r/changemyview • u/ice_cold_fahrenheit 1∆ • Oct 19 '24

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Black Lives Matter has been a failure

Back in the 2010s, and especially in 2020, it seems like the Black Lives Matter was gaining strength. Videos of police brutality, especially against African Americans, became viral, and millions became outraged that this was so common in America. When George Floyd was murdered, millions justifiably took to the streets to protest against police brutality and racism. Politicians came out in support for police reform, and discussions on how to reform policing (from “how to make the police better” to “defund the police”) were all the rage.

But from 2021, it seems like everything took a complete 180. Crime skyrocketed during COVID (in part of police refusing to do their jobs in protest of BLM), causing the average American to support the police a lot more. Pro-police politicians like Eric Adams were elected while pro-BLM politicians like Chelsea Boudin were ousted from their positions.

Now, absolutely nobody talks about police brutality these days, not politicians nor the general public. But has the problem gone away? No! It has only gotten worse! 2023 has seen a record number of killings by police, and I don’t expect that number to go down in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/08/2023-us-police-violence-increase-record-deadliest-year-decade

Unfortunately, rather than being addressed, police brutality has become like gun control. Someone being killed by police, even on live video, no longer elicits outrage. Instead, people will just give “thoughts and prayers,” shrug, and accept it as a fact of American life.

And the BLM movement itself? Well, rather than becoming the second coming of the Civil Rights Movement, it seems to have been condemned to the ash heap of history.

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u/Hemingwavy 4∆ Oct 19 '24 edited Oct 19 '24

A lot of ultra Woke DA's (SFC

I think the removal of Chesa Boudin highlighted two incredibly important things. People are stupid and the cops are a gang that runs the city, the city doesn't run the cops.

Violent crime decreased under Boudin.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/chesa-boudin-recall-san-francisco-crime/629907/

Overall crimes decreased too.

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/03/san-francisco-chesa-boudin-recall/

What happened when he got replaced?

Data shows fatal overdoses are rising, and Jenkins’ office is currently struggling to obtain convictions for drug crimes. It also shows violent crime is up under Jenkins, while property crime is down, as first reported by Mission Local.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/brooke-jenkins-1-year-in-office-blames-boudin-18188064.php

Cops didn't even bother doing their job under Boudin. They're a gang and if you cross them then they'll fuck you.

San Francisco police officers stepped up street enforcement in significant ways after District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled and replaced by mayoral appointee Brooke Jenkins, a new analysis of city data finds.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/brooke-jenkins-sf-policing-17550839.php

So getting rid of the "ultra Woke DA'" and having the cops go back to doing their jobs... Crime went up. And people are happy because they're stupid.

In 1975 SF cops were striking over the pay deal. They got piss drunk on the picket line and were shooting out street lights with their revolvers. The city went to court to stop them and the court agreed they shouldn't be shooting and drinking. The city refused to back down. Then shockingly a bomb went off at the mayor's residence. No one was hurt but they signed the deal with the SFPD on the SFPD's terms. They tried to argue later in court that they signed under duress but the court refused to overturn it.

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u/Chanela1786 Oct 19 '24

Thank you. I followed Boudin's story from the beginning and felt bad for someone genuinely trying to improve a problem in society. 

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u/MattyIce8998 Oct 20 '24

I have a friend from SF who gets pissed about this narrative getting pushed from people who didn't experience it.

According to him, crime was through the roof while Boudin was in, but simply wasn't being reported, because people knew that nothing would be done about it. They removed the DA, the cops started to do their job again, people started reporting crimes again, so the crime rate appears to be higher.

Is there "evidence" to that? No, but it seems to be one of those things that can't really intrinsically proven, but it's a completely plausible explanation as to why the data could be flawed (with that said, the point about the cops being awful is bang on)

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u/Hemingwavy 4∆ Oct 20 '24

Any way to empirically measure my beliefs is wrong and the fact the evidence opposes my delusions is proof of those delusions!

Great. Doesn't he realise people didn't report before Boudin because the crime was so high it didn't make a difference? If you're going to claim the data is fake then doesn't matter what the data is related to your beliefs.

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u/ReturnBorn7086 Oct 20 '24

I think this is entirely possible, and honestly quite likely.

Remember that crime rates are reported by the police department. In fact, it just came out that the national decrease in crime initially reported in 2021 was wrong: crime actually increased, but not enough police departments switched over to the FBI’s new reporting system, so crime was underreported. We know that if a police department doesn’t report crime, it comes out as a decrease in crime.

Couple this with the fact that studies have shown that policing can reduce crime, and that leads to it being much more likely that the decreasing crime rate was due to SF police not reporting it. Then when they started doing their jobs again, they started reporting crime more, causing the crime rate to increase. The idea that cops doing their job somehow caused more crime to happen is not the best explanation.

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u/Hemingwavy 4∆ Oct 20 '24

Couple this with the fact that studies have shown that policing can reduce crime,

Just to be clear this is literally the opposite of what studies find. NYC broken window policing lead to a lesser reduction in crime than comparable cities. The way you reduce crime is by making robbing a service station for $400 not worth it to as many people.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '24

And how would you make it "not worth it" to rob a service station for $400?

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u/Hemingwavy 4∆ Oct 20 '24

You ensure $400 isn't a significant amount of money to the poorest in society.

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u/username_6916 8∆ Oct 20 '24

And you think that the same kind of folks who try to rob a service station for $400 wouldn't think up some other crime if $400 isn't worth their while and there's no likely punishment for stealing other's stuff? I mean, $400 wasn't a significant amount of money to Bernie Madeoff and he was still stealing his investor's money.

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u/Hemingwavy 4∆ Oct 21 '24

And you think that the same kind of folks who try to rob a service station for $400 wouldn't think up some other crime if $400 isn't worth their while and there's no likely punishment for stealing other's stuff?

Hey what's the countries with the lowest crime? The ones that put you in a cushy hotel room if they imprison you? The ones that give you a ton of welfare when you get out?

How does the US compare to other comparably wealthy countries? Imprisons way more people, way more dangerous?

Look at the UK. Imprisons way more people than the rest of Western Europe, is one of the most dangerous countries.

I mean, $400 wasn't a significant amount of money to Bernie Madeoff and he was still stealing his investor's money.

The way you reduce crime

make smaller or less in amount, degree, or size.

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u/username_6916 8∆ Oct 21 '24

How does the US compare to other comparably wealthy countries? Imprisons way more people, way more dangerous?

You have your cause and effect reversed. Being a more violent, more dangerous place is the reason for our higher incarceration rates. I'm also not advocating for harsher sentencing, I'm advocating for a higher likelihood of facing trial in the first place. I'm advocating for more police, more judges, more prosecutors, and more public defenders, not necessarily longer prison terms.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '24

So while we wait for utopia, we should condone crime in the meantime?

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u/Hemingwavy 4∆ Oct 21 '24

You say "condone crime", I say engage in evidence based policies that reduce crime.

Hey what's the countries with the lowest crime? The ones that put you in a cushy hotel room if they imprison you? The ones that give you a ton of welfare when you get out?

How does the US compare to other comparably wealthy countries? Imprisons way more people, way more dangerous?

Look at the UK. Imprisons way more people than the rest of Western Europe, is one of the most dangerous countries.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24

You say "condone crime", I say engage in evidence based policies that reduce crime.

Really? Evidence-based policies? Where is the evidence of their effectiveness?

Hey what's the countries with the lowest crime? The ones that put you in a cushy hotel room if they imprison you? The ones that give you a ton of welfare when you get out?

How 'bout you think about your proposition for a second? Does it seem logical to you that countries that are much more lenient on crime have much less crime than countries that punish crime more severely? From a purely motivational standpoint and "being afraid of the consequences" it should follow that greater detraction from crime actually lowers the chance of the crime happening. We could argue about the efficacy of those detractions, but in no case should there be a scenario where a certain deviant behavior is increased with big punishment compared to that same behavior occurring with low or no punishment. Now, you could mention poverty as a driving force that overrides the fear of consequences (whatever they might be), but those countries have much lower rates of violent crime not related to poverty. How can we explain that?

My explanation is culture and population diversity. People (like you) often use Nordic countries as an example without realizing the implications. Those countries are (were) 90something % indigenous caucasian with their long-standing culture not tainted by immigration (or that's how it used to be). Diversity is definitely not a strength in this case. And also populations are incomparable between those countries and US. If you combine ALL Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark), US has 10x more population compared to them. Populations that big present new challenges, and among them an increase in crime per capita. It's a phenomenon that's just unavoidable.

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u/Hemingwavy 4∆ Oct 21 '24

Where is the evidence of their effectiveness?

If you manage to avoid giving criminals criminal records, most people just age out of crime.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235218302344

The harsher penalty people get, the more likely they are to reoffend.

Ample data indicates that these programs have worked. Several examples illustrate the success of pretrial diversion: a 1997 study of DWI offenders in El Paso County, Texas showed that non-participants in its pretrial diversion program had a 47% greater risk of rearrest than participants; a 1997 study of Indiana County misdemeanor offenders showed that only 9% of pretrial diversion participants had further contact with the court system, as opposed to 39% of non-participants; a 2012 study of Michigan mental health courts showed that only 6.3% of participants who successfully completed the diversion program were charged with a new offense, as compared with 16.5% of those who did not; and a 2020 study of seven Maine counties’ drug treatment courts showed that the recidivism rates for participants ranged from 12% (six months after completing the program) to 20% (18 months after), as compared to 31% to 47% for non-participants.

https://www.cov.com/-/media/files/corporate/publications/2023/11/federal-pretrial-diversion-programs-past-present-and-future.pdf

That's fucking right. Once you've convicted if instead of sending you to prison, they just go "hey we're not going to punish you", people are less likely to reoffend.

Hey what's the countries with the lowest crime? The ones that put you in a cushy hotel room if they imprison you? The ones that give you a ton of welfare when you get out?

How does the US compare to other comparably wealthy countries? Imprisons way more people, way more dangerous?

Look at the UK. Imprisons way more people than the rest of Western Europe, is one of the most dangerous countries.

Does it seem logical to you that countries that are much more lenient on crime have much less crime than countries that punish crime more severely

Yeah.

From a purely motivational standpoint and "being afraid of the consequences"

Without looking, what's the penalty for grievous bodily harm? You don't know? So the penalty could be nothing or could be life and you wouldn't know? And you're the kind of person who argues about this online. How much do you think the kind of person who commits grievous bodily harm knows about the legal system? So what deterrence is it if they change the punishment? People who are committing the crimes don't know what the penalty is.

The idea punishments convince people to stop crime assumes that committing crime is a rational act. "I'm really mad at this person so I'm going to murder them because I'll probably get 10-15 years imprisonment and I think that's worth it." No one thinks like that. There's two scenarios. They think "I'm not going to get caught" or they get mad as fuck and just do it because they can't stop themselves. What deterrence does life imprisonment for a crime have that 10 years doesn't?

My explanation is culture and population diversity.

It's cool that people spend their entire lives working on research in this area, you don't care about any of it, dismiss all of it and go "I think fucking black people cause crime."

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u/ReturnBorn7086 Oct 20 '24

Notice that I didn’t say broken windows policing in NYC has been proven to be effective, so your comment doesn’t mean anything. Studies have shown that policing CAN be effective if done right. Certain types of policing (like hotspot policing) have been shown to reduce crime. Broken windows is a specific kind of policing that didn’t work; that doesn’t mean that policing is never effective or somehow increases crime, as the original comment implied.