You're so close to figure it out. Let me help you along:
Hiring more police doesn't stop crime.
400 more police officers on the payroll won't prevent someone from stealing a package off your porch and won't get your Amazon delivery back.
I would disagree to some level.
Policing is a multi-faceted task. One integral part is that of patrolling. If the staffing levels are not high enough, then officers are always "on a call" (stationary at one location, often for a long time if the crime is significant) and cannot be seen randomly patrolling higher crime areas.
It has been shown many times in LE study data that higher density of officers on the street does push crime rates down. Admittedly it does not eliminate crime, but it reduces crime in hard-hit areas, when the officer presence is greater.
Some may argue that hiring more officers hasn't helped in their area, and that may well be true. But I would say that hiring "more" isn't a well defined statistic. How many more does "more" represent? In the example above, if 400 hundred were hired, how many also retired in that same year?
Actual example in fact; this is data from the last eight years in for IMPD (Indianapolis Metro PD). In Indianapolis there is data to show that 800 officers have been hired since the current Mayor took office 8 years ago. But the mayoral challenger in the race brought up the fact that 900 have retired/quit. So the net effect is a loss of officers on the street. My point isn't one of politics; it's that facts can be misleading when you only look at parts of the situation, and not the situation in its totality.
Most simply put: If hiring "X" LEOs didn't reduce crime in an area, then the simple reality is that "X" wasn't a large enough number to have the desired effect. Now, there may be a financial limit to what any agency can afford to hire; they are limited by funds appropriated to them by a governing entity. Or, maybe the situation at that agency is unattractive and the rate of pay per officer isn't sufficient to retain them.
The assertion that hiring more officers would never fix a problem is a problematic and misleading statement. There is almost always a quantity of resources that would fix most any problem, IF AND ONLY IF the allocation of resources is supported to a level which actually makes a difference. In the quoted example above, those "400 officers" may be a very large improvement to a department which had 400 to start with (doubling their street presence). It may be a pittance to a department that has over one thousand, and also has hundreds quit/retire each year.
The rational understanding of this topic is broader than the LEO application... Even if we were talking about other topics:
- spilled beverages on a countertop; a larger spill is more easily mitigated with more paper towels, you need enough to fully clean up the mess
- vegetables in a garden during a drought need more water; if the water increase is insufficient, they may still die off. The only way to secure a decent harvest is to add enough water that the veggies produce an output to the desired level
- buying a growing teen new shoes once a year may not keep up with the growth rate; they may need new shoes twice a year. The child needs "more" than one set of new shoes in a year's time.
- etc .....
My point is that adding resources is a statement of ambiguity; it does not address a specific desired outcome.
The question isn't "did you add cops to the beat"; the question is "did you add enough cops to the beat to get the desired result"? If the answer is no, then you really should not be holding up the "facts" as evidence of failure. The failure was ensured when the resourced element was left short.
Sooooooo ...... how does this circle back to the porch pirate topic?
If enough officers are added to the situation, then the likely effect will be a reduction of thefts. Having more police to freely roam (increasing patrol density) most certainly has been proven time and time again to reduce crime in targeted areas.
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