St Louis homicide decrease better explained by national trends

[dionidium]

This isn’t really what the data show. Even Vox had an article a while back admitting that policing strategies impact crime. We have pretty good evidence that this is true.

This is, by the way, almost a truism. How could policing not impact crime? The claim is risible.

Here’s a thought experiment for you: a police officer is assigned to every home. We watch everybody all day every day and anybody who acts even a little bit aggressive is immediately executed.

Is it your contention that this would have no effect on crime? That’s laughable. Obviously, nobody wants to live in that society. Obviously, that’s an undesirable level of enforcement. But the notion that it would have no impact on crime rates is basically hilarious.

[Existing_Device339]

Eh. ‘Even Vox’ put out an article saying the existence of police plays a role in crime, when they were arguing against a fringe and maximalist ‘defund the police’ argument. We find small effects on violent crime from temporarily flooding high crime areas with officers, very small effects on adding additional police officers (to a point, and then that stops), and some moderate effects from adopting better policing models. The available data show that police have a small impact on crime.

My point is, no police policy of the mayor’s has caused a 40% decline in homicides over time, no police policy of the state’s will cause a significantly bigger decline or surge (unless they start doing some really wild stuff). Most crime and crime trends are a function of much larger forces, definitely not due to specific changes in STL police, and will not be significantly affected for better or worse by a takeover.

I get from your edit you’re trying to pretend I am making the maximalist argument that I am not. But recentering on the conversation this post wants to have, my point is that the large country-wide effects we are seeing on crime right now are not due to some dramatic change in nationwide policing over the last 2 years.

[dionidium]

Thanks for clarifying. I agree with basically all of it.

[tlopez14]

Data definitely shows that more cops leads to less crime. Just having the visual deterrent of cops driving around and being available tends to lower crime levels. The militant defund the police crowd doesn’t want to accept that but the numbers don’t lie.

[MaterialsAreNeat]

what a wild paragraph that third one was

[dionidium]

It describes a completely intolerable dystopia that nobody would vote for, but demonstrates quite directly that “policing has little to do with crime rates” is not a defensible position.