So how much does it cost the state (such as NY and Cali) when people and businesses move out because of the crime? Tax money comes from tax payers. The less tax payers, tax paying businesses, the less tax collections.
When crime gets bad enough, property values go down. The lower the property value, the lower property taxes you pay.
So there's all kinds of ways to look at this, but the bottom line is if you allow the criminals to take over the state, good hard working people and businesses leave like what's going on in SF. Even the railroads have had it. When trains stop, the cars are broken into and merchandise stolen. Amazon boxes are strewn all along the tracks for thousands of feet. I don't know what or if the state earns on trains going through the state, but I'm sure it's something because California is really worried about it.
A strong enough deterrent works every time it's tried. But there are no deterrents in places like NY or Cali. Take that Bodega worker in NYC for instance. The woman exhausted her funds on her SNAP's card so he pulled the bag of chips she wanted to buy away from her. She ran out and got her ex-con boyfriend to settle the score and this worthless piece of garbage started to beat up this 63 year old Cuban immigrant. He stabbed the customers BF in the neck with a knife in self-defense. Commie states don't recognize self-defense as an excuse so they arrested the worker for murder.
If anything, that's the place to start. Start making laws that favor law abiding citizens and against the criminal element.
I’m going to have to get busy writing those history books. Ones that show Deterrence worked every time. If that was the case, World War One and Two would never have happened. But hey, we can look at crime alone. And if Deterrence worked, then Prohibition would still be the law of the land wouldn’t it?
You are arguing that no matter the cost, we must do this. Then how much are you willing to pay in taxes? Because all of this stuff cost a ton of money. Let me guess, nothing. You just want to shift the money from a sector you don’t agree with. Imagining that billions of dollars will appear like magic when you shut down whatever other programs you want to.
California, we could shift the money from Wildfire protections. Let the state burn.
A few million dollars is shifted, and nothing changes, because that few million wouldn’t even be enough to house more criminals, because they don’t have the prisons now to house all they want to.
It isn’t one thing. It’s never one thing. You can’t just say we need more cops and that will solve the problem. Because then you have at most the revolving door you will moan about how criminals are released almost immediately. Why? Because we don’t have enough jail space. So we need more jails to hold the accused crooks. Before their trials. Great. Where will we get the billions we need to build new jails? Then we need more prisons. A fifteen hundred bed prison will cost another half a billion. And it will take a decade to build because we have to deal with lawsuits from all those good conservative people who don’t want a prison in their back yards.
And the Democrats are just as bad there. I know the story of Ted Kennedy and the wind farm. Enough said.
So in a decade or so, we will be able to house another fifteen hundred convicted criminals. What do we do with them otherwise?
And if deterrence was the answer, the idiot Sheriff and his tent city jail would have cut crime dramatically. It never dropped other than a tiny little blip. Albuquerque remained about the same crime wise.
But that is what happens. So if we can’t house everyone we want to, we have to pick and choose.
Now, the obvious answer is to figure out how to choose. You want them all locked up. We can’t. We don’t have the facilities. So who gets locked up? Murderers? Kidnappers? Rapists, Armed Robbers? Drug Dealers? All felons, and all serious criminals. Now, we get down to the misdemeanors. Well shit, we don’t have much space left for them. I guess we could turn a couple drug dealers and armed robbers loose.
You are treating this like that idiotic joke. We can keep twice the canaries in the truck if we keep half of them flying.
You don’t answer the question. Where do we keep these criminals you are determined to lock up? You don’t answer the question because all you want to focus on is the first phase. The cops on the street. The cops don’t want deterrence.
A city in California wanted to discuss their police policies and practices. They hired an expert. I know the fellow. He has 30 years experience in Prisons, including being a warden of a prison. The city had riots about every day in jail. He helped them get those down. Riots are bad for the prisoners, and worse for the guards. Because the guards get hurt, or killed, or are taken hostage.
Then it was policing. My friend got the cops to open a sub station in a strip mall which was high crime. Sure enough, crime dropped. And the cops hated it. They hated hanging around, they detested walking the beat in the surrounding neighborhood. They wanted to chase people, and catch people. So the substation was shut down after a year, and crime skyrocketed again.
Tell the cops to go back to walking a beat. They’ll quit.
Around me, the highest paid cops are the State Police and the Port Authority Police. A lot of cops try and get on at the Port Authority. Most of them quit within two years. It’s boring. Nothing but reports and checking ID cards. Accident reports, injury reports, and all that. It’s boring. And they crave the action. You can argue that they are deterring crime, but they don’t want that. They want to chase people.
Those gung-ho cops are the problem. They don’t show restraint when using force, and they get the department sued. They get cases thrown out for abuse and brutality. They get the criminal free. They get bad press for the department, and they get their fellow officers in trouble.
The reforms driven by the Insurance Companies is to get rid of those gung ho types. Get rid of them, and change the policies to reflect a more common sense approach.
St. Ann as I said in the OP, has enacted these reforms reluctantly. They have a lot fewer arrests, but the crime rate remains the same. No uptick in violent crime. None.
Reform means looking at alternatives, and finding ways to do the job better.
The cops who are quitting, are probably those violent cops who get the departments sued. The ones who won’t learn and won’t do the job the way it is supposed to be done.
