[bkirwi]

FWIW, this is addressed in the article and the paper it covers: the slowdown involved reduced "proactive policing" -- "systematic and aggressive enforcement of low-level violations" -- but the observed drop is in major crimes like burglary and assault. The authors also do some work to control for the overall crime reporting rate.

[falcrist]

I'm a bit confused... Everyone is assuming that the police wouldn't respond to calls during this period, but the article doesn't suggest that this was the case.

Even looking through articles in 2014 and 2015 doesn't provide me with any evidence that police weren't showing up to crime scenes... just that they weren't doing the "proactive policing" thing.

Am I missing something here?

[nanis]

Showing up after the crime has been committed is not the same as being around to deter crime.