zlacker

>>robthe+(OP)
> The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest.

Does street crime in fact continue to fall? I keep hearing about bicycles getting stolen, or how in London, mobile phones get snatched. It was also common to hear how police fails to prosecute various kinds of crime (usually mentioned in contrast to how they do prosecute noncrime crimes such as 'hate speech').

Here, for comparison, is a paragraph from an essay by Konstantin Kisin:

> A month earlier, I was walking through a posh part of London when I saw a young man in a balaclava snatch a bag from a tourist. When I told people about what I saw at various meetings, most people were surprised that I was surprised. Phone thefts, muggings and all kinds of petty crime are now considered normal and routine.

Which story is correct?

[0] -https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/theres-good-news-for-brita...

>>azangr+Hf
Everyone in London knows what happens if you try to report "minor" street crime.

Obviously everyone saying the UK isn't a utopia is a Russian bot, and we should be censoring them.

>>fidotr+jg
Fine, but also how to explain the crazy claims flying around the internet that London is a warzone and a no-go area? I live here and... seriously, nothing has changed. I feel perfectly safe and always have.

Yeah sure, there's some phone theft, it's not great. This phone theft wave is just a symptom of everyone carrying £500 devices around. Big cities have always had theft, pickpocket and snatching crimes. But it's nothing astonishingly new or different. I know one person who had their phone snatched, never seen it happen myself.

So how to explain this massive wave of social media posts making out that London's unsafe? There is definitely a narrative being pushed, whether by Russian bots or not, I cannot say.

>>widder+Kw
Because everyone that experiences the crime stops tolerating it and leaves. This is why the area around the greenbelt so closely resembles the inner cities of 20 years before. This isn't some new phenomenon - Lee Kuan Yew famously described the newspaper purchasing arrangement at Piccadilly Circus in the 1950s, which was incomprehensible by the 1980s.

I'm old enough to remember when they had posters telling people not to wear iPod white earphones because that will get you mugged (and it would) - pure blaming the victim nonsense.

If London defenders were half as enthusiastic about cleaning up their city as they are about attacking anyone pointing out the all too obvious problems they genuinely would be in utopia.

>>fidotr+4G
What are we supposed to do to “clean up our city”? I live in one of the worst areas, statistically, for crime and haven’t experienced anything beyond porch piracy and someone trying my car door.

My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about. Obviously crime happens, but against other comparable large cities it’s only really Tokyo and a few cities in semi-authoritarian countries that seem that much safer to me. Big European cities are about the same and US cities are much worse.

Beyond reporting anything I see, which I do, I’m not sure what kind of cleaning up you expect me to do? Obviously it’s a factor in how I vote, but it’s not even a top 3 issue to be honest.