I think people believe the more cops = less crime fallacy is because they associate police presence with safety (eg, deterrence). And if you believe in the theories of crime that argue crime is a moral and/or opportunistic choice, then I get why people would think this.
I think this is why the broken windows model, flaws and all, became so popular; people need to perceive there is no disorder in order to believe it’s not happening.
If you need a study for this you already lost. You clearly don’t live in a city with antisocial behavior and crime. Loved experience is more valid than some “study” lol
Like if you seriously don't think, for example, that lax enforcement of fare jumping doesn't *encourage* more fare jumping (and criminal behavior) then I have a bridge to sell you. Letting homeless sleep in libraries encourages more homeless to sleep in libraries.
What is overlooked by having massive police forces, or those with qualified immunity, and the 'thin blue line' code of silence, is that the police themselves become a criminal gang. One that is taught 'warrior cop' mentality, that there is us, and everyone else we must intimidate and control. Corruption, rape, murder, domestic violence, all common issues. As are 'special units' some that dote on violence and literally put notches on their guns.
This is rooted in how the US police forces were constituted first from the state constitutions that required males between 14 and 50 to own a firearm and participate in slave patrols, then after reconstruction the KKK and the police were often the same, as the lyrics say 'some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses.'
More recently it is the outright militarization of US police forces as a domestic pacification and occupation force as many came out of the GWOT as did the equipment, tactics, and intelligence methods against our own population.
Crime often comes from the failure of civil society to provide; it is lower in societies that have lower levels of inequality and higher levels of happiness. What provides those are no mystery, but doing so in the US is against the individualistic and capitalistic values that keep being perpetuated as national myth, when in reality all progress was a function of social investment and communitarianism.
Non police response to social needs work, one of the first in the country was the Eugene Oregon CAHOOTS program created in 1989, it became a model for other cities to craft their own, Portland Oregon has its Street Response program. Olympia, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Denver all created programs inspired by it. Mental health, social worker, medic led units to deal with issues that often police respond poorly to when confronted with someone in crisis, or a need they are unprepared to fulfill.
"Despite the white-people white-knuckling their pearls, the truth is that American police were never defunded"
This is patently untrue. Many, many cities have fewer cops or did not keep up with population growth. Many lefty politicians talked about "attrition" and shifting resources.
This blog is a pathetic.
Hint: The majority of Black people in DC actually want MORE cops in the more dangerous areas, not whatever you white lefties want to impose on them. But that would go against your race baiting, so you ignore it.
At the end of the day, "Free busses" is due to a politicians fear of enforcing the law and being called out by leftists like Joe. In Joe's mind, forcing someone to pay a bus fare is racist, and should be stopped.
I'm working on a research proposal for a different project, so I just looked at the 2018 Berkely paper asking "Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced?" I wish I had more time to consider your question as it's a worthwhile route of inquiry, but here's my initial response:
1. Concluding that US cities are underpoliced does not hold up to scrutiny when comparing the levels of crime and policing in the US to those of other countries. It is obvious that many other factors contribute to crime rates if other countries have much lower rates of imprisonment and crime alongside lower rates of policing.
2. The underlying theory of deterrence described in the paper is part of the issue. It oversimplifies things to only consider one factor - does having police deter crime? At it's simplest, the answer is yes. However, the same could likely be said for any other form of accountability or consequence that wasn't police. Chinese social credit scores likely prevent crime through accountability, ancient societies that shunned group members for their acts likely prevented crime through accountability. The theory also doesn't account for the fact that crime itself is a social construct, for example direct theft is punished more harshly than wage theft, even though the outcomes may be quite similar. Nor does it account for all of the harms that policing causes when police are used for minor crimes. The book The New Jim Crow details the racially disparate enforcement of law. To give just one example, they note the fact that black and white people use drugs at similar rates, but black people are highly disproportionately arrested for it, facing lifelong consequences while white people have the ability to be contributing members of their community while also doing things that we have created laws to prevent. Studies show that high incarceration rates in an area break down community ties and weaken labor power leading to lower wages and all sorts of other negative effects which perpetuate involvement in the justice system (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9387667/).
3. The authors focus on murder and violent crimes in this paper, but police in the US have notoriously low clearance rates for murder investigations, police themselves are responsible for about 5% of all murders in the US (I wrote about this here: https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/dexters-copaganda-part-1), and the justice system has murdered many innocent people through the death penalty (as shown by The Innocence Project). This is not even counting that once people are in prison, they face higher rates of death due to violence from other inmates and guards and high rates of suicide and drug overdose (with guards frequently providing drugs), which I wrote a little about here: https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/the-american-solution.
Overall, the narrow statistical focus of this paper may make it technically true, but not worth much in regards to policy decision-making as the conclusion the authors want you to take - US cities are underpoliced - does not follow from the data they present. Supportive programming across the US is showing that you can reduce crime without relying on policing and incarceration, from Hawaii's youth system (https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/prison-abolition) to Connecticut (https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/how-connecticut-reduced-both-crime), to Baltimore's violence intervention programming. More policing may be statistically shown to deter some crime, but at a huge direct cost to communities (through both police budgets and lives lost to police and prisons) and an even bigger opportunity cost due to the supportive programming not able to be funded because of the amount spent on police. The question we should be asking ourselves is, does supportive programming prevent crime? To which the answer is a resounding yes. And if so, why would we continue to push for increased policing? (https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/policing-is-not-prevention)
Given that police in the US are uniquely deadly among peer nations, maybe there is something wrong with our institution, police culture, and training which cannot be solved by more police.
If we accept your claim that European cities are safer than US cities, why select policing from among the many other potential causes? If we focused on murder rates as the most accurate crime data could we not look at the proliferation of guns in the US vs Europe as a causal factor? If we look at theft, why not consider differences in wealth inequality and level of social safety net? How do medical debt, privatized health/mental health care, and homelessness play into all this? All major differences between the US and many European countries that don't factor into a one sentence response implying causation with no proof.
I think people believe the more cops = less crime fallacy is because they associate police presence with safety (eg, deterrence). And if you believe in the theories of crime that argue crime is a moral and/or opportunistic choice, then I get why people would think this.
I think this is why the broken windows model, flaws and all, became so popular; people need to perceive there is no disorder in order to believe it’s not happening.
Not saying it’s right, but I understand.
The broken windows model has been proven true hundreds of times.
Not so.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-university-researchers-find-little-evidence-for-broken-windows-theory-say-neighborhood-disorder-doesnt-cause-crime/?utm_source=News%40Northeastern+Email+%28opt-in%29&utm_campaign=6e97706e61-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_21_12_47&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_87debeefe9-6e97706e61-278691341
If you need a study for this you already lost. You clearly don’t live in a city with antisocial behavior and crime. Loved experience is more valid than some “study” lol
Like if you seriously don't think, for example, that lax enforcement of fare jumping doesn't *encourage* more fare jumping (and criminal behavior) then I have a bridge to sell you. Letting homeless sleep in libraries encourages more homeless to sleep in libraries.
This is common sense. No "study" needed.
"My lived experience is more important than qualitative data" is peak wokeism. Sorry, but we deal with Facts — not feelings — here at JoeWrote.
DC metro started enforcing fares and crimes on buses and trains dropped by like 50%. Try harder.
Are you saying that not enforcing crime doesn't encourage more crime?
You honestly think you need a "study" for this?
You must be a parody account lol.
What lifeless, cookie-cutter suburb do you live in Joe?
Matt, bro, I lived in Manhattan during the 80s 😂 STFU.
Then you must recognize how and why the city got cleaner. Appreciate your insight!
It wasn’t because of broken windows - correlation isn’t causation.
What is overlooked by having massive police forces, or those with qualified immunity, and the 'thin blue line' code of silence, is that the police themselves become a criminal gang. One that is taught 'warrior cop' mentality, that there is us, and everyone else we must intimidate and control. Corruption, rape, murder, domestic violence, all common issues. As are 'special units' some that dote on violence and literally put notches on their guns.
This is rooted in how the US police forces were constituted first from the state constitutions that required males between 14 and 50 to own a firearm and participate in slave patrols, then after reconstruction the KKK and the police were often the same, as the lyrics say 'some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses.'
More recently it is the outright militarization of US police forces as a domestic pacification and occupation force as many came out of the GWOT as did the equipment, tactics, and intelligence methods against our own population.
Crime often comes from the failure of civil society to provide; it is lower in societies that have lower levels of inequality and higher levels of happiness. What provides those are no mystery, but doing so in the US is against the individualistic and capitalistic values that keep being perpetuated as national myth, when in reality all progress was a function of social investment and communitarianism.
Non police response to social needs work, one of the first in the country was the Eugene Oregon CAHOOTS program created in 1989, it became a model for other cities to craft their own, Portland Oregon has its Street Response program. Olympia, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Denver all created programs inspired by it. Mental health, social worker, medic led units to deal with issues that often police respond poorly to when confronted with someone in crisis, or a need they are unprepared to fulfill.
Found the guy who doesn't know a cop.
My neighbor is one, my cousin a sheriff's deputy for 30 years, but nice try at an ad hominem retort with no substance to refute any facts mentioned!
"Despite the white-people white-knuckling their pearls, the truth is that American police were never defunded"
This is patently untrue. Many, many cities have fewer cops or did not keep up with population growth. Many lefty politicians talked about "attrition" and shifting resources.
This blog is a pathetic.
Hint: The majority of Black people in DC actually want MORE cops in the more dangerous areas, not whatever you white lefties want to impose on them. But that would go against your race baiting, so you ignore it.
At the end of the day, "Free busses" is due to a politicians fear of enforcing the law and being called out by leftists like Joe. In Joe's mind, forcing someone to pay a bus fare is racist, and should be stopped.
And people wonder why Trump won.
I don't think bus fare is racist.
You can tell how out of touch Joe is when he thinks the "the cause of the assault altogether" is not the criminal, but a ..... bus fare.
Joe, have you lived in a city and taken a bus before? Doubt it.
Armchair, suburban leftists trying to solve city crime is hilarious.
How do you assess the social science that says more cops does result in less crime?
If you provided examples of this, it would be easier to evaluate your claim. Which studies are you referring to?
Here are three examples, by no means comprehensive:
- https://www.princeton.edu/~smello/papers/cops.pdf
- https://eml.berkeley.edu/~jmccrary/chalfin_mccrary2018.pdf
- https://morganwilliamsjr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Chalfin_et_al_2021_WP.pdf
I'm working on a research proposal for a different project, so I just looked at the 2018 Berkely paper asking "Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced?" I wish I had more time to consider your question as it's a worthwhile route of inquiry, but here's my initial response:
1. Concluding that US cities are underpoliced does not hold up to scrutiny when comparing the levels of crime and policing in the US to those of other countries. It is obvious that many other factors contribute to crime rates if other countries have much lower rates of imprisonment and crime alongside lower rates of policing.
2. The underlying theory of deterrence described in the paper is part of the issue. It oversimplifies things to only consider one factor - does having police deter crime? At it's simplest, the answer is yes. However, the same could likely be said for any other form of accountability or consequence that wasn't police. Chinese social credit scores likely prevent crime through accountability, ancient societies that shunned group members for their acts likely prevented crime through accountability. The theory also doesn't account for the fact that crime itself is a social construct, for example direct theft is punished more harshly than wage theft, even though the outcomes may be quite similar. Nor does it account for all of the harms that policing causes when police are used for minor crimes. The book The New Jim Crow details the racially disparate enforcement of law. To give just one example, they note the fact that black and white people use drugs at similar rates, but black people are highly disproportionately arrested for it, facing lifelong consequences while white people have the ability to be contributing members of their community while also doing things that we have created laws to prevent. Studies show that high incarceration rates in an area break down community ties and weaken labor power leading to lower wages and all sorts of other negative effects which perpetuate involvement in the justice system (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9387667/).
3. The authors focus on murder and violent crimes in this paper, but police in the US have notoriously low clearance rates for murder investigations, police themselves are responsible for about 5% of all murders in the US (I wrote about this here: https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/dexters-copaganda-part-1), and the justice system has murdered many innocent people through the death penalty (as shown by The Innocence Project). This is not even counting that once people are in prison, they face higher rates of death due to violence from other inmates and guards and high rates of suicide and drug overdose (with guards frequently providing drugs), which I wrote a little about here: https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/the-american-solution.
Overall, the narrow statistical focus of this paper may make it technically true, but not worth much in regards to policy decision-making as the conclusion the authors want you to take - US cities are underpoliced - does not follow from the data they present. Supportive programming across the US is showing that you can reduce crime without relying on policing and incarceration, from Hawaii's youth system (https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/prison-abolition) to Connecticut (https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/how-connecticut-reduced-both-crime), to Baltimore's violence intervention programming. More policing may be statistically shown to deter some crime, but at a huge direct cost to communities (through both police budgets and lives lost to police and prisons) and an even bigger opportunity cost due to the supportive programming not able to be funded because of the amount spent on police. The question we should be asking ourselves is, does supportive programming prevent crime? To which the answer is a resounding yes. And if so, why would we continue to push for increased policing? (https://bathruminations.substack.com/p/policing-is-not-prevention)
Cities in Europe are policed more than the US and are much, much safer.
1. According to this 2023 report, Chicago and New York both have more police personnel capita than London and they have narrower responsibilities than London police (https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183480/1/global_cities_officer_benchmarking.pdf)
Seems there's a lot more data you'd need to make that claim.
2. "The United States far exceeds most wealthy democracies in killings by police, and officers seldom face legal consequences." (https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-police-compare-different-democracies)
Given that police in the US are uniquely deadly among peer nations, maybe there is something wrong with our institution, police culture, and training which cannot be solved by more police.
3. The US has consistently higher police per capita than Canada (https://www.statista.com/statistics/529925/police-personnel-rate-in-canada-and-us/).
4. "Income inequality in the U.S. is higher than any country in Europe, even Russia. Wealth inequality is higher than all European countries except Russia and esoterically inegalitarian Sweden." (https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/04/26/america-and-europe-are-equally-poor/)
If we accept your claim that European cities are safer than US cities, why select policing from among the many other potential causes? If we focused on murder rates as the most accurate crime data could we not look at the proliferation of guns in the US vs Europe as a causal factor? If we look at theft, why not consider differences in wealth inequality and level of social safety net? How do medical debt, privatized health/mental health care, and homelessness play into all this? All major differences between the US and many European countries that don't factor into a one sentence response implying causation with no proof.
The cost comparisons are garbage
1. No PPP adjustment
2. No population adjustment
3. No inflation adjustment
Eg in last 10 years budget has really only increased by 10% in real terms. Not 50%.
Can you show the math behind that 10% figure?
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
$1.50 in August 2025 -> $1.10 in August 2015
.40/1.10 =0.364 . So that’s a 36.4% increase.
Yes, inflation was 36.4%. Real cost growth was 10%