Exactly, I dont think this is a clumsy PR play as the OP suggested. All big cities are experiencing increase in homelessness, crime and violence, drug use. You see it in Austin, Denver, SF, Seattle, LA, Chicago. Many of these cities were already bad and are getting worse, but others used to be 'good' cities and are now moving into thunderdome territory.
And that narrative is now having some success. It is getting people to apply a confirmation bias such that they perceive their city as crime-infested.
Meanwhile, crime statistics in many (most? all?) of these cities are actually down or flat. And compared on a per-capita basis look like even weaker support for that narrative.
I dont think its being pushed by far right or far left, I see both sides complaining about it which means there is factual evidence and experience to prove it a real issue.
Crime is up in a lot of cities, example of a recent study in Denver, sure it depends on what you measure and how, but that is how statistics work:
- While Colorado’s rates for homicide, aggravated assault and motor vehicle theft rose by more than 10% in 2020 over the average of the prior three years, rates for rape, larceny, robbery and burglary stayed relatively level or declined.
- Increases in aggravated assaults — which include shootings and stabbings — and motor vehicle thefts are the biggest drivers of increased rates statewide of violent crime and property crime.
- Colorado’s communities are not a monolith. Trends in the state’s largest cities differ from each other, as do those in medium-sized towns.
Colorado’s 2020 violent crime rate was the highest it’s been since 1995, but is lower than it was between 1985 and 1995. The state’s 2020 property crime rate was the highest recorded since 2008, but is less than half the rate recorded in the mid-1980s.
- While Colorado’s violent crime rate jumped 10% between 2019 and 2020 — the largest single-year increase since 1990 — that increase came as part of a six-year upward trend. The state’s violent crime rate increased by 8% year-over-year in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
I'm skeptical when percentages are named because I remember seeing one study like this where it was like, "homicides are up 10%" and then when I looked, there were 10 homicides last year and 11 the next.
For sure that is why I said "sure it depends on what you measure and how, but that is how statistics work". But it was a pretty comprehensive study. Crime is still up. You can travel to any of these cities and notice a visible difference. Going to SF, Austin and Denver from trips several years ago to this year was noticeably different. From tent cities, trash, drugs, crime and the general voice from the locals.
The city I live in has been an ongoing target of this kind of "thunderdome" rhetoric, and while there are well-known problem areas, the reality is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be.
With regard to things getting worse over the past couple years, I'm not sure what people were expecting to happen when sky high rents intersected with a global pandemic, especially in places where there's not much of a safety net.
I’m sure everyone knows it but it’s in almost all cities that had a very prominent defund the police movement. In Seattle and other Washington cities like Olympia they just don’t have a police force that is capable or even allowed to act. In Olympia for example a homeless person constantly goes to the same area and pisses and shits on the sidewalk. He stood in front of a glass window of a salon and shit in front of everyone and the business called the police only to be told that because they were just a tenant at the shopping center that the police would not come out. They made a rule (I dont know if law) that only the property owner can call the police now, and becaus the person shitting wasn’t inside the store, the property owner had to make the call. Like seriously? Property owners are banding together to hire essentially a private police force to patrol now because the government won’t police. Apparently only the businesses care about safety because the city councils do nothing and voters dont change anything.
> it’s in almost all cities that had a very prominent defund the police movement. In Seattle and other Washington cities like Olympia they just don’t have a police force that is capable or even allowed to act.
Or police are actively making the cities worse places to live as a way of punishing people with these attitudes.
I guess we'll find out when departments slip up and put into writing policies that were previously said behind closed doors.
> In Seattle and other Washington cities like Olympia they just don’t have a police force that is capable or even allowed to act.
You may want to check into this a bit more. As with anything it's much more complicated than that. For example, have the Seattle "police" been defunded? In late 2020, the Seattle City Council cut less than $10M off the specific police budget, with funds specifically allocated for adding 125 officers. Meanwhile they budgeted $100M MORE for additional community safety initiatives (see https://crosscut.com/news/2020/11/seattle-cuts-doesnt-defund...).
Every time there was discussion of anything like "police reform" the past two years in Seattle, the Seattle Times ran an article with a headline like "Seattle City Council defunds police" and you would read the article and find that nothing had even changed, but that the council had just issued a statement of support for the idea of reform.
This is the kind of spin/propaganda that is happening.
It’s not that the police actually get defunded but that doesn’t help, it’s the general attitude of cities that supported the defund movement. Every law and decision made by these places encourages being soft on crime and criminals regardless of what they do with the budget. You could hire 125 more officers but tie their hands together so they can’t prosecute crime under $900 in damage or can’t charge criminals for possession of drugs unless they consumed them. Both of which Washington now reflects. All of the small crime just leads to people graduating to larger crime more often. We’re seeing a horrible uptick in all kinds of crime here.
