Has there ever been a faster cycle of liberal non-sense to the “never mind” stage than the case of “Defund the Police”?
Of course, simply refunding the police is not sufficient when there is an all-out attack on the police for their practices, or DAs who have decided to play catch-and-release. Should we be surprised that more and more police officers conclude it isn’t worth the trouble to arrest someone if they’re going to be back on the street in hours and have their charges dropped?
We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to see soaring complaints and formal investigations into police officers for not doing their jobs. The San Francisco Chronicle reported (by way of Reddit, since the Chron has a paywall) recently:
More S.F. residents share stories of police standing idly by as crimes unfold: ‘They didn’t want to be bothered’
Is property crime in some ways allowed in our city? Are police on an unofficial strike or work stoppage?
Now, a man police believe is the culprit is in jail — busted only because he allegedly went on to commit more vandalism days after the Wine Society mess. But the episode spotlighted an issue bigger than one arrest: a pattern of some officers on the San Francisco force seemingly uninterested in dealing with crime.
After reading the column about the parklet, Supervisor Hillary Ronen wrote a letter to Scott demanding answers. She told him she’d witnessed officers tell her constituents there’s no point in investigating or arresting a suspect because Boudin won’t prosecute anyway — an assertion the D.A. rejects, though he does strive to reduce incarceration.
The letter highlighted alarming data backing up many residents’ concerns that police have thrown up their hands. For example, last year the Department of Police Accountability opened 595 cases into alleged police wrongdoing; the largest share by far, 42.6%, related to “neglect of duty.” That percentage has ticked up steadily since 2016, when neglect of duty made up 32% of complaints.
Ronen’s letter stated that of all the crimes reported in San Francisco in 2021, just 8.1% led to an arrest, the lowest rate in a decade. Just 3.5% of reported property crimes yielded an arrest. And, of course, that doesn’t include all the crimes residents have stopped bothering to tell police about.“…
Just how did people think police officers would respond to a non-stop campaign to demonize them? (Note, however, that the real and unstated subtext of the WaPo story linked here is the power of police unions, which are no different in their effect than teachers unions and other public employee unions that should be curtailed or abolished.)
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