A combination of factors. Lower funding, suburbanization, growing means for home entertainment, growing wages sending people to more expensive options, etc.

I read something about the Carnegie libraries in Pittsburgh basically doing this way back when. Apparently it was popular for people to get off work, go home, clean up, eat, then head out to the library. There was stuff there for kids like story tellers, tutors, art workshops, and more. For adults, quiet places for people who just wanted to read, places for study, areas for people to discuss various subjects, classes on various skills (painting, pottery, carpentry, etc) and the ground floor main area had a general social space. They served coffee, food trucks set up outside, and some inside. It was a popular place for people who didn’t want to go to the bar.

I don’t feel the need to convert them, to get them to back off their bullshit. There are ways to move forward without them, we need to focus on working on that.

The only ways to force someone out of a cult is through forced deprogramming and by attrition, as you break the cult apart, or it naturally breaks down. So what do we do when the cult members you want to do this number in the millions, many of which are willing to resist violently?

That or the far right has gotten to a point where they will openly condemn anyone who isn’t racist regardless of their other political stances.

Hmm, looking at the data the rise started a few years before the decriminalization, peaked the year after, and has begun to decline, or at least plateau, again. It seems more like the the financial and societal stress of the pandemic, which took place during the same time, is probably a more likely factor. This happened all over, however things are beginning to decline, which is why the crime wave cries aren’t justified. Things are slowing down again after a high seen at the end of a world wide stress factor. We shall see how the next couple years plays out, will it continue to decline, plateau, or rise? Looks like things are moving in the direction of declining again.

The cops being babies probably had some affect on it. How much we wont know for a few years. Other places where the police had similar reactions are now in criminal decline again, after a peak at the end of the pandemic, such as Minneapolis. Seattle seems to still be on a rise, but there are more confounding factors than less police. Also, while a lot of these places had the highest straight numbers of things, the amount of crimes per capita is still significantly lower than in the 80s and early 90s, as the populations of most of the cities, that saw the worst increases, and the US as a whole, has increased greatly since.

But yeah, there are police departments all over the US who are either refusing to do a lot of their job after having regulations on the tightened, or even had their whole departments just quit. This, even though the general amount spent on police has actually been on the rise. The defund the police talking points aren’t really holding up due to this and, when you really start looking into the things said by the police, city officials, and communications/paper work filings, about their decline in number, it usually has more to do with them not liking growing transparency rules, less internal control over their investigation and penalties, and reduced protections offered by qualified immunity.

I can remember when crime actually was out of control in the US. In the 80s and 90s violent crime was far, far, worse than today. It was during a time where republicans had been at the head of federal government for most of 20 years, and the majority of roughly 40. to top it off, while the exact reason the decline happened is still debated on some points, most agree a series of progressive legislation passed in the 70s are amongst the primary factors that drove the decline in criminal activity.

Seriously, look for pictures of poor areas of major cities all over the US during that time, and the same for now. It is a night and day difference. We used to have large areas of major cities that looked like they had been bombed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtI-En92Xso

That’s cool, don’t share any information you are not comfortable with. Thank you for the reply.

Where did this happen, if you don’t mind saying. Just would like to read up on the incident.

Knowing the people who think like this, they probably imagine that is some sort of mobile lgbtq+ indoctrination center. Remember, any mention of people who are not straight and cis is pornography according to them.

central city porn distributors? Honey, we have the internet. Also the government controlled, tax paid, abortion clinic has a sales sign, so it’s still charging even though taxes are paying for it? I mean, I could totally see the US doing this but, leftists would just have the national healthcare system pay for it with the taxes and leave it at that.

So their two best candidates are a, multiple court case proven conman, and the man who protected a high profile pedophile for years? The US is doing really well at the moment.

Off the top of my head I can’t remember everything. However, he worked with several PACs to get a budget increase to the local schools, he and several members of the town’s staff retained money from several major corporations, like PNC, to fund a fairly diverse set of extra-curricular activities and clubs for the local school as well as cover the costs to the students for those activities. Braddock had pretty much no where for people under 21 to do anything so he worked with a number of groups to get a pretty decked out community center built that, beyond a place to hang out and play, offered martial arts, classes in visual arts, music lessons, after school tutoring, and, IIRC, Wiz Khalifa put in money to add a studio with classes on sound engineering, production, etc. He and his wife opened a free grocery store available to those without food. They laid the ground for a government run, non profit, grocery store to address the food desert situation as well as provide more affordable food. He worked with a number of local community leaders, from churches to business owners, to reach out to kids getting into trouble with police, give them part time jobs, teach trade work, etc.

He fought very hard to get a lot of infrastructure improvements as well. Roads, public buildings and facilities, etc. He also helped get funding for a free to user day care.

American, but I qualify for government insurance so everything tends to get covered and I pay nothing for it. Back pain is ultimately from Spina Bifida. Why this particular escalation in pain is happening, I believe, is because I recently spent a few days out of town which I slept on an air mattress. While the air mattress I have is a nice one, my back is exceptionally mercurial in attitude.

They sure do. Like the time I saw this Newsmax host, on his knees, in an alley just of Kensington, getting bukkaked by Trump and David Koch while at least 4 under aged boys were pissing on him.

Meh, fifth day of back pain strong enough to limit movement. Pain management had me get a nerve block. I am now in over night observation at the hospital. I start PT tomorrow, hopefully this gets better in a few days of therapy.

When I worked for Allegheny County I attended a bunch of meetings that included Fetterman. He seemed like a genuine dude. Spent a lot of his time as mayor of Braddock living in the rear of the town offices, he got nasty with established politicians in the town to get a number of his reforms passed and was a constant hound on the county execs until they granted funding to several of his projects.

Braddock, for those not from the Pittsburgh area, has been a really rough place for decades. It has been on the list of most dangerous places in the US repeatedly. His mayoral policies have been tied to a general decrease in violent crime, as well as several major improvements in the QOL stats in Braddock. The dude got to know the local gang youth and personally worked with a bunch of them to help them leave the life style. When one would get killed he would get their name tattooed on himself.

I would have preferred having his corpse in state office than that celebrity snake oil salesman.

huh, back when I was young, and people would still, occasionally, pester me into going to strip joints with them, we mostly just binge drank, did drugs, and occasionally got some dancers to facilitate more private services.

The people who seemed like they were actually, really, paying attention to the dancers were, well, even more creepy than your average strip club attendee.