practically speaking, cities and towns would have to be able to sustain that high level of policing, which hardly anyone wants.

But it'd be temporary for it to be that high, no? Am I misremembering, or is this basically the way that NYC stopped being so infamously crime-ridden? I was under the impression that it's not as aggressive now as it was then.

Hastily-googled, but this seems to confirm at least some of what I remember reading a while back: https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/what-reduced-crime-new-york-city

I think there’s very little appetite in America to actually put a police officer on every corner. Nobody would like living in that world.

Yeah, probably. Was just wondering about it hypothetically.

After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?