Most people mistakenly assume that police solve crimes on a daily basis. According to University of Utah law professor Shima Baughman’s research, just 11% of significant crimes end in an arrest and 2% in a conviction. A significant proportion of serious crimes usually remain unsolved.

What are police doing instead? Most cops spend between 46% and 81% of their time on “unassigned” duties, such as eating lunch or filling out paperwork. And when they’re on patrol, cops playing with their phones has become such a problem that even Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop himself, has expressed his “frustration.” Two weeks after the subway shooting, Adams asked New Yorkers to send him photos of officers using their phones while on duty. “We are going to start taking very aggressive actions to make sure police are patrolling our subway system and not patrolling their iPhone,” the mayor warned.