I’m friends with the manager of my neighborhood convenience store and he is extremely angry that he has shoplifting caught on tape, trespassed people, begged and pleaded with the police but they won’t do anything. I’m not sure if you actually know anyone operating a retail store but it’s pretty grim in the blue cities
The police rarely have ever been super responsive on shoplifting and basic trespass. I worked at a big box electronics store in the 90s, and we got looted when management did stupid shit like put hard drives on a retail shelf to save labor. The police rarely cared with some specific exception.
These cases are both minor and hard to prosecute.
The difference isn’t enforcement, it’s demand. The retail model as it stands today wasn’t designed for a world where there is a global market for everything. 95% people are honest, and most dishonest people are disorganized and easy to deter.
If you were to raid a drug store in 1986, your ability to unload stolen toothpaste and hair spray was pretty limited - maybe some mafias had a network of bodegas or independent stores.
Today, you have a major corporation that prides itself at having the “world‘s largest selection”. It’s also the worlds largest fence — Amazon.
The symptoms you're describing don't seem to match the proposed treatment.
Police: "You've caught them red-handed on camera, but we're very busy and we don't care. Or perhaps this is a place where we're deliberately doing-nothing as a revenge or pressure-tactic against local politicians."
Shopkeeper: "Ah, but this time I have the camera-footage and fancy biometrics of everyone in the store!"
Police: "Oh, well why didn't you say so? That completely changes things, we're always willing to help out a fellow biometrics fan."
> Police will not arrest if the DA won't prosecute.
Why not? If the police are frustrated that the DAs aren’t doing their job, I don’t think it helps the police any to choose to also not do their job. Especially since DAs are often elected, which means it’s easier to replace them if the police can show that they (the DA) are the bottleneck. But if the police don’t do their job first, then the police are the bottleneck.
Depends on the judges. If police cannot prove the crime in front of the judge, they wasted their time. With proper evidence it's not a waste of time anymore.
Progressive prosecutors don’t care. Judges let repeat offenders out with a wrist slap. Demoralizes police - what’s the point of all the effort if they are back out on the street tomorrow?
No, that's your experience. The narrative is that everything went to shit because the left is trying to create a society where the values you hold are despised and where the good people are blamed for everything while lazy people and criminals get to do whatever they want because of a misplaced sense of justice.
What is actually happening is more mundane.
It's political systems breaking because closed primaries and Gerrymandering mean that a significant population in a lot of places effectively get no political voice because the elections are held in the primaries, and the people can't vote in the opposing party's primary. Ossification results, or the candidate who appeals to the party's more ardent voters get elected, and we essentially lose the center as a political position.
We also have a homeless situation that isn't being addressed, because no one wants to do anything effective. So what happens is that the only thing that can be done is to arrest them, and house them in jail temporarily. This is expensive and doesn't actually fix anything.
So you have a bunch of frustrated citizens who feel like they have no control over their local policy and are sick of the petty crime, along with police who are handling it by not enforcing quality of life crimes in the hope people will blame the elected officials they don't like.
Your frustration is real, but the causes you are attributing for them are wrong.
Arresting criminals and throwing them in jail, like we did until about 10 years ago, would be a fantastic start! Really not a quantum leap in policy change
You need to read what people write and engage with the substance of it. Replying with a variation of the same talking point over and over is not a discussion.
My response is simple and straight forwards, I don’t tie myself into logical knots to turn what is simple and correct into a complicated inverse of reality
Except you didn't respond to anything I wrote. A 'simple and straightforward' response that does not address the content of the post you are responding to is not how this board operates.
From the guidelines:
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
It’s just hard to engage when the comment doesn’t respond to the philosophical bedrock point: Stealing! Is! Wrong!
This is a bedrock foundational principle of Western civilization. I don’t take any quarter to any other opinion. This is the Ten Commandments. I don’t give an inch to anyone who tries to justify stealing whatsoever. While my HN persona is a bit grating my personal relationships are full of leftists, or I wouldn’t be able to be a community member in my deep blue city. I am tired of people defending theft and thieves. NO STEALING EVER PERIOD
We were talking about enforcement, not morality. I addressed enforcement completely in the comment you never bothered to read.
You are conflating different things, you are not reading or properly engaging, and you are letting emotions take over instead of thinking. Maybe you should work on these issues instead of blaming leftists.
