| ▲ | pj_mukh an hour ago |
| Can we cut to the bone a little bit? The recent crime panics are not about a partner assaulting their live-in partner or a random home burglary. There is no real "ROI" to be had. It's purely about the unease of living in chaotic cities, the random stabbings, the shoplifting, the visible homelessness etc. Flock is the stopgap here. Partly the "feeling" of chaos is just that, a feeling, driven significantly by algorithmic feeds feeding us every random crime from around the country 24/7. Husband murders wife in a murderous rage? No one hear's about it. Mentally ill man murders a woman on the train in a Tier 2 city, immediate nationwide breaking news. The other part though is a real dissolution in how we take care of our mentally ill. Complex topic [1]. I think complaining about Flock is complaining about the symptom. Today we dogpile on Flock to get it cancelled, tomorrow the public will reach for something else. We have to fix the underlying disease, which is a combination of the two factors above. [1]: https://time.com/6265241/america-care-of-mentally-ill-people... |
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| ▲ | altacc 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| In the UK there is a yearly survey regarding crime and I've not read it for a few years (I've emigrated) but a regular theme used to be that people interviewed personally felt safe and weren't likely to be victims of crime but thought everyone else in the country was less safe and everywhere they didn't live had higher crime than it did. The public perception of crime is persistently incorrect for many if not most people and this incorrect, emotional rather than evidence-based view of the world is unfortunately what drives political pressure. |
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| ▲ | nemomarx an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Some of this stuff does feed into the perception though. Flock provides more footage for media to clip, for example. Or you can look at Ring cameras and people getting worked up about joggers or neighborhood kids because now they get alerts and have neighborhood chat groups, etc. |
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| ▲ | RussianBot9580 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Today we dogpile on Flock to get it cancelled, tomorrow the public will reach for something else. Who's the "we" in this sentence? The people who want to keep cities crime-ridden? And why does your opinion matter more than that of the public? I thought these "we" were pro-democracy? |
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| ▲ | pj_mukh 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | We are pro-democracy, but specifically votes are hidden, the voting booth is a private space, away from the judgmental eyes of privacy focussed individuals common on this forum. In the privacy of a voting booth, people will vote for Flock to feel safer and simply flooding the headlines will only work temporarily (in fact, there's a good chance Flock simply rebrands) |
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| ▲ | thinkingtoilet an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Let us also acknowledged that we're living in the safest time in history and modern American cities are extremely safe, despite the unhinged propaganda from the right. |
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| ▲ | monideas an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I don’t think public parks in the 1950s in America were filled with used heroin needles and homeless people strung out or defecating. You can correct me if I’m wrong though. | | |
| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | thinkingtoilet 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Good news! They aren't filled with used heroin needles today as well! | |
| ▲ | dgellow 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | From my understanding cities like NYC were actually in a really bad shape in 1950s and after compared to now, until around the 90s Edit: actually, from what I find in the 1950s there was even ongoing heroin epidemics, in addition to gang warfare, and of course racial inequality |
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| ▲ | pj_mukh 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The usual retort here is that the anxiety driving the adoption of Flock can't be seen in crime statistics (which is mostly measuring partner/family crimes ala "murder rate is down"). The random smattering of shoplifting is never reported, the unhoused man in a fit of rage yelling at passers-by is never filed with the police. But in the privacy of the voting booth, people will vote for more Flock cameras. Instead of waving off concerns we should be addressing them better. | | |
| ▲ | thinkingtoilet 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | We can't address concerns if they aren't based in reality. "the unhoused man in a fit of rage yelling at passers-by is never filed with the police" Good. That's not a crime. | | |
| ▲ | pj_mukh 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I think you're saying that because you imagine the only alternative is for the police to come in and beat the homeless man up. But simply accepting it, or state violence aren't the only two options. If we don't make better governance possible, we make Flock invevitable. |
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| ▲ | ericmay 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We can acknowledge that and also acknowledge that a lot of petty crime goes unreported/unresolved because the police can't do anything, and that our target should still be 0 crime and folks are entitled to be upset about any amount of crime. Recent example I have is a work truck behind my neighbors house in the alleyway. Parked for less than 5 minutes, went inside a garage to look at something, came back, and someone had already walked off with their tools. I sort of got the guy who did it on video which I provided to the person who was victimized, but who knows if anything ever really came of it. Probably not. Does that actually show up in crime statistics? I bet it doesn't. What is also missing here is that even if there is not criminal activity occurring, there is a general influx of highly anti-social behavior occurring that feeds in to the perception that higher rates of criminal activity occurring. This is very noticeable when you see people casually running red lights, driving without registration, yelling and screaming at people on the street or at the bus stop, and more. Even if I'm unlikely to be a victim of a crime, I don't feel safe when these anti-social behaviors are occurring, people are shoplifting and now going to CVS feels like going to a third-world country. Framing this as right-wing propaganda I believe is a mistake and if you are a leftist it just loses elections for you because even if the folks who are concerned about crime levels are wrong (they're not though) the perception matters much more than reality. Denying the perception implies you deny the reality too and fewer people are going to vote in favor of candidates who tell them that what they see for themselves isn't happening. | |
| ▲ | hollerith 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Some American cities like St Louis, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans have averaged about 50 homicides per 100,000 per year over the last 10 years. Detroit averaged about 40. It is not "unhinged propaganda from the right" for people living in those cities to wonder why the rate cannot be 1 or 2 per 100,000 like it is in most European cities and many American suburbs. Except for a few years in the early 2000s, London's rate has stayed below 2.5 for the last 250 years. | | | |
| ▲ | nxm 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks to the border actually not being wide open due to Trump, all violent crime is down across the US | | |
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