In Southern California...
We had 4 washes up until about 2018, two in a county coverage area and two in a city. The city began to seriously struggle financially (bankrupt) to the point that "low priority calls" would regularly take 3 or more days to receive a response. We dealt with homeless camping in our bays, stolen cars being dumped, serious graffiti and vandalism but we chugged on. We attended "coffees with a cop" meetings and would walk away slack jawed at the disconnect we were seeing from our police. The lieutenants and captains would tell the elderly homeowners to call the police if they saw transients digging for recyclables in their waste cans juxtaposed with us trying to get police help for felony level vandalism, obstruction of a business, shootings, open drug use / sales, etc. One night at about 2 a.m. my wife was checking the cameras and woke me up saying there were 3 guys trying to break in at the wash that was in the city coverage area. They had 6-foot pry bars, sledgehammers, and bolt cutters. I immediately called the police to ask for help, and they indicated they "would send an officer as soon as possible." I called 5 more times over the next hour and the dispatcher finally revealed they had no officers available to assist, they were all on other high priority calls, all 6 of them in a 300,000 population city leaving the entire city without coverage. I asked if they could send the Highway Patrol, the sheriff, school police, request an assist from another city, anything to stop the damage that was occurring. All requests were denied. An hour and 15 minutes after my first call, an officer drove by the business with his alley lights on very slowly and let them run off into the night. When I arrived, I asked the officer why he didn't give chase. He indicated if he had done that, he'd have to process them, keeping him off the street for a few hours and that there already were no officers available in the entire city. After hearing this shocking revelation, having already experienced a history of poor service from the department, and inspecting the thousands of dollars in damage, the decision to shut the business down was made on the spot. When those experiences are contrasted with the outstanding service we receive from our sheriff's department, the importance of strong law enforcement becomes all too clear.
We MUST have the support required to protect private property and our ability to engage in commerce, if not, the imbalance of criminal activity will crush our pursuit of profit.
-Sorry Debra, that's as positive as I can get with this topic.