During military officer education, I read an article on an effort to clean up crime in New York City.
The NYC police departments had a policy of ignoring the “small stuff” and concentrating only on “big” crimes. Also, they were more concerned about police corruption than fighting crime. NYC was becoming progressively more unsafe.
One of the crime-fighting initiatives was to crack down on small crime, such as shoplifting. This had the effect of convincing NYC residents that the police were finally doing something to make neighborhoods safer. In addition, a rather surprising result was that people who were arrested on minor charges often had outstanding warrants for more serious crimes. Thus, the crackdown on minor crime led directly to arrests on more serious charges. And NYC became safer as a result.
I believe this happened under mayor Rudy Guiliani. He appointed a new police chief who oversaw the change of direction for the police departments.
The state of California, of course, is going in exactly the opposite direction. By ignoring small crimes, it is allowing (encouraging) criminals to move up to more serious crimes. Why not? Don’t they get away with it? This is just one more reason I did not return to California after retiring.
You can hear that entitled criminal saying repeatedly, "There ain't nothing you can do."
Unwarranted confidence there.