I don't only post about crimes, actually.

For example, I've been posting a lot about the housing supply problems.

Does that change anything? I've been noticing a positive shift in the public debate about housing supply and NIMBY in NYC. Both here in this sub and in the public view on our city politicians. But I don't think I can take any credit for that.

I post primarily to learn more from thoughtful replies by fellow redittors. I don't only post to shout my views, but to also elicit meaningful/intellectual challenges to my views.

I learn a lot from truthful conversations here (when the other person is debating in good faith) and that has genuinely shaped my views many times.

After all, how should I know what to support in reality?

IF the dominant mainstream discourse was sufficient, we wouldn't be observing those issues in reality, or at least we would have an intellectually sound explanation for it.

That's just coming from my desire of educating myself before throwing myself behind any solution in ways that go beyond just understanding the mainstream opinion.

>What policies do you support?

I support the obvious: economic improvements, better wages, better life-quality, better education, access to health-care, mental health care, etc. All of which already receive plenty of attention (even if they don't receive effective implementation, like De Blasio's failed mental health care plan..)

What I don't support: advocating for above shouldn't devolve into a "crime denial" bliss where we just blame the media and "far-right people", and then pretend that there's no issue.

I also oppose the nihilist view that we can't do anything about crime ("we are just at the mercy of a nationwide trend", "it's a pandemic we have no control of", ...). The nihilist view is not supported by evidence.

What do I think has been missing from the debate?

An honest conversation about the role of policing, and how America is severely under-policed compared to other developed countries, and how that's actually one of the root causes of mass incarceration (longer and more severe sentences as a way to compensate for under-policing)

• https://direct.mit.edu/ajle/article/doi/10.1162/ajle_a_00030/112647/THE-INJUSTICE-OF-UNDER-POLICING-IN-AMERICA1

Understaffed police departments also tend to employ more violence.

We can look at other developed cities, like London where the police doesn't even carry guns (except for very specialized units), but when they intervene to arrest someone they usually swam the individual with lots of bodies.

Right now, this is what I like to see more in the conversations:

• Deterrence (likelihood of being caught is more important than the severity of the punishment)
• Messaging about crime enforcement is more important than punishments.
• Poverty drives property-crimes but not violent crimes
• Lack of trust in the police as a root-cause for violent crimes. To address that we need to make sure police misconduct is addressed seriously, but also to not exaggerate that or devolve that into openly spreading of "anti-police" campaigns (which can foster distrust in the police locally, even if the PD who committed the wrongdoing is a completely different PD from another state)
• Violence spreads like a contagious diseases. Stopping the spread requires a two-pronged approach: prevention (better economics/social) that makes communities less vulnerable), and targeted isolation/intervention (don't let a few people keep spreading it!)

Obs.: I refer to some people as "progressive" between quotes, because the totalitarian discourse/logic they employ and the actual policies they impose are anything but progressive.

I DM you the citations, if you honesty actually care about it.

>Wait wait you do this then blame “progressives” the people who have been advocating for mental health services for inmates are the progressive man

I consider advocating for mental health services an actual progressive policy (not "progressive" between quotes). I have no problems with that and support it.

My criticism is aimed at the people who go around proclaiming that street violence is not a problem, as if criminal violence doesn't destabilize families and communities in ways that are not very different from the consequences of police brutality.

And yet these people somehow call themselves "progressive" (I put in quotes because they are anything but progressive).

I edited my comment to include citations.

Edit: welp, it looks like the moderators don't really like citations.

>Let's start by providing social services, free of charge or strings, to people who need them
>
>Housing reduces crime
>
>Education reduces crime
>
>Healthcare reduces crime
>
>Job opportunities reduce crime

The above are all fair and square and shouldn't be ignored.

But you do know that violent crimes themselves increase violent crimes more than poverty, right?

Among progressives, there's more than enough advocacy for social services and economic improvements.

But there's very little attention to the principal role of criminal violence itself on perpetuating the cycle of violence, which prevent families from lifting themselves out of poverty and perpetuates disproportionally negatively outcomes for minorities/POC.

Why is that?

Edit: my reply below was moderated immediately after I edited it to included citations to academic papers (from the Psychology of Violence journal and the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine).

>It wasn’t a first time offense

I didn't claim that he only offended once though.

I was pointing at how he came to commit his first offense, which is important for anyone who cares about root causes.

>concluding that getting tougher on crime is the answer.

That interpretation is on you and your own biases. Don't project your own biases on me.

It's a really tragic story on how Guallpa became a first-time violent offender himself (from the article):

>Luz Guamán, Guallpa’s wife, recalled him as a good father, often helping with housework and taking care of the kids. But the former construction worker, who lost his job after an onsite accident, fell into a dark depression after he was robbed outside his home in an assault in which he was hit in the head repeatedly.
>
>After that, Guallpa began drinking more and attacking his wife, who supported their family through her income from a clothing factory.

Considering that robberies are rising by more than 30% in NYC this year, and felony assaults are on pace to hit the record high for this century in NYC (https://imgur.com/a/uYPZgDY), how many more victims like Guallpa do we need before our fake-progressives start taking the issue seriously? Crimes are destroying families.

Edit: if you're outraged with the above paragraph by wrongly equating "taking the issue seriously" with "tough-on-crime far-right policy", you should check yourself for your own biases. While you might have an opposite moral compass, that suggests you have the same narrow-mindedness/lack of imagination as the far-right people you might despise.

Comparing races like that is just despicable and I condemn those statements.

It's either ignorant or disingenuous for this professor to make those claims as if asians-americans weren't systematically targeted, incarcerated in concentration camps, and had their properties seized (federally) a long time after the abolition of slavery and even the Jim Crow era.

I'd say Jennifer Lee being a more recent immigrant from Korea may be just oblivious to that and give her the benefit of the doubt, if it wasn't for a fact that as a professor she should've known the history a lot better.

So we are ready to dismiss the rise in traffic fatalities as a nationwide trend, therefore an issue people in NYC should just accept as a fact of life?

Is it a coincidence that there was a state law enacted in 2020 which made vehicular manslaughter not bail-eligible?

This is good, Eric Adams.

Please keep up the effort to help increase the housing supply in NYC.

I've edited my comment to include citations.

It's kind of amazing that De Blasio and others in the party believe that normalizing severe drug abuse is somehow a progressive policy.

In reality, they are implementing policies to bring back the 1800s, when as much as 1 out of 200 people in the US was addicted to an opioid. Then it took us almost a century (with drug trades by colonial powers, opium wars and more) to realize the damage such drug abuse can cause to a society.

There's a valid point on not criminalizing weed and such that I strongly agree with.

However, I disagree with the extreme we have today: allowing severe drug abuse to the point of causing damage to our society (which we are just starting to witness) is anything but progressive. This is regressive as fuck (1800s kind of regressive).

But you do know that the best way to come back to those crime posts is to prevent crimes in the first place?

It’s amazing that our fake-progressives in NYC want to normalized drug abuse, as if we lived in the 1800s (in the peak, as much as 1 out of 200 in the US was addicted to opium).

It’s hard to think of many policies that are more regressive than that.

NYC is great.

Don’t be deterred by all the talk about crime or other city issues.

You’ll notice that a lot of New Yorkers really care about the city, that’s why they are vocal, but that’s also a big part of why NYC is great.

How many people were murdered in the NYC jails this year?

>In this Life Inside essay, former New York City jails commissioner Vincent Schiraldi writes about why Rikers is "Exhibit A for why we need to end mass incarceration.”

NYC jail population has been declining fast and is extremely low now.

He punched and knocked the victim on the tracks.

Why wasn’t he charged with attempted murder?

Some people need to be helped.

But what is unsaid is that the individual is often not the only person who needs that help to happen. The public also needs it.

If it’s only for the individual’s benefit, maybe there’s a liberty/freedom argument here that they should be allowed to refuse help.

But in many of those cases, the need is also in the public interest.

And the balance of one individuals rights and the public’s rights need to enter into consideration.

In many of the cases we often hear about, I don’t think they should be allowed to refuse help.

>The folks that make up the street homeless causing crime or with untreated mental illness are the vast minority of homeless individuals.

That's part of why it doesn't make sense.

If it's such a small fraction of homeless who are mentally ill, severe drug abusers and/or violent causing so much grievance, why is there so much resistance to address it in more targeted and effective ways?

> Do you know the difference between an anecdote and data?

OP anecdote of feeling at a greater risk of physical harm actually correlates with the data.

The data shows crimes in 2022 are worse than in 2019.

For example, at the current rate, NYC is on track to end the year with 26000 felony assaults

That figure will be the largest amount of felony assaults in any year of this century... so far.

Felony assaults are not only rising, but the rise is accelerating (chart + source): https://imgur.com/a/VcoUFlx

Know that you’re not alone.

I hope our democrats will stop denying the obvious and stop making excuses soon.

The ideological elements in the party have caused so much harm by closing their eyes to the reality.

Good intentions don’t matter if that produces the wrong results.