Public discourse around crime is broken in the Bay Area and a lot of progressive parts of the country. Progressives don't want to be seen as being too harsh on criminals. They are aware that criminality has roots in a number of social justice issues which they want to retain sympathy toward (racism, poverty, guns, wealth inequality). Also, criminals are disproportionately minorities who lack privileges that might have made resorting to crime seem unreasonable. So here in SF, we have this strange discourse where the two positions you hear most are:

The first bullet is a misreading of the reality of crime statistics, where there is a huge underreporting bias for larceny and other non-violent crimes which should make anyone skeptical of the data quality. The second is much easier to have sympathy for.

The idea that we need more policing or better funding for public safety (which is basically where my head is) is a sort of heresy that you utter hesitatingly and only in the company of close friends and associates - "safe spaces," to use the progressive lingo.

John Hamasaki is a police commissioner who is just outrageously uncouth on Twitter, so much so that the Board of Supervisors (overall a pretty woke progressive bunch in SF) rebuked him. I'm not going to waste time critiquing his lack of decorum, but I will take a moment to show this tweet. It is emblematic of the false dichotomy that progressive voices put forward.

Note that one option is a "knee jerk conservative route," implying that it is reactionary in both senses of the word, while the other is "harder," seemingly more thoughtful and on a higher and more compassionate plane. But even if we equal out the language here, it's simply bizarre to think that you can't support more active public safety measures while also thinking about the root causes of crime.

There is a temporal incongruence here that goes unacknowledged. Solving the root causes of crime is really hard. No one actually has the answers, and the answers are likely contingent upon specific local circumstances. There's an enormous amount of politicking and research that goes into trying to create opportunity and further equity. Much of it comes down to values and thus is politically fraught. There's a long road still to climb. Yet we have a problem with crime today, and increasing police presence - and even making incremental improvements to policing - are much more tractable problems and have real results.

Here's what Darrell Owens wrote in that substack piece that Hamasaki linked to. Overall it was a great and thoughtful addition to the conversation. The whole thing needs to be read and appreciated. But this really stood out to me:

Darrell is right on one thing - the empirical research is pretty clear that police presence leads to less crime. Note, this doesn't mean police arresting or frisking people. Merely having cops on foot patrol in an area reduces crime there. It's a shame that people who resort to crime, often because of foolish choices at a young age, could end up with a permanent life disadvantage due to a felony conviction that haunts them. If greater police presence causes people to think twice about committing a crime, that would seem to be a real benefit to those individuals. It's not as sexy as eliminating poverty, but it's not nothing.

And yet here is a progressive person acknowledging that there is a public measure that has real and proven benefit, but it's not worth doing because it requires more public sector headcount. I cannot imagine any other social problem where the public sector can make an obvious positive impact by investing in resources, that would get this sort of treatment. Darrell observes that the Bay Area is an extraordinarily wealthy but unequal place, and yet the prospect of putting money in public coffers to fully fund safety is "fiscally irresponsible."

As an aside, there is a good debate to be had about police comp structure and perverse influences there. There is also plenty to discuss about how to make police better able to de-escalate violence instead of shooting people first. We need to have those discussions and nothing precludes doing so.

Darrell is a good progressive foot soldier in that he also implores people to focus more on the systemic issues. Indeed, we do need to keep our eyes on the prize. But this cannot be an either/or discussion, and it is to the Left's detriment to make it one. 

The public wants to feel safe, and the way to make the public safe has a pretty clear, concrete path relative to other social ills. Building a fully just and equal society is a Sisyphean task, but a boulder we gotta keep rolling. However, if you make the public choose one, they will choose safety every time, and that will undermine Progressives' ability to advance more ambitious priorities.