Maybe we should defund the police because they don't do anything.

The New York Post has a story about a Whole Foods store in San Francisco that had to close because of “vagrants,” drugs and violence. The New York Times also had a story about that particular Whole Foods closing, and so did the Washington Times. That this organic food tragedy would garner the stories in national press is odd, given that San Francisco has 10 million Whole Foods, as well as countless other businesses where you can spend too much money on food. It sucks for the people who worked there but as you might guess none of these stories call for labor protections.

It’s the endlessly self-perpetuating narrative that San Francisco is a hell scape because of progressive groups. The Post is a right-wing rag, but the supposedly liberal Times also promotes an idea most forcibly perpetuated by Fox New:

In the famously liberal city, where Republicans make up just 7 percent of the electorate, moderate Democrats like Mayor Breed are calling for aggressive steps to address public safety concerns while progressive voices decry law-and-order strategies as kneejerk responses that trample on the vulnerable.

Where police come in at all in this narrative, it’s to decry their demoralization following the George Floyd protest and calls to defund. Notice anything interesting in the chart below? (h/t Radley Balko):

Every year since 2011 funding for the SFPD has gone up while their clearance rates have gone down to under 10 percent in 2021. Before you blame Boudin, other data shows the trend continuing under Brooke Jenkins.

One argument is that people have stopped reporting crimes because of Chesa Boudin or whatever but this shows reported crimes and goes back 10 years. And while Boudin has been known to time travel like a crime loving Scott Bacula you probably can’t blame him for a whole decade-long trend. By the way, “clearance rates” mean that an arrest was made, not that the person was charged or even guilty.

I guess it’s good that they solve more murders than 8.8% (though again, a clearance doesn’t mean the person is convicted or guilty). But the crimes your average person is most likely to be exposed to is a robbery or burglary, not murder, and besides, what everyone is always kvetching about is stolen property. Clearly police don’t give a fuck about your stolen bike.

And they certainly don’t seem to prioritize solving sexual assaults! Which is a crime where the victim goes to the police and says, “Hi I was sexually assaulted. This is where it happened and what I remember about my attacker as well as my rape kit” aka more evidence than a murder. This isn’t a “believe all women thing,” as, again, a clearance is an arrest and not a successful prosecution.

Why is more funding a reasonable solution? When does this inflection point occur, where the police will be satisfied enough with their funding and conditions to do their jobs?

Yes I know I’m a stupid journalist and don’t have any idea how hard police work is, but there’s literally no other institution that gets a pass with results like this. We’ve been societally battering public school teachers for decades, but I’m pretty sure that more than 8.8 percent of public school students know how to read. Also I’d rather go solve a crime in a homeless encampment than sit in a class room with terrifying, hormonal teenagers. And of course, being a teacher means living with the fear that, much like a police officer, you might not make it home to your family that night.

p.s I know defund is a terrible slogan, and also we surely don’t want armed versions of private charter schools — when I say defund I mean literally look at the records of individual officers, see who commits more violent crime than they solve, tell them to improve their numbers, and then fire them if they don’t. How is this unreasonable?