To give you an analogy that might help, high covid infection numbers are bad always, but low covid numbers can be either good (if the covid numbers are truly down) or bad (if the real numbers are just not being tracked properly/swept under the rug, and people are just not getting tested enough).
But to give a direct answer to your original question, yes, low crime numbers are bad when they are the result of prosecution and enforcement not doing their job, as opposed to being the result of crime actually going down.
Lies, damn lies and statistics is still applicable and relevant today, if conveniently forgotten.
Just to bring something else to this discussion, Chesa didn’t run on statistics. He ran on a soft-on-crime message and delivered. Since this is an elected office, he didn’t answer to the Mayor, so he didn’t benefit from the Mayor’s cover but also wasn’t in the same chain of command as SFPD, so when the voters turned, they turned directly on him and this being an elected office, he just didn’t have a good story to tell or the support he needed from the communities he needed it from. The real statistics don’t even matter at that point because statistics don’t run for office or win elections.
The answer is it depends on the context.
