Burglars switch to homes in S.F. as tourists, and their cars, stay away | Hacker News Reader

Burglars switch to homes in S.F. as tourists, and their cars, stay away

sfchronicle.com

46 pointsundefined110 comments

> Alan Byard, who runs a city-sanctioned private police unit that works closely with the SFPD and covers the Marina, Cow Hollow and Pacific Heights, said businesses and boarded-up storefronts are also prime targets.

Wait a minute. The rich neighbourhoods have their own private police? Very clever. I like this very much.

These things are how Prop13-windfall-recipients have their cake and eat it too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mello-Roos

Very neat. It allows you to ensure that your 'property' taxes now only go to your locality. A recipe for great disparity, certainly, but I can see how it was easy to get approved.

Yep! On-paper segregation might be illegal post-1968, so Prop 13 just makes maintaining old segregation the only financially reasonable thing for people to do, because they will never want to sell their house, move, and suddenly owe substantially more in property tax. Shift the focus to the District level, give your District fun special Mello-Roos toys, convince other Districts that they are in danger of something called "gentrification" ("Save the Mission!!!"), and the rest has worked out pretty much like that would all imply, in a way any reasonable individual participant thinks is their own decisionmaking :/

http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea

The organization Byard heads long predates Mello-Roos. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Patrol_Special_P..., https://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/contact.html (lists Byard as President), and https://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/history.html And AFAIU Mello-Roos isn't implicated at all; patrols are funded through private contracts with homeowners and neighborhood groups.

TL;DR: The Special Patrol is a quasi-private police force organized years before creation of the public police department. SFPD has been trying to get rid of them for many, many years, but I'm guessing SF's old money keeps them around as a hedge. SFPD did successfully get their arrest powers stripped, though. (According to Wikipedia stripped in 1994, which is recent on a 150+ year timeline.)

I don't see what the problem is, honestly. Sure, poorer neighborhoods can't afford their own private police force. But it does free up resources to be redirected to those neighborhoods. And it's not like SF's elite are miserly when it comes to funding the city--they're happy to pay for their private police force and a robust public police force, not instead of a public force. Anyhow, some of those poorer neighborhoods are now agitating for fewer public police. Go figure.

EDIT: Special Patrol commissions seem to be transferable: "Patrol special police officers designated as the owners of a certain beat or territory or the legal heirs or representatives of the owners may dispose of their interest in the beat or territory to a person of good moral character, approved by the Police Commission and eligible for appointment as a patrol special police officer." https://sfpatrolspecpolice.com/charter.html That's cool.

That explains how the 1% can support this "defund and abolish police" radicalism. They live behind walls and have their own private security.

This implies that the same level of crime, mind you, was completely acceptable when it was perpetrated against outsiders. Cry me a river, San Francisco.

It does not imply that in any way.

Sweet username

What on Earth? You should know that people will read this as a statement more about you and less about SF.

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