Perhaps a little exaggeration on my part but the idea that police need to respond swiftly and in large numbers in an ambush-like method is sound.
@Liquid proper policing of petty crime can help widespread problems but the area I live in is not riddled with petty crime. This is an eccentric area with a hospital and wealthy private university campus nearby. The takeover took place on the main street where all the college bars are. It's relatively quiet.
These takeovers are effectively ambushes themselves. Like raccoons, they gather in packs randomly, and when they get spooked they scatter in all directions, continuing to break all the rules while they do that. It requires a concerted response to actually catch and contain. Cops did a decent job - they showed up within about three minutes and when I circled back there were still three cop cars there with another off in the distance with flashing lights. I'm not sure what the cops were discussing but I do find it annoying that they aren't able to discover this behavior by themselves - this event was going on a half mile from my house and while home I could hear it plain as day from
inside my house. I hear it probably once a week on average. Hopefully the cops were discussing how they were close enough to arrive within a couple minutes but weren't close enough to hear it with their own ears with their windows rolled down.
I've decided I'm going to start going out of my way to go find these events when I hear them and report them because apparently nobody else is doing it. None of the kids standing in line at the bar called it in, and the people who work at the UDF gas station didn't call it in. The dispatcher sounded totally surprised when I reported it. Am I the only one around here who gives a **** about correcting somebody when they're wrong? Where is our accountability as a society? If individuals refuse to hold each other accountable then screw it I'll call the badges every time, I pay taxes for a reason. We can make it complicated.
Dayton could certainly do patrolling better though I'm not sure constant patrolling qualifies as broken windows policing. That's just them doing their jobs, being in a car and making their rounds 24/7, going out of their way to be seen on main streets and in neighborhoods.
The bottom line is that people need to know their chances of getting caught are high. Currently they are confident they can get away with anything. That needs to change and I think a really effective way to change that quickly is the brute-force methods of sending a lot of cops every single time.
You saw someone doing donuts and you're ready to start some police brutality?
I do understand anger and outrage at the image of someone putting others in danger on purpose. And you did the right thing by calling the police. But even in your anger, you do need to remember that the police ALSO do this. Don't place your full trust in the people with badges. Because sometimes they're even worse than donut guy.
This is why some restraint is necessary. Because we're ALL just people, including the authorities. So as much as you might be angry at donut guy, you don't have the tools you think you do to make everyone safe. Police violence might cut down on some behavior, but it comes at great cost as well. What we all need is a measured approach.
I should clarify that this wasn't just a person, it was a street takeover. I happened to be circled by one car but there were at least five in the gas station waiting their turn and a crowd of 20+ people on the sidewalk cheering them on. It's a routine thing that I hear from my house probably once a week. If they were selling drugs or doing deals we'd call it organized crime. Massive problem in big cities, I'm sure you've heard the news, and nothing gets done so in those places it is truly lawless and out of control. I don't want that to happen here.
Also, whether the reps will do anything about this lawlessness problem… IDK how it’d play out in Ohio, but in Sweden, our government was elected two years ago in part cuz they promised to tackle gang crime which especially in bigger cities has gotten increasingly worse over the past couple years. Two years later, there appears to be no difference. If anything, the cynic in me would argue that they’re expoiting the crime just to get elected, but what do I know. Even in the US, as showcased by @UKMikey in the election thread:
Point is, I’m not sure if the Reps should ever be trusted with… anything? I can understand the frustration about the perceived lawlessness, but I’d also try to consider why it’s happening, especially post-2020. Long-covid? Climate change-induced nihilism? Sensational news reporting (not necessarily appliable in all cases, like yours)? You even suggest it in your own comment:
I'm curious what your take is on this in European society. In America, I'm percieving a widespread lack of accountability, both within individual behavior, as well as people interacting with each other. Basic concepts of decency are gone unless you're in a relatively wealthy area of a city and there seems to be almost no social enforcement of decency anymore. Nobody corrects other people or calls them out when they're doing something wrong.
A tiny car-related example. As a child I was taught that when somebody is driving without their headlights on, you flash at them, or you flicker your lights on and off to get their attention and figure it out. That used to be a widely understood norm but today it's perceived as a threat. How the hell did that happen? I've never seen more cars in my life driving without headlights on when it's freaking dark out, and I could write a whole thing on the causes of this but the immediate solution of being corrected by your peers simply stopped happening. Today, people allow other people to have bad behavior, and the bad behavior persists and grows out of control. Little details like this add up and eventually result in a society full of morons who have no idea what they're doing and nobody to correct them.
The authorities can quote violent crime statistics all they want and tell me crime is improving and all that, fine. Good. But it's clear to me that at the individual level society has fallen further out of order and generally gotten stupider as I've gotten older. Nobody gives a flying crap anymore about anything, and they won't stand up and tell somebody to their face that they're being an ass, and they won't scold or punish anymore, and they won't enforce anything person to person because literally everything as perceived as a threat these days. Obviously there's a huge difference between what I'm talking about here and what I did last night - nobody thinks it's a good idea to walk up to a group of 20 assholes and think you're going to solve that problem in a reasonable way.
People are softer and dumber than ever. Bunch of degenerates with no respect. Who raised these assholes, Gen X?
@Danoff
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