Comment by CurtHagenlocher
5 months ago
Even if true, it would only be for one of the narrowest possible definitions of "crime". What can Flock do about mail fraud? About domestic violence? About wage theft? About falsified studies that lead to substances being misclassified as harmless? About price fixing? Does the majority of criminal activity even take place in "public" spaces?
It's common for people to talk about "crime" when what they really mean is something like "street crime" or "stranger crime" - some random person I don't know hurting me or taking my stuff. It's true that other kinds of crime are common, but the solutions to them probably look pretty different than the solutions to let me safely walk around anywhere in my city after dark.
> safely walk around anywhere in my city after dark
For that use case, the crimes to worry about the most would be speeding or distracted driving. But people are usually more focused on e.g. someone doing drugs on the sidewalk than speeding cars; in fact speeding is hardly considered a crime at all despite the danger to pedestrians.
I just don't understand the point of this kind of argument. I suspect you and I would agree on the reason why people focus this way - they see the guy doing drugs on the sidewalk (or the shooting on the news, or their friend who got mugged, or...), think it's spooky, and decide without looking up any numbers that it shouldn't happen again. It's true that a statistical analysis of mortality or injury risk would focus on other things, but they didn't run that analysis and don't agree that it should dictate their focus.