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Comment by uoaei | Hacker News Reader

Lack of response by police is expected, warranted, and even desired if the reason for this lack is that they are neglecting property crimes to prevent violent crimes elsewhere.

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I believe the crimes in question are muggings and an armed robbery in which a gun was pointed at an employee. It is a stretch to call those strictly property crimes.

So armed robbery doesn't qualify as a violent crime in SF now?

In my experience, police are more likely to focus on corporate property crimes than violent crime. It seems to be a sick game of incentives gone wrong... the police department just needs to grow, so it needs more money.

So it protects the corporate taxpayer over everyday victims.

But this very case is an example of a corporate taxpayer getting screwed over by municipal indifference (to the point where they were hiring private security, but even that was not enough).

You're right, it does seem like a strong counterexample. But I'm not sure how cops would fix this one directly either - they surely can't station an officer at the store all the time.

Part of my point is that they spend so much time on things like traffic tickets and civil forfeiture, little time is left for actually prosecuting these criminals.

https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-cash-from...

It's a big cultural change that could take months or years to see the difference in daily shoplifting amounts.

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