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Comment by adamsea | Hacker News Reader

> I chalk it up to incompetent city government (which frankly right now, is actually hostile to proper policing -- with a DA who has openly said such ...

What did the DA say? Not familiar.

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The DA has said no such thing. The new DA did run of a platform of not convicting when it doesn't do any good to - an evidence based legal philosophy that was made very clear on his website, sources included.

But he is pretty easy to pin a Communist red letter on and is the favorite punching bag of conservatives. He's a sort of "mascot of all that is wrong with Bad Communist San Francisco." "First they're a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, then they're a sanctuary for BURGLARS and BAD GUYS!!!"

The police union and conservative media often oversimplify his platform, I don't know why. The union could only stand to benefit from increased officer safety from policies that evidently reduce crime, but I think they want to believe the only solution to crime is throwing people in jail. As for conservative media I have no idea why we're the chosen target but whatever.

I'd say it has everything to do with the current state of affairs in SF. I don't think it's the post-apocalyptic hellhole that many make it out to be but property crime here is really out of hand.

Police don't take anything less than a stabbing serious (I had my motorcycle stolen and the police came by 6 hours after I called them and then jetted off to stabbing within 2 minutes of arriving). I called the police 6 times in the first few years I was here, every time they arrived at least an hour later and provided absolutely no help. Last time my motorcycle was stolen and I found the guy parting it out on Craigslist, they were of zero help. I just don't bother anymore.

One of my friends that lives on Capp street witnessed burglars in an obviously stolen car with stolen goods, divvying up those goods in the middle of the night, and then went into a neighboring house. My friend was on the phone with the police as it was happening and they recorded the whole ordeal on video. Police slowly cruised by an hour later and that was that.

I understand that jailing people won't magically fix all of our issues, but the approach we have been taking is obviously not working. We need to try something new. I personally like the idea of hiring more police and getting them to constantly patrol their beat so that they are in-tune with their community and the community feels the police presence. Because at the moment, parts of SF, especially the Mission, feel lawless as fuck.

24th & Capp? Has been gang territory back to the 70’s, so unless you get the feds involved or gentrify them it’s not going to change.

Isn't that area part of the gang injunction no-go zone? That was federal involvement IIRC.

Never heard of that, short of ankle monitoring, how would it work.

The DA was elected a few months ago, I don't know what you expect him to do about the history of property crime in the city.

I wasn't speaking about this DA in particular, but more about the conservative portrayal of the city and its failure to effectively deal with crime through liberal policies.

I've seen a great deal of conservative shrieking about "liberal policy" in san francisco, I've yet to see anybody effectively draw a line between policy and property crime in SF.

Property crime happens in every city I've lived in. Houston felt a better target for "liberal policy" being a liberal haven in a conservative state, and yet nobody jumped on them for their car breakins.

Basically, I'm skeptical of the political motivations of criticism of SF. If someone can provide an evidence based argument of bad policy I'm all ears. In the meantime I'm going to continue to vote for candidates, such as Chesea, with actual plans for tackling property crime.

SF hasn't had a "tough on crime" DA in the last 60 years. To think that Boudin would be a huge change from the previous do-nothing predecessors is laughable. He simply played up the compassion angle to court the socialist and progressive vote to defeat Loftus, who had the backing of the mainstream democratic party machine.

Nothing will change.

To what end? You're throwing around words like "socialist" and "progressive" as if these aren't all SF citizens that are facing the same crime issues as the ten conservatives in the city lol.

> Nothing will change.

Bet.

I was using the terms socialist, progressive, and democratic machine to describe the various parts of the SF "left" voter population.

Ok, but what's the point of getting elected to simply not do anything? You seem to be implying the goal was to act socialist enough to get elected and then I guess sit in the DA's office with his feet on the desk? Which is a strange accusation to make as a Chesea detractor, given that typically people like to point to his very socialist history and background.

He's certainly not pretending, lol.

Getting elected to office in SF is huge for one's political ambitions, even if they don't do anything meaningful to help the city.

You must be a bit innocent to think that a DA's priorities and stated goals of moving away from incarceration will not flow down to an understanding among police that they are being told to "look the other way" and that their efforts to arrest lawbreakers (their primary tool) are being made hollow and pointless by lack of follow through on the prosecution end.

"...Boudin said he will end cash bail and “tough-on-crime” sentencing enhancements, launch a unit to consider the immigration consequences of prosecutions and stop filing cases stemming from “illegal searches” after a minor traffic violation." -- https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/citys-new-progressive-da-che...

Immigration consequences of prosecutions -- just what do you think this means? People not getting prosecuted.

> just what do you think this means? People not getting prosecuted.

Seems a pretty big leap to me.

> cases stemming from “illegal searches” after a minor traffic violation."

Sounds constitutional to me.

> Boudin said he will end cash bail

Sounds fair to me.

> “tough-on-crime” sentencing enhancements

Sounds like evidence-based legal strategy to me.

I've yet to see any indication that effective prosecution will go down. In fact, part of Chesea's platform was increasing prosecution for felonies such as DWI.

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