is also rooted in me seeing that the war on drugs turns the banned drugs into a highly valuable and easily produced form of underground currency and thus directly leads to the growth of drug gangs and cartels that are, clearly, responsible for a good share of the street crime that I am seeking to curb.

Other than complaining on social media, which raises awareness but does not necessarily accomplish that much, what can one do in cities which are failing to provide basic safety? What are some actionable ideas, things that might actually help, whether it is some sort of viable plan for forming a vigilante militia or a plan for influencing local elections? I am open to suggestions. I know that statistics say that street crime is down a lot from the 1980s and early 90s, but that is small comfort for me because I have little memory of those years. What I know is that I subjectively feel that the level of street crime now is too high compared to what I would wish it to be, and I would like to do something about it. If moving away from the failed cities is the only reasonable course of action, fair enough. But is it, or can something actually be done to fight back against the problem?

By the way, given that this is The Motte, I know that people will likely read a racial angle into the issue. Which is fair, given the crime statistics that most of us are aware of. But anecdotally speaking, out of the five or so times that I have been attacked by street criminals of various sorts over the course of my life, four of the five times were a case of white men doing the attacking. So while I totally understand that statistically speaking, there is a racial discrepancy in this sort of thing, at the same time it is clear to me that we do not just have a problem with non-white people. We also have a pretty significant issue with street scum whites who act in these kinds of ways. There is a general problem with territorial idiots, drug dealer gangsters, violent insane homeless, etc...

My problem with the drug war is not just rooted in my libertarian-esque attitudes about the proper bounds of government. It is also rooted in me seeing that the war on drugs turns the banned drugs into a highly valuable and easily produced form of underground currency and thus directly leads to the growth of drug gangs and cartels that are, clearly, responsible for a good share of the street crime that I am seeking to curb.

it's not 2005 anymore. we've scaled back waging of the drug war considerably and the problem has worsened. clearly, policing drug use was doing something useful

imagine it's your child living in a tent in the park. they refuse to speak to you because you have told them they need help for their fentanyl addiction. they've overdosed already and the police have administered narcan and left them with a card with a hotline number to call to get help. they refuse. they just want more fentanyl.

IMO, the most merciful thing you could do is arrest them and put them in jail for a few weeks so they can detox and remember they like things besides fentanyl

Would close relatives kidnapping a fentanyl addict off the street and forcing him to get clean be the sort of thing that gets prosecuted in a major city? I don't really know.

insert usual cynicism here that this would get you put in prison in SF for longer than any crime a fentanyl junkie can commit short of murder

Personally in this era of fentanyl and other absurdities I'd much rather live in a society with zero tolerance for drugs (and thereby mitigate junkie random encounters substantially) than take on the externalities of recreational drug use. I'm living in an affluent Western society presently, and the vast majority of my perceived threat from my fellow citizens is from drug users.

Why, why, why is anyone still talking like 'drugs' is a useful, let alone coherent, category? You don't mean zero tolerance for drugs. You mean zero tolerance for a much smaller, much more specifically-defined subset. Why not just amend that subset?

This is an excellent and underappreciated point. Oregon legalized cannabis to basically no ill effect whatsoever (actually the worst outcome has been that credit card processors won't do business with pot shops, so the pot shops only deal in cash, so they get robbed a lot). Oregon legalized all drugs and it has been an absolute disaster because "all drugs" included meth and opiates.

Even within that, I don't think I've ever met anyone who wants coffee, tea, coca cola, aspirin, or cough syrup banned. And that's before we get to prescription drugs.

Actually, most people seem to be fine with most drugs being legal. Like you I've come to the conclusion that the problem is opiates and meth, and maybe to a smaller degree a couple others, but... really, it's opiates and meth that are the problems. And if there's a third member of that set it's alcohol, which I don't want banned either.

It seems like the recent uptick in crime has a large component of crime committed by homeless addicts, especially on the East coast. If you are naturally left-leaning, you might be interested in Michael Shellenberger's thoughts on this topic. This whole video is good, but I have queued the link up to the part where he discusses the central idea: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5nSBmftZ1qU&t=903

Shellenberger is very compassionate and a natural born leftist, but he understands the facts that (1) addicts living in the street are there because of an ongoing sequence of foolish decisions whose net effect is that they have lost control of themselves, and (2) the interventions necessary to get them back on their feet necessarily involve both carrots and sticks. He has some fairly concrete policy recommendations that he makes in the video. My sense is that he has so much conviction to actually solve the problem that he doesn't let himself be blinded by ideology, and his suggested approach combines the best aspects of the political left and right.

In any case, suppose I have an idea that I believe is better than the status quo. Then what? My philosophy on this has two parts. First, a soldier at war is not responsible for winning the war; he is responsible for doing his duty in the effort to win the war. Similarly, when it comes to public policy, I am not responsible for changing the world; I am responsible for (1) not being part of the problem, and f(2) doing my duty in being part of the solution. My duty is to work intelligently to change hearts and minds. Working intelligently means working in groups and through institutions -- and on this topic I would refer you to Teddy Roosevelt's essay "The Duties of American Citizenship", and to the final segment of Ronald Reagan's farewell speech.

In my opinion, if, over the course of your life, you help five people get closer to truth, you are a superhero.

Get a large dog, some breed that is very protective and loyal. Train it to bark and growl at the people you don't like while on walks. Regularly take walks around your house and neighborhood.

This is the solution a lot of poor people half ass attempt. They end up with dangerous dogs that bite some kid. I'd suggest you not half ass it.

Dogs are generally way more willing than people to get violent. The fear of violence situation will be reversed.

If you do this, get a shepherd not a pit. They are actually good dogs that don't attack kids, while do attack crazies.

German Shepards have potential health problems, though. And they're still a high-energy herding breed that'll require proper training and handling, so the poor thing doesn't go all squirrelly.

If you do go that route, anyone, please do your research and purchase from a good breeder.

There are better breeds I'd suggest if he was going the herding protection route, but none I'd advise for someone who knows nothing about dogs(and most people who do).

Seconded, my shepherd would absolutely maul a fool while never having harmed a human being in his decade of existence (we don't get much crime here). They're the best mix of intimidating while not hurting anyone you don't want to hurt.

On the other hand, my lab? At most he'd bark at them ineffectually, I'm not sure he's aware it's possible to bite human beings.

Note, however, that the most dangerous sorts of street people may feel affronted by such a dog and initiate lethal violence against it, as in the case that inspired this classic Freddie deBoer article:

The Existence of Random Dog-Killings Would Seem to Imply the Need for Some Sort of Constabulary Force

To be sure, Jessica Chrustic's golden retriever was not a trained personal-defense dog, but according to her testimony in other articles the dog did indeed attempt to defend her from the homeless man who was menacing her (and then beat the dog to death).

In which case they've attacked a sympathetic victim and opened themselves up to the justice system. They also won't necessarily escape unscathed in the altercation.

OP seemed willing to be a police officer or engage in vigilante justice. Raising a dog to do it in your place seems strictly safer from a personal perspective.

It also has a lot of plausible deniability, unlike shooting someone, or beating them up yourself.

There's a class called schutzhund which is available for like, dobermans and shepherds and other breeds used in military and k-9 service. If you're willing to pay for it, you can just buy a dog that's trained under it, or buy a dog trainable under it and send it through.

This is the best way to obtain a personal protection dog if you live in an urban area and aren't a particularly experienced dog owner. Ensure that no one outside of your immediate family feeds it or gives it affection, and have it wear a shock collar for appearances' sake if nothing else.

Awesome suggestion, I don't actually own a dog, or have to worry about this. So it's good that there is an existing training program.

This is the most expensive way to obtain a canine bodyguard- hence why poor people half-ass it(usually with a pitbull crossbreed).

Of course very experienced and competent dog owners can train a dog in house, and pick from a wider variety of breeds, but those by-and-large are rednecks in the countryside who expect to fill any self defense needs that do crop up with firearms(the main reason for such intensive training of a personally owned dog would be for hunting, so pre-existing experience leans pretty strongly in one direction).

Avoid pitbulls though. They are called the BIPOCs of dogs for multiple very good reasons.

Really dude? You should know better, 2 day ban. The second part of your comment is pure low effort culture war antagonism.

He's right, though.

Pitbulls are something like 6% of the US dog population, but commit 60+% of fatal attacks. I'd link but I don't want to possibly subject (a) US law firm(s) to random-linking from a den of witches (with outside observers waiting to pounce upon such wrong-think). I've also often seen 66% quoted, but that's almost too convenient.

Blacks are something like 12% of the US human population and commit 56% or so of homicides (2019 FBI UCR statistics, e.g., via Wikipedia). There is an overlapping cast of characters who often try to make similar excuses for both pitbulls and blacks, which only adds to the parallels.

I was talking about dogs, the OP was talking about crime but made it clear it wasn't a racial thing. Then burdensome comes in and throws a low effort racial insult into the mix.

The hypothetical high effort comment doesn't matter if he is just going to leave us the low effort one.

Pitbulls are not called “bipocs of dogs” though. And Pitbulls were purposefully bred as fighting dogs. Whatever one can say about other humans, they are not that.

The word typically used is much coarser.

Yeah, I just think using minced oaths should be a bannable offense. If you want to say nigger say nigger, terms like "the n-word" should only be used when discussing how stupid it is for people to say "the n-word." It's juvenile, and either hopelessly cowardly or deeply mean-spirited.

On right wing Twitter they are called that and worse, for the same reason.

Pitbull = Black

Golden Retriever = White

Borzoi = Jewish

Huh, Borzoi is not even unflattering. I guess the unflattering ones are either pitbull-adjacent or have very flat snouts.

While I can go to Wikipedia (a dubious source, unless it supports one's views I guess) and search for the FBI stats (a dubious organization, until its statistics support one's views) that you mention, this is still equating human beings with dogs. That's an presupposition that in my view is unfounded. A human's behavior, or many humans' behaviors, may be attributable to various factors other than simply their breed, and I'd suggest this is true more so than in the case of dogs. This may be an unpopular view on the Motte, I'm not sure, but it's mine.

Insurance company data suggests that there really is a problem with pit bulls. Unfortunately pit bulls are not a particularly well defined breed, so there's fuzz in the data anyways, but every source of data that exists suggests that pits do actually commit a disproportionate share of dog attacks.

I have no dispute with the pit bull suggestion. I think the comparing them to humans is the problem.

I used to hold similar views to you, that laws against recreational drugs were a massive injustice.

Then I saw what happened in cities where drugs were de facto, or in Portland’s case de jure, legalized. The externalities from junkies got worse, not better. Regular citizens have to deal with more theft, more random acts of violence, more derelict homeless camp eyesores.

Now I think keeping certain drugs illegal just makes pragmatic sense. If you’re a sensible enough drug user you’re very unlikely to be caught, but if you’re not it gives society a good tool to lock you up. Maybe the evidence of your theft or violence is shaky enough that you’ll be let off. But “we found drugs in your pants” is pretty rock solid, notwithstanding your protestations that they’re not your pants.

It’s essentially giving cops discretion to arrest people they believe are up to no good just from their appearance, with the extra check that they need some pretext for the stop and must actually find some drugs.

Then I saw what happened in cities where drugs were de facto, or in Portland’s case de jure, legalized. The externalities from junkies got worse, not better. Regular citizens have to deal with more theft, more random acts of violence, more derelict homeless camp eyesores.

I personally have yet to see the argument that the trade-offs of junkies are worth occasional recreational drug use. I've sampled most party drugs at some point in my life, and I'm not a regular user of any since, whilst I don't mind having ticked that box, I don't see any need to be ongoingly engaged. And the trade-off I get in return for my society being liberal on drugs is occasionally having RPG random encounters with people who are literally irrational actors.

The trade-off is supposed to involve minimizing junkiehood.

A maximally harsh policy, e.g. death for casual use, is a one-way door. You need a policy which makes people less likely to opt out of society and into crime. Ideally, you want to give them every opportunity to make the right choice. If the on-ramp to street shitting is slower than the off-ramp to rehab, those random encounters should dwindle away.

I think you can see why this would be important to people who 1) think punishments like prison are ineffective and 2) describe their politics in terms of compassion and empathy. This policy wasn’t implemented for you, but for faces under a proverbial boot.

It’s essentially giving cops discretion to arrest people they believe are up to no good just from their appearance

Is this going to be one of those 'I never thought leopards would eat my face' moments?

It’s essentially giving cops discretion to arrest people they believe are up to no good just from their appearance, with the extra check that they need some pretext for the stop and must actually find some drugs.

This, except they don't need to find some drugs, they only need to """find""" some drugs.

Obtain the protection of a local biker gang and have this fact be widely demonstrated. How many people do you think are messing with the hells angels?

Find who the wealthy funders are for the anti-policing politicians. Make tens of thousands of flyers and posters detailing their name and residence and schools of these individuals so that citizens can (legally) protest at those locations. Make sure to detail how much money they have. Then place them mostly in the areas where the homeless are located, providing directions from that location to the locations associated with the donors. Perhaps offer to pay them to protest. Imagine dozens of homeless people protesting outside of a school funded by one of these donors, embarrassing their family name right where the students are picked up, all for a measly $80 a day. On social media, do something similar but attach the phone numbers of all associated companies, so that citizens can (legally) call these entities and express their dissatisfaction at the crime problem in SF. If all of this is done legally (as it must be) then it may be effective and inexpensive. On social media, you can also make an account like “donor spotted”, so that if the donors are at some fancy restaurant, you can wait outside and embarrass them (legally). Imagine if they are with an important client!

Just because something is legal and the left can get away with doing it to the right, doesn't mean the authorities will allow the left to be attacked in the same way.

Before embarking on any campaign that might screw other people over within legal limits, consider how easily you might be targeted with legal fuckery.

OP suddenly finds he is being investigated for breaching labor laws, anti-money laundering for paying in cash, etc.

Why would they have to delve into OP's business and finances? They can just prosecute the picketing campaign itself as "harassment." Or maybe "terrorism."

Maybe even a hate crime

There are serious ethical concerns with this approach.

Yes, that's why said wealthy funders already use this on people who support causes they don't like. Tit for tat.

If something's unethical, it's unethical, regardless if it's you doing it to get back at someone else who does the same unethical thing. This shouldn't be that controversial.

The sad thing is that cooperate defect and defect defect are both bad.

I looked around online and it appears that San Francisco has no ordinance regarding residential picketing:

San Francisco and Oakland have not restricted residential demonstrations.

Some cities do, though.

This is the historical American approach to democracy.

as an individual

I don't think there are any! I mean, sure, there's things you can do to protect yourself. Don't go into high crime areas, carry pepper spray, lock your doors, etc. Mostly that just means that you personally won't be a victim, but someone else still will.

It's not something you can solve individually. It's a common fantasy though, just look at all those comic books about caped crusaders fighting crime! But no, that doesn't work in real life. There was the "Guardian Angels" program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels but my understanding is that they never really accomplished much. It's mostly larger socioeconomic forces and politics that you can't individually affect.

What are some actionable ideas, things that might actually help, whether it is some sort of viable plan for forming a vigilante militia or a plan for influencing local elections?

  1. Organize with your local neighborhood association to raise money to hire private security. I have seen this done moderately successfully.
  2. Less effective: Attend community meetings with police, community meetings with politicians and make your voice heard.
  3. Potentially most effective, but very high effort, haven't seen it done: Start a political advocacy group that creates a scorecard for all politicians on how well they are doing on public safety issues. Publicize your scorecard, publish endorsements, so all the citizens in your city know who to vote for if they care about public safety. Once you have enough of a following, you will be able to command meetings with politicians to get your greivences heard.

What stops me is that I quite simply disagree with the laws against recreational drugs on a very fundamental level. I am sure that I am not the only one. I cannot in good conscience side with the cops who enforce such fundamentally illiberal laws.

If someone was stinking up a park with marijuana, and a woman with children asked you to get them to stop, would you have a bad conscience about that? If a street had become notorious for open air dealing and people shooting up and leaving needles around and the police chief told you to make arrests and clean up the street, would you feel bad about that?

AFAICT, urban police in the 2020's are not in the business of arresting people for private use of marijuana in their homes. Their not in the business of jailing people for personal use amounts of marijuana. They police drug problems only when it becomes a major public nuisance.

My problem with the drug war is not just rooted in my libertarian-esque attitudes about the proper bounds of government. It is also rooted in me seeing that the war on drugs turns the banned drugs into a highly valuable and easily produced form of underground currency and thus directly leads to the growth of drug gangs and cartels that are, clearly, responsible for a good share of the street crime that I am seeking to curb.

I think this was always motivated reasoning on the part of left-liberals. They wanted the cause of crime to be something that they opposed anyways, and so such arguments got signal boosted. But in you look at it, Singapore and China don't have a crime problem because of drug prohibition. Loosening up on drug prohibition hasn't reduced crime in the United States. And frankly, the strictness of drug prohibition was always overblown. I recommend this old blog post ( https://devinhelton.com/drug-crimes ) and specifically this excerpt from a news article about policing drug dealing:

That’s just talk to officers, who say the revolving-door punishment makes for an unwinnable game. They know the dealers and users they arrest today probably will be back tomorrow, selling the same drugs and prompting the same neighborhood complaints.

“The dopers know it, too,’’ says Sgt. Rick Lehman, a 26-year veteran who supervises the District 4 Violent Crime Squad. ”They’ll say, `I’ll be back out in a couple hours.’ "

The real drug war was never tried. Those dealers should have been getting a half-dozen whacks with a cane then put in a workhouse until they were able to move to gainful employment.

Singapore doesn’t have a drug problem, but it’s also a tiny island with a long history of state capacity. Much easier to control imports and exports. China might be a closer fit.

Either way, a call for harsher punishments is a call for lower standards of evidence. China is presumably fine with that. Here, the same civil rights which shape the rest of our national character are in the way of punishing obviously bad things.

Helton waffles on this. He acts like weapons searches justify the pretext of drug searches, then asks why we don’t make more drug arrests. He follows a careful explanation of how easy it is to pursue weapons charges by complaining that 25% of Obama’s commutations involved a weapons charge. I think he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

We can’t just look at people and tell whether they’re ready to get out of the workhouse. We certainly aren’t capable of ensuring gainful employment for newly freed individuals. C.f. Scott here. A policy that says “just hit them until they are ready to work” is missing all the important bits.

C.f. Scott here. A policy that says “just hit them until they are ready to work” is missing all the important bits.

Terrible essay. "If your plan doesn't have every single detail that will cover every single situation, in ways that pie-in-the-sky Bay Arean progressives will find acceptable, stop complaining and accept the status quo" is one of the precursor steps in that adage about "If liberals insist that only fascists will [do something], then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals refuse to do."

The real drug war was never tried. Those dealers should have been getting a half-dozen whacks with a cane then put in a workhouse until they were able to move to gainful employment.

The dealers should be getting the Singapore treatment. They won the drug war there.

People who call it the "war on drugs" seem to forget that in a war we mercilessly vaporize the enemy with thousands of tons of explosives.

If the US is going to keep drugs illegal, then perhaps the US really should invade Mexico and destroy the cartels using overwhelming force. As you point out, is it a war or isn't it? The Mexican government would protest but I have a hunch that most actual people who live in cartel-run communities would be glad.

The current situation, where drugs are illegal yet easily available and are being used by extremely savage organizations like the cartels to grow themselves, seems extremely sub-optimal.

People who call it the "war on drugs" seem to forget that in a war we mercilessly vaporize the enemy with thousands of tons of explosives.

I too support the complete and lethal destruction of all banks, hedge funds, government bodies and media outlets - those cocaine users need to be taught a lesson. The NYSE can get blown up for that matter as well.

Potentially most effective, but very high effort, haven't seen it done: Start a political advocacy group that creates a scorecard for all politicians on how well they are doing on public safety issues. Publicize your scorecard, publish endorsements, so all the citizens in your city know who to vote for if they care about public safety. Once you have enough of a following, you will be able to command meetings with politicians to get your greivences heard.

You left out step 4, get labelled a hate group by the SPLC. Or get infiltrated and coopted by activist who then turn the purpose of the organization into the exact opposite of what you founded it to do.

If you are reasonably careful, you can probably avoid getting labeled a hate group. However, you may do an enormous amount of work, have a partial victory, then five, ten years later when the public is safe and less concerned about crime they will retroactively demonize your group for criminalizing poor people, and so for all your work, you will be seen as a villain instead of a hero. This is what happened to some of the 'tough on crime' folks from the 80s and 90s.

All you can do is leave and stop voting that way. Most of the areas that have been captured by criminals are hopeless corrupt and run by political machines. You can't vote your way out of it, and if you use non-political means like actually defend yourself from those animals, the state will come down on you like a brick of shit. "The punishment for armed robbery isn't getting shot!" or "What about due process?!" will ring from every pundit's mouth as they discuss your actions on every cable news show for 48 hours. The powers that be have decided you have a moral obligation to allow yourself to be victimized by these people, and they have no obligation to protect you.

At some point, if we are lucky, those areas will collapse. Businesses will leave, their governments will go bankrupt, anyone with the means to will have left for better managed areas, and if we are really lucky people will have actually learned and changed what they tolerate from their governments in aggregate.

If we are unlucky, the people from the areas that are fucked will just fuck the places they flee to, because they've left their own choices completely unexamined.

Sadly I think this is the more likely case, because very few people deprogram from all the demoralization propaganda they've been fed the last 20 years.

Probably safest to move somewhere remote and buy guns and ammo. All my neighbors are strapped with an acre or more between us and I've never felt safer.

What are some good ideas, as an individual, for decreasing street crime in highly Democratic-leaning cities, other than just moving away?

Vote for someone else, and convince others to do the same. As long as it's nigh-unthinkable to vote for the Republican except in extreme circumstances, the best you'll ever do is get some popular authoritarian whose policies will fade away as the memories of the crime waves do.

Be very suspicious of any policy which aims to treat the problem indirectly. That includes both Democratic "root cause of crimes" and Republican "go after casual drug users" policies, for instance. Some of these might work in a better world with better (at least in certain aspects) governments, but US cities can't pull them off (and in many cases that's not the true reason for the policy anyway). Policies aimed directly at violent criminals are your best bet.

As an individual, unfortunately, unless you're Curtis Sliwa or Batman you probably can't do anything. And I have my doubts that Sliwa (founder of NYCs Guardian Angels "unarmed crime prevention" organization) did much. The problem is too big and there are too many groups working against you. That's why the rational choice is usually Exit.

I am a techie, I do software. I've recently thought that well, given my concerns, maybe I should go work in law enforcement. I think that at this point I am probably too old to become a cop, but I could probably provide useful services in other ways.

Probably >90% of police and adjacent agencies in the country are in desperate need of IT and programmers for various projects that may help. The problem is, of course, the pay is absolute dregs compared to what you'll make anywhere else. If you're comfortably wealthy and can treat the pay as a nice bonus that covers your insurance, might be an option?

An alternative is to work for a company that produces tech for police departments (i.e. mobile forensics, visual recognition, cybersecurity etc). These will probably pay you decently (if not at FAANG-level, although what do I know?) and the work will probably be pretty interesting.

What are some good ideas, as an individual, for decreasing street crime in highly Democratic-leaning cities, other than just moving away?

Fundamentally the issues are caused by wealthy leftists not having to live the consequences of their ideology.

If you really want to improve things I'd suggest spending your weekends operating a shuttle service that takes the rougher individuals from downtown to and from the upperclass parks and neighbourhoods.

IME the "nice" part of Democrat controlled cities stays nice through aggressive policing. They quietly scoop up all the bums and drop them off in skidrow.

Usually this is when it's a separately incorporated and controlled by somewhat more moderate democrats, but it can also work under the same leadership, when they know who's in charge.

Anyways your plan likely won't work because the bums won't take your trip when it will result in a swift slap on the wrist. They could always fare dodge their way over on the bus but they don't.

Speaking as somebody who lives in one of these cities that are supposedly falling apart, this just isn't true. Sure, Bill Gates home is in a small suburb on the eastside in a suburb Seattle on the other side of the water, but there are plenty of well-off people living in parts of Seattle not far away from the 'bad parts.' There are brand new $2000/month apartments blocks away from homeless services buildings and so on.

Hell, there are streets that wouldn't look out of place in any American suburb a block or two away from Aurora, the street that's been well known for prostitution and various other petty crime since the 70s in Seattle, and the values of those homes only continue to go up.

It's nice to blame wealthy leftists for it all, but the reality is, the median voter in a large city is less uncomfortable with chaos and disorder than many other people are, at least compared to the style of crackdown people here want. They won't vote for out and out police abolitionists or whatever, but they're not voting for a Guliani-type anytime soon. Even in NYC, part of the reason Eric Adams won is because along with talking about crime, he also had the legitimacy of having issues w/ the NYPD before.

Seattle nearly elected a police abolitionist as city attorney. The top two primary produced a police abolitionist who said she’d stop enforcing DUI laws and a moderate Republican. The Republican barely won.

Sure, because ironically, the 'moderate Republican' was really an Obama-era Democrat who would've actually won by a wider margin if she had stayed as a Democrat, but I legitimately think didn't understand the Top 2 voting system in Washington, so thought she had to run as a Republican to be in the general. Like, if she'd just been the normal Democrat she basically was, she could've won with 65% of the vote instead of allowing said police abolitionist to run as the only Democrat in the race, and probably getting the votes of plenty of low-info normie voters.

Like I said, voters will vote for tough on crime Democrat's, but they're not going to vote for Guiliani-style Republican's as long as crime is still far below 90's levels.

Wealthy leftists are an easy scapegoat. In reality all they are doing is the same thing everyone else is doing. Existing within the Overton Window and not pushing the boundaries beyond their own comfort zones.

You can see the same effect in play whenever the police accidentally a black person. Or when someone brings up black/white sentencing disparities. People who would otherwise be in favor of harsh punishments for crimes and a stricter and stronger police force immediately fold. The institutions that desperately need support are abandoned in favor of short term emotional stimuli. Being on the 'right side' of discourse. Not falling into an 'extreme'. Not wanting to burden themselves with any of the cost of the harsh policies they otherwise say they support. Because people really do not want to live with the consequences of their ideology. Leftist or otherwise.

In turn we get George Floyd riots and Disparate Impact legal theory. Unsafe streets and people OD'ing on the sidewalk. An increase in physical suffering and pain. More neglected and dead children. This could have been prevented but people choose comfort and short term happiness over harsh reality. This is history repeating itself and a few chickens coming home to roost. This is not because of white leftists. And there are very few people here that don't themselves deserve whatever it is they wish on the white leftists.

Fundamentally the issues are caused by wealthy leftists not having to live the consequences of their ideology.

Very, very true. You have wealthy liberal donors who, while they do live within the district for the candidate their monetarily supporting, they live in the wealthy, suburban, sheltered part of it.

If you really want to improve things I'd suggest spending your weekends operating a shuttle service that takes the rougher individuals from downtown to and from the upperclass parks and neighbourhoods.

Or take wealthy liberal donors to the rougher spots downtown.

the failure of my local government to provide basic safety

There is no lack of state capacity. The problem is completely and entirely brought on intentionally by the people in power, who enforce policies of releasing criminals without punishment or simply allowing them to commit crimes uninterrupted.

In fact, if you tried to form a vigilante group to stop the criminals, the government would instead go after you and destroy you.

If the officials in power were replaced, the problem would be rapidly mitigated. If you had the ability to influence that, this would certainly be a good option.

The problem is completely and entirely brought on intentionally by the people in power, who enforce policies of releasing criminals without punishment or simply allowing them to commit crimes uninterrupted.

This is only a small facet of the problem though, otherwise how do you explain all the many cities around the world with lower imprisonment rates and lower crime rates both?

Fewer criminally-inclined people in the first place.

NYC is much safer than other cities with similar demographics.

Every American city is dramatically safer than it was in the 1970's, even if the demographics haven't improved.

It really is possible to reduce violent and property crime by an order of magnitude relative to the demographic-driven baseline (compare crime committed by Jamaicans in Jamaica to crime committed by Jamaicans in the UK) through effective policing backed up by swift and certain punishment of criminals. Most Western European and 1st-world Asian cities do this.

I have no idea why other American cities can't get their "crime per member of a high-crime ethnic group" numbers down to NYC levels, but the problem doesn't appear to be fixable by electing Republicans or tough-on-crime Democrats at the local level.

One thing I do think is that the easiest way to reverse the recent trend in shoplifting is to clamp down on the large tech companies running online marketplaces for obviously stolen goods.

I don’t think these crime statistics really capture the picture. How often are things even reported? In NYC many quality of life offenses have blended so deeply into the noise of city life that nobody will report it because it’s not a serious crime.

If a psychotic drug zombie is screaming at me on the subway platform about wanting to stab me and how he could kill me, is that a crime? Actually yes, it’s technically an assault under NY State law. Will anybody report it? LOL

Repeat this ad nauseam and you see how crime statistics are low but there is a massive degradation in quality of life

Based on my experience as a tourist in the US, general disorder and quality of life crime is still lower in Manhattan than in the centres of most other US cities (thinking about it, I think the Vegas strip and immediate environs was nicer). Compared to a northern European or 1st-world Asian city, NYC is a bit grubby. San Francisco is filthy.

Every American city is dramatically safer than it was in the 1970's, even if the demographics haven't improved.

Yes, but this was done largely by putting criminals in penal institutions.

I have no idea why other American cities can't get their "crime per member of a high-crime ethnic group" numbers down to NYC levels, but the problem doesn't appear to be fixable by electing Republicans or tough-on-crime Democrats at the local level.

Why not? That's how NYC did it.

In fact, if you tried to form a vigilante group to stop the criminals, the government would instead go after you and destroy you.

This has happened in the city near where I live. They conceal carry, and while they haven't been told to stop or arrested, they've faced criticism from the mayor for carrying and for taking the law into their own hands.

Can you link to any news or discussion about this?

It is also rooted in me seeing that the war on drugs turns the banned drugs into a highly valuable and easily produced form of underground currency and thus directly leads to the growth of drug gangs and cartels that are, clearly, responsible for a good share of the street crime that I am seeking to curb.

This doesn't match my model of most street crime.

I'll see a drugged out fentanyl addict (when they're not bent over like this) careen into the supermarket I'm shopping at, wearing about 3 layers too many and know instantly, this guy is going to steal some shit. I make eye contact with the security guard, do a little head nod as if to indicate, "hey, you see that guy? He's going to steal some shit". The guard gives a tired sigh as if to reply, "I fucking know, dude. What do you want me to do about it?", and I shrug and go back to shopping. Couple minutes later, I see the guard following the junkie - now with hoodie pockets stuffed full of batteries - out the door. I guess that's protocol. Junkie shambles off around the corner to the alley and probably sells his whole haul to another drug addict for $10 and moves on to smashing car windows to steal cans out of the cupholders or something. That's the street crime I see.

We have gangs. It's just that they're off in another part of the city shooting each other, and playing cops & robbers with the anti-gang police task force. I'm sure their crime is connected to the druggie stealing Duracells somewhere, but it doesn't feel like it. Maybe it's different in your city.

I think this is a large part if the issue. Even those who are hired to stop theft in a venue are for all intents and purposes forbidden to do their jobs, often by the fear of lawsuits or other reprisals. This makes criminals much less worried about getting caught, and much more likely to resort to crime as the best option. Even cops are often forced to simply watch until the crime has been done and the criminal has gotten away before being allowed to act. With such policies, those who don’t want to be victims of crime need to basically defy the laws in order to protect themselves and others and frankly their businesses.

Which is where this is going to end up, sooner or later. People fed up with being victimized will take it upon themselves to administer justice, and no matter what the laws actually say, people will be armed. That’s what happens when the law doesn’t protect people for whatever reason. The common people arm themselves and protect themselves.

Which is where this is going to end up, sooner or later. People fed up with being victimized will take it upon themselves to administer justice, and no matter what the laws actually say, people will be armed.

People have been prosecuted for defending themselves in a tense situation in a non-premeditated way. If you're caught being in an armed vigilante gang in places like NY...

Normal, prosocial people have shit to lose. By definition, they're much easier to cow than nihilistic criminal sociopaths and high impulsivity druggies and morons.

This is why I never skip out on jury duty.

Where this actually ends up is non-state institutions taking on core state functions and the police just letting them.

In the US where clans are dying out and confined to parts of the rural south, these non-state institutions are almost uniformly criminal gangs themselves. Protection money will become a regular business cost and lumpenproles will be intimidated by bikers(who have a slight human capital advantage because you have to be at least lower working class to join, due to the requirement of buying a motorcycle).

Would you recommend going with the Norteños or the Sureños? I like that the Norteños are a local business, but the Sureños have a great introductory deal going on right now ($5 monthly DoorDash credit!) and are offering lower interest rates for their BNPL program. Or maybe both, to hedge my bets?

I wish I had advice to give, but I don't. Instead, I'd like to take this opportunity to expand on part of your post. I largely feel the same way about drug laws, though not with as much conviction as I used to. Over the last several years we have seen some huge strides in drug policy liberalization. Oregon is probably the largest and most notable. Initially, these decriminalization measures seemed really promising! We were finally going to run a proper experiment on this!

Except that's not what happened. At the same time that the drug laws were loosened, enforcement of all manner of public nuisance laws and public intoxication laws fell off a cliff. The same jurisdictions that decriminalized various drugs have adopted catch-and-release policies for all but the most violent of people that are on drugs in public, and now these places are practically held hostage by huge numbers of dangerous drug-addled vagrants.

It didn't have to be this way! We could have decriminalized possession without simultaneously legalizing being a menace to the public! What the hell happened? So, now, the experiment will ultimately be called a failure and we'll have to start the prohibition cycle all over again. I don't have much hope for us getting it right on the next go-around either.

Intuitively, I agree, but I’ve been thinking about stuff Scott mentioned in this post and its response.

  1. A police officer sees a mentally ill homeless person and assesses them as disruptive. Technically the officer should assess whether the person is “a danger to themselves or others”, but in practice it’s all vibes. They bring this person to the ER of a hospital with a psychiatric ward.
  2. In the ER, psychiatrists evaluate the person. If some number of doctors, psychiatrists, and others …agree the person is a “danger to themselves or others”, they can involuntarily commit them…Again, in reality this is all vibes.
  3. The patient gets committed to the hospital.
  4. If the patient seems psychotic, the doctors start them on antipsychotic drugs. …realistically the person will stop seeming psychotic right away.
  5. After a few days, the hospital declares victory and discharges the patient with a prescription for antipsychotics.
  6. The patient stops taking the antipsychotics almost immediately.
  7. Repeat steps 1-6 forever.

You’ve got all the same factors as legal drug use. Being mentally ill in the privacy of your own home isn’t a crime; it’s wandering around and shitting on sidewalks or threatening businessmen that’s illegal. But the default state of psychosis or whatever is rather correlated with shitting and threatening. As soon as the individual is out of direct supervision, any relapse is likely to end up in the same behavior.

Well, being addicted to heroin is closely correlated with being a menace to the public. It doesn’t matter if private, quiet heroin use is legal if enough users end up committing all the public-menace crimes. As with psychosis, you’re left collecting these people in your external support network, trying to clean them up, and eventually letting them out to make their own choices again.

It’s doable, but it’s not free or easy. Nor is it established like involuntary commitment. At best, some subset of the normal prison system is designed for detox and rehab. Co-opting that is bad optics at best. Far easier to mutter something about “better support” than to implement it.

It didn't have to be this way!

The problem is, it did have to be this way, not because of the policies, but because of the people.

You put hippy-dippy bleeding hearts in charge and got hippy-dippy bleeding heart policy, which meant no punishment at all. If you wanted techno-utopia, you needed to vote for techno-utopians, and I know enough about Oregon to know that the bleeding heats outnumber to utopians by overwhelming numbers.

It didn't have to be this way! We could have decriminalized possession without simultaneously legalizing being a menace to the public! What the hell happened?

I think you have one group of people trying to solve a problem at the tails, while some more radical people think the problem is closer to the median. Basically police reform vs abolition.

Strangely, the radicals may sometimes have a better idea of the scope of the problem than the normies. If both sides agree too many people are in jail and one wants to solve it via letting out people caught with marijuana (because they saw some horror story about some kid being trapped for months because of a joint) they'll hit diminishing returns much faster than the people willing to have much laxer standards

This is the story of America.

There is a very old and very respected tradition of people on death row being granted their last meal of choice before their execution. It's a remarkable gesture - it is a tradition from a society that will allow someone they have decided is not fit to live the dignity of a good meal before they are put to death.

Then one guy ordered a crap ton of food on Texas's dime and then didn't eat any of it. As a result, the judge ended the tradition, and as of last I checked Texas no longer offers prisoners on death row a last meal.

What I love about this story is that it's one of the most perfect microcosms of America - here is a wealthy, powerful society that treats even the people they decide to kill under their laws with some manner of respect, with the leeway to even consider this in the first place, and because of the individual freedoms allotted to every single one of them, they have to account for the edge cases where someone plays defectbot. And you can't even blame the defectbot for it, because going out kicking and screaming and full of spite is a right that is also allowed to the man playing defectbot. Worse, there were probably multiple ways that the ill effects of the man playing defectbot could be minimalized - it would have been trivial to set a budget cap on the last meal, and the tradition could be honored without throwing the whole thing out.

But no, everything has to be this way. I have zero faith in the American justice system's ability to decriminalize possession, or indeed the American state's capacity to apply punitive measures against criminal possession. You could say this is because of bad actors. But an American society that is permissive of these things doesn't have bad actors, simply actors exercising their individual freedom.

Change can come, when a critical mass of American society with suitable amounts of power decides that no, it is no longer permissive of these things, and that the drug-addled vagrants should not be allowed. Then they'll go back to locking them up in sanitariums or prisons, or finding other similarly ugly measures. The experiment doesn't matter anywhere near as much as this - there's no end of ways you can obfuscate or hide results that are unpalatable to certain interest groups.

Recently I have been getting more and more fed up with the failure of my local government to provide basic safety - which is, after all, reasonably speaking the most important purpose of government.

What I know is that I subjectively feel that the level of street crime now is too high compared to what I would wish it to be

Can you clarify what exactly you're seeking regarding safety that you're not getting now? Is this impacting your life directly, and if so, how?

Edit: looks like you added more detail in an edit, saying that you were attacked directly, so feel free to disregard. But I guess more info about those attacks might be useful. What was the context, what was the motive, what was the outcome, etc?

In my case for awhile we had mailboxes being hit frequently, sometimes more than once a week. We also had a park a few blocks away used as a free shooting range a couple of times in the early morning hours.

We live in a wealthy neighborhood in a suburb of Seattle. My home is more than a couple million bucks and it’s not the nicest one around. Our cops are actually responsive and pretty good at tracking down criminals. But felonies are adjudicated at the county level, and the criminals know that unless they murder someone it’s not going to be taken all that seriously.

Even murders aren’t taken that seriously recently. A guy got killed when he confronted car prowlers in a mall parking lot. Prosecutors asked for 14 years, the judge handed out 12.5 year sentences, which certainly means less than 12.5 years: https://komonews.com/amp/news/local/men-who-murdered-victim-during-car-burglary-at-southcenter-mall-sentenced-to-prison-murder-stealing-cars-hyundai-stolen-vehicle-surveillance-video-king-pierce-counties-washington-tukwila

we had mailboxes being hit frequently

adjudicated at the county level

Isn't vandalising mailboxes a federal offence?

I made a report to the postal service once, got back a form response, and nothing else happened. I think my report was probably better than average since I had the theft on video, though wasn't able to read the thief's license plate.

Here's the response I got in December of last year:

This is in response to your recent inquiry concerning suspected mail theft.

This Service Request XXXXXX has been forwarded and is currently being reviewed by the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).

The Postal Inspection Service is the law enforcement of the United States Postal Service. Complaints alleging mail tampering or theft come under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Postal Inspection Service. This inquiry does not require you to contact either the Inspection Service or the Postal Service. A Postal Inspection Service representative will contact you if this inquiry requires further investigation.

Please note, information provided in a mail theft complaint and reviewed by the Inspection Service does not always result in a criminal investigation.

Alas, we are a long ways away from the days of Postal Service Badassery.

Christ. I heard about that case back when I lived in Seattle. There are better cities and metros out there. My life got way better when I got a place at the same rent on the other coast.

At the moment I don't want to describe the details because I do not wish to risk doxxing. However, I might change my mind about this later.

I've put more than enough details on the motte to be doxxable and it doesn't appear anyone has tried.

I have no clue what I'm talking about with this stuff, I've never been attacked or felt particularly unsafe where I live. If I'd been attacked multiple times, I'd probably move away, start carrying mace, find different routes to take, start driving instead of walking, start walking around in groups for safety, idk.

I assume you've spoken with the police about it and they told you they can't do anything? If you want to try to change your neighborhood instead of just changing your habits, maybe I'd start by finding out about existing town halls, and see if anything is already being done about it. Do you sense other people have been impacted like you have? If nothing is already being done, then speak at your town hall and try to show people this is a big problem. Try to make some sort of council through your town hall that can make suggestions to the police about where they should be policing. Or maybe start a neighborhood watch? If none of that works, then find some other people who have been affected as you have and start a viral campaign to showcase the problem and try to humiliate the local police, show everyone they're not doing their jobs and normal people are suffering.

I don't think anyone would actually recommend going Charles Bronson on them.

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