San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
And that's really it. We've put to the people in ballot initiative after initiative to reduce crimes and penalties for 'nonviolent crimes', which people will happily vote with good conscious for because of the word non-violent.
But nonviolent to whom? We're forgetting that they're still crimes, that they add up and degrade quality of life, and can violently ruin lives without striking a blow. Whoever worked in these Walgreen stores now need to find a new job, and had they been small businesses, closing up shop could ruin their entire career. I had someone come into my garage in the middle of the night in December, who woke me up and I confronted him. He ran away, so it was technically a nonviolent crime, yet I couldn't sleep for weeks and haven't felt fully safe in my home ever sense. The psychological damage is done.
We have a tendency to focus on the criminals with open arms trying to reintegrate and not overly punish people, and completely lose track of the victims. And when there's no credible consequences for bad actions, criminals become emboldened.
You look at jurisdictions that are "soft" on crime - Scandinavia, New Zealand etc. and invariably all of them have figured out non-punitive methods of crime reduction that are far more effective than jail. This is reflected in crime statistics.
(and before you mention Singapore, it's worth pointing out that they have many, many policies in place to alleviate poverty and social unrest - government housing, world class education, a strong economy, national service etc. in addition to their strict laws. I'm not arguing that the laws do nothing, but you can't just beat an uneducated, poor, fatherless person with a stick and expect them to be a productive member of society.)
Leaving that aside for a moment, if there was "evidence" that not punishing murderers was the "best thing for society" (in terms of rehabilitation, crime rate, etc) would you support that policy?
For most people, a society that doesn't punish criminals is simply uncivilized. I tend to agree.
Punishment is one thing, and it certainly is good for a feeling of justice. But the real problem San Francisco is experiencing is lack of deterrent. That's related, but not quite the same.
If there is a way to keep up the deterrent, but sacrifice some punishment to get more rehabilitation then that's worth discussing. That's what Scandinavia is trying to do (in addition to other policies that affect crime rate). A prison turns out to be a good deterrent even if you don't get raped there.
In comparison, just not prosecuting theft at all is removing not just the punishment, it's also removing the deterrent, and I don't see how it's going to rehabilitate anyone. Obviously punishing the theft as a misdemeanor was supposed to be the deterrent, but without enforcement all that's left is a total failure.
This is a pretty interesting and concise way to frame this, because I definitely would support such a policy.
Punishments carried out by justice systems are a means to an end. It's sad that even today it's considered the most effective tool for general safety and protection of society.
It strikes me as really strange to consider punishments for crimes as a sort of state-sponsored revenge.
I would also attack the notion of "evidence" here. The previous poster is not making an empirical argument at all, he's only pretending to. If Scandinavia had more crime than SF, he would pick another example (notice how he dismisses Singapore for...reasons). He's defending an a priori belief, as am I. Empiricism fails us here, we're arguing over values.
> It strikes me as really strange to consider punishments for crimes as a sort of state-sponsored revenge.
Justice is carried out by a disinterested third party (the state), revenge is not.
The US has the largest prison population in the world by a large margin and we still have a relatively high crime rate overall, especially when it comes to violent crime. Putting more people in prison is not a solution to our problems as we can clearly see.
It really helps to look at the numbers to wrap your head around it, but here is a lot of good data to start understanding the issue. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
There is a lot of data and research out there regarding these issues, that's the good news. The bad news is that few people want to take the time to read it.
One more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-prisons-make-u...
My question, then, is this: if punishing people for crimes was shown to be ineffective for society, you would continue to support punishment?
I think I must be misunderstanding. It sounds like you are saying that you’d prefer to cut off your nose to spite your face. (Punish criminals despite punishment being a net negative.)
This isn’t to boost any particular flavor of justice. I am just curious about your perspective.
> I think I must be misunderstanding. It sounds like you are saying that you’d prefer to cut off your nose to spite your face. (Punish criminals despite punishment being a net negative.)
No, you're not misunderstanding. To me your question makes no sense. By definition, a society that does not punish criminals is no society I want to live in. It is uncivilized.
If you mean, "if punishing people for crimes increases the number of crimes, would you still support it?" then my answer is yes, of course (though I don't accept the premise). Reciprocity is part of human nature. If you do something bad, you deserve to be punished in porportion.
To the extent that we adopt your perspective, the value of human beings will be lost. When you punish a criminal, you are treating him with respect. You respect that he made a choice, you are showing that he didn't have to make that choice and that he could refrain from making it in the future, and that by accepting his punishment he can pay his debt. I believe that this perspective will result in less crime but even if it doesn't, I'm still in favor of it because justice is an end in itself.
Yes, if the "best thing .. in terms of .. crime rate" includes fewer murders. I prefer the package (fewer murders + higher percentage of murderers unpunished) over the package (more murders + lower percentage of murderers unpunished). Where unpunished does not mean "no reaction" but rather treatment, medication and rehabilitation.
Norway is actually tough on shoplifting. It is not tolerated, and its mitigated by arrest and the police spend resources tracking down sales on online platforms etc. The government also track down the source of money/income that look suspicious, and have the means to do so due to widespread government oversight of all aspects of society.
Police will actually help shops or shopping centers remove non-rehabilitated people that have committed thefts in the past.
The Eastern European mafias take advantage of this and ship busses of thieves to Norway.
Basically, Norway system of rehabilitation assume strong borders so that you can limit how many you need to help and Schengens free flow of people from some poor Eastern European countries violate this assumption.
Which is the cause and which is effect?
Or even COVID deaths and lockdowns.
Policy can be as much as outcome as a cause.
Our DAs promised “restorative justice” but in practice criminals get caught in released without consequences or rehabilitation. Is there evidence that this approach hasn’t emboldened organized criminals and contributed to the rise in property crime in recent years?
Maybe that’s coincidence, but the onus is on those who brought us to this point: Where are the results that were promised? Where is the evidence that we should continue down this path, when by all metrics, it appears to be a disaster?
But this article was just arguing against your point. The crime enforcement laws were relaxed and the crime rose. It is obvious that allowing law enforcers to enforce the law reduces crime. Some people in SF are losing their jobs when the stores close you know? These crimes are not victimless.
A police officer claimed that technically.
I don't know that police officers are the best at making such correlations.
But can you really trust the engineer who is telling you there is a correlation? What are her motives?
You're assuming what works for X works for Y as well, without accounting for an insanely large difference between the culture in the United States and those countries. People are very different here, the education level, the moralities of the society, the concept of "I, me and myself first", the economic conditions, the violence, the mental health issues and many more things.
There is a reason why despite having liberal gun laws in Switzerland, there are way less mass shootings than the United States. But what works there won't work here.
Gun ownership is high due to more or less half the population serving in the army, and the laws are probably more liberal than in neighbouring European countries, but you can't compare it in any way to the US.
And, this not being Brave New World, the baby will be subject to them.
I have difficulty believing that a mais being taped by her employer in Dubai will ever go and make a police report
Whats does it mean soft? Sweden has no parole you go straight to jail.
They have a very low crime rate, several times lower than the white average. There was a study on this, and Swedish-Americans and Norwegian-Americans commit crime at about the same rate as Swedes and Norwegians, which is to say, not often.
The population was effectively self-selected for those ambitious enough to emigrate, and in many areas, tame a new frontier and/or start businesses. They were then dumped in an environment highly supportive to it (cheap land and natural resources, rapid technical advancement providing huge vistas of economic opportunity) That probably has a significant ripple effect for a few generations. (The "Grandpa had to swim across the Atlantic and learn English and sweep floors to get started, so he's going to ride his kids to make sure they get the most of their education" pattern)
On the other hand, I suspect there's some toxic counterfactors in that; the celebration of bootstrap-pullers tends to encourage "I've got mine" attitudes and may end up underserving parts of the community that would benefit from more social support and community services.
I did manage to dredge this link up, which says that in 1973, Minnesota had the lowest high school drop-out rate in the nation, and the third-lowest crime after Iowa and Maine.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/08/12_cu...
Which is no smoking gun, but is suggestive. I'm sure someone could do a deep dive on academic literature in criminology and turn it up, but it won't be me I'm afraid.
Well.. large segments of our populations commit very little crime. But when crime is committed, the police and the justice system are useless. Convicted for the 350th burglary? They'll be let out again and maybe be back tomorrow, if the prosecutor even bothers prosecuting them since it's pointless.
So DO look at us for crime prevention but NOT for managing crime when it happens.
Elect a real DA who respects the law and law-abiding citizens, and the police will be able to do their jobs. Until then it’s a lost cause.
Criminalizing these activities is incredibly costly and doesn't truly solve anything.
People are quick to question the morality of desperate unhappy poor people when they break the law when they don't have enough resources or options, and yet we rarely consider the immorality of those who hoard incredible wealth they don't need, when there are desperate unhappy poor people in need.
Shouldn't those with great power have the greater responsibility?
The problem in SF is that we've disbanded the team that tries to catch people in the act[2]. IIUC, it's both because there weren't enough resources and the DA won't prosecute anyway, so what's the point.
[1] - Maybe not in the case of a-rod: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Half-million-in-lo...
[2] - https://www.sfweekly.com/news/authorities-hustle-to-curb-s-f...
>“We see a lot of repeat offenders.”
Sure if each criminal act was done by a different person, it probably would be expensive. In most cities, very small set of people are responsible for 99% of the crime. So if you book a single person, it will prevent multiple such incidents and bring down the cost and will be worthwhile. It's not a cost problem, it is a politics problem.
Besides doesn't matter how small the crime is. If tomorrow, if what the DA and the cops are are doing get written into law, ie, anything that is of less value than what costs us to prosecute is legal, the society will descend into chaos very quickly. Like why the hell am I paying for groceries?
If the police hand hundreds of cases to the prosecutor only to have the prosecutor refuse to pursue them, the police get the message.
Summed up and very simplified obviously, but eh.
Sherif finally told my dad. “Nothing we can do, buy a gun, just make the body look like it wasn’t running away and police won’t make an issue of it”.
This horrified us on many levels.
We moved to a safe neighborhood. Later on we realized we had a bunch of gun nuts on street.
One of which loved to shoot blanks at trouble makers.
This disturbed me, and left me deeply questioning many things about guns.
As an adult I moved out of state to raise my family near the the pro gun people. Never once had an issue. Don’t like to touch guns personally. Yet happy to be where criminals fear to tread.
> The hearing did not answer a crucial question: Why San Francisco? If the problem stems in part from a change in California law, why aren’t other cities in the state seeing similar spikes in shoplifting?
Does Los Angeles count? Last I checked six months ago with LAPD Pacific Division most forms of crime were up, significantly. That was just listening to them take questions at the Venice Neighborhood Council meeting and looking at their reported crime stats documents. Solution: I moved out of LA.
Problem is, most of these types of petty crimes aren't reported because LAPD can't do anything. Plus, it's below the insurance deductible for most retailers. I speak from experience as a former retailer in LA (Culver City) on a major street, Sepulveda Blvd, for twelve years managing my own decent sized store.
I had tens of thousands stolen year after year. Even with video, I couldn't do anything. It's exceptionally difficult to catch and recover the money, so what's the point in trying, or even reporting it? It's a complete waste of time. I did my best with prevention, but even reveiwing videos to figure out what's happening takes a long time... And you need to know it's gone in the first place!
When you have $500k to $1mm in inventory, which really isn't much, and tons of product coming and going every day, how are you to keep up? Even with cycle counts, we were always behind the thefts.
I finally sold the shop in 2016 after a series of heart breaking thefts by employees, customers, and an electrician. Sure you can say it's my fault for not having a better system, and you're probably right. Still it takes honest employees and honest customers for it to work.
Prop 47 seems self fulfilling: Expand misdemeanors to cover twice as much product, so then less crimes are reported by the community, finally claim crime is down!
If technicalities were equivalent to reality this would be great policy, but it's different on the ground than what most people see from a report on their computer.
San Francisco's budget to address the problem is $106,500 per homeless individual, or enough to literally just buy them everything they need and send them to a trade school.
> The hearing did not answer a crucial question: Why San Francisco? If the problem stems in part from a change in California law, why aren’t other cities in the state seeing similar spikes in shoplifting?
Whenever we read about people antagonizing masks or vaccines and their usual political alignments let's remember this, because it's fundamentally the same thing
It's a "feel good" position, it's a "I'm in your tribe" position even if it makes no actual sense in reality (and both sides are not lacking in crap arguments to support those)
There’s not only 2 sides.
I stopped reading any news or social media (outside HN or stocks) since New Years. I don’t feel on a side anymore.
And you'll notice the extremes complain louder at those in the middle than at the "opposite side"
The problem started long before the change in policy.
I don't think "we" (the people?) are forgetting they are still crimes. They are, and are supposed to be still prosecuted as the minor crimes they are.
The problem is that police and DAs have taken the position that if they can't go for bigger charges (which is what DAs like to put on their resume) then they won't pay any attention at all. That's the root cause of these lesser crimes being completely ignored.
> The retail executives and police officers emphasized the role of organized crime in the thefts. And they told the supervisors that Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified nonviolent thefts as misdemeanors if the stolen goods are worth less than $950, had emboldened thieves.
You are quoting the police and business owners, who are very much a biased source. How do they know what the causes are? Do you think they've commissioned a survey or done research? It's just as possible they were against Proposition 47 to begin with and the NYT is supporting their agenda for their own reasons.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-franc...
In the 3 weeks I've been on the list 5 cars have had their windows busted and things stolen, 2 garages have been broken into and things stolen. 2 garages have had their doors damaged from attempted break-ins costing the owners hundreds to get fixed. There's been videos of people staking out places to rob (people walking from house to house inspecting garage door locks and trying to peak inside the garages). And ~10 or so posts about various other thefts or results of thefts.
This sounds more like one of those lawless 3rd world countries than a major city in a first world country. And worse, many people on the list just react as "that's life in a big city", no big deal.
It's not, having lived in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Singapore were property crime is extremely low. People get defensive whenever I bring this up, making excuses why crime needs to be high where they live. It doesn't.
SF Chronicle (an SF based newspaper) tracks break-ins in SF [0]. Here is a more general crime dashboard as well [1]. For reference, here are some statistics in Chicago [2].
YTD, SF has had 8500 property theft cases. Chicago-- 3000. Per crime capita, SF is astronomical.
Many people don't have cars in SF for this exact reason.
Other commenters are right that it varies slightly by neighborhood (e.g. cars in Russian Hill/Cole Valley are by far more touristy than others), but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.
[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/sf-car-breakins/
[1] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
[2] https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_C...
I think any American city will have some culture shock compared to Japan or Singapore. Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.
IME this is becoming an increasingly common attitude in many cities besides SF. And it’s a problem of social decay - fear of being considered an asshole by calling some behaviors just unacceptable. Americans are (somewhat ironically) terrified of being perceived as assholes, and we’re letting our social standards erode more and more each decade.
We don’t have to relent to this. Expecting to be able to leave something out and it not be stolen is not unreasonable. Expecting not to be assaulted is reasonable. Expecting people to not shoplift is a reasonable expectation in any civilized society.
Californians should be ashamed but they continuously vote for this shit.
No one wants to hike bernal to rob someone.
They’d case the block in broad daylight. I used to leave my car unlocked so at least there’d be no broken glass. Garage door openers were getting stolen and they’d come back to those houses later to empty out the garage. Cops never turned up when called.
Anyway we moved out of SF a month ago. No chance I’m paying that rent or mortgage in a city that won’t enforce its laws. Seattle’s been awesome so far.
Seattle might be headed that way with our city council. Make sure to vote.
These are not things you should have to do in a sane first-world country
What I'm trying to say is that there are major US cities that are relatively safe. Fortunately not every city in the US has been following the CA politics.
* Ring
* Nextdoor
This "crime problem" has little to no effect on my daily life, other than needing to press a button so an attendant can unlock the shampoo cabinet when I'm at CVS every other month.
Is it uncommon to have a neighborhood fb group that's just full of old people posting that it looks like it might rain and people trying to offload extra rhubarb from their garden?
There aren't exactly many cars to be broken into in lawless third world countries, there aren't many garages with things in them to be broken into along with said things stolen in lawless third world countries, and there aren't many garages with doors to be damaged in lawless third world countries.
Like, come on.
San Francisco is a strange place, where the only places you're allowed to be poor are in the tenderloin, 6th and market, or the projects. It's the only place I've lived where I regularly had to dodge human excrement on the sidewalks, car windows are all smashed, deodorant is locked down in the stores etc.
The poor don't consider themselves of the same people as the rich. The infrastructure is not for the poor, the police are not for the poor, the parks and sidewalks and houses and cars are not for the poor. Hell, while I lived there the poor weren't even allowed to sit or lie down! So why should they feel any civic pride or duty or identification at all? It's like some sort of Elysium and Deponia. The Elysians are so far removed from reality that crimes against them are hardly crimes at all as far as the poor are concerned. They'll never taste of the good things Elysium has, so why even care? Better to just grab whatever you can from them and try to eke out whatever existence you're able to. It's similar in many ways to the bandit camps and highwaymen of the Roman era.
I've traveled and lived in many places, and this sort of behavior only happens when there's massive inequality, tempered a small amount by the severity of the law.
I know this will get downvoted to hell because almost everyone on HN is rich, so they're blind to this. For you, the answer is better policing and stronger laws, because those are the only things that can help keep you separated from the rest unless you're rich enough to afford private security.
This is a west coast phenomenon largely driven by IMO west coast policies.
But a potato is not a color!
“Which is why I included blue and green.”
IDK, I think it's because SF was heavily influenced by freak culture in the 60s and while that mode of thinking died out in the rest of the world it found refuge in NorCal. NorCal has, since the 60s, been a bastion of drugs and freakiness. The culture behind that tolerated a crime society because of the disdain for law and order, with its authoritarian, conservative, anti-drug values. They were more naive than, say, New York liberals who knew you couldn't just let people do whatever they wanted.
Today, they can live in San Francisco.
Your comment comes across as that of an apologist.
Warning, there is nothing NSFW, but it's just sickening to watch.
That's brazen. Some of the shoplifters were even wearing masks, but pulled them down to their chins.
A guy came in and started grabbing things from the shelf, and putting them in his bag.
The ladies started shouting “Thief! Shame! Shame! Shame!”
The guy left quickly.
Having seen similar shoplifting incidents around SF, I feel bad for the security guards. They're not allowed to physically stop thieves at larger chains, but they're expected to follow and hinder them. It's a very tough job, ad prone to injury.
It's fascinating to watch the change in behavior when the "security guard" flashes his SF Police badge and says, "Actually, I'm a real cop." Then the thief drops everything, stops mouthing off, and heads for the door..
The last time I went to a Walgreens I needed to buy:
1. Mouth wash
2. Tooth paste
3. Shaving cream
I had to drag some poor employee over for all three items to either unlock a lock, or go into the back to find the item because they only had a display box.
Another time I went and I couldn't find anyone with a key. The person behind the counter said they didn't have one and they didn't know where the person with the key went. After waiting around for a few minutes I left to go to the Safeway nearby to try there instead. Only to find the item I needed was also locked down. I gave up. No one wanted my money.
I just drive out of the city to do my shopping now. It's a much better experience.
Once shops start closing down, people will ask and complain why stores don’t exist in their neighborhoods, or they’re too expensive but low quality. It’s cost of doing business.
‘Cheesy Pudding’, the DA, is high on the list of everyone’s favorite target for a recall, but sadly, I think most people won’t bother with the recall effort and the downward spiral will continue.
Some of the people who espouse these policies see Marxism as an example but Marxism would never ever put up with rampant delinquency.
And the answer by the people who implemented this policy will, no doubt, be “institutional racism” by walgreens…
The useless SF DA is at great fault here. The cops don’t want to spin their wheels when they know anything below ~$950 doesn’t get prosecuted. And in addition the DA, having felon parents, has a soft spot for criminals. SF bought that whole sale because voters have been made believe the way to turn criminals into productive members of society is to say, “pretty please” and they believe they just haven’t said please nicely enough. Well here we are now.
Once in control, yes, Marxists would not allow rampant delinquency. But until that day file this under "by any means necessary".
They’d be called consumerist capitalist destabilizers, counterrevolutionaries who are undermining the people's revolution, etc., etc, get their houses marked, harassed and taken to the klink.
Also, if you missed a day of work, you better have a doctor's note. I once asked my parents what happened if you just didn't show up to work for a day and didn't have a doctor's note, and she looked at me and said "I don't think anyone dared to do that." Imagine being thrown in jail for calling in sick but not having a doctor's note to show your employer.
Of course crimes like theft were punished a lot more severely than in the West, and the result was indeed very little of that type of crime. Of course having an extensive network of secret police and informants everywhere helped with that. But that's the difference between being the revolutionary trying to overthrow capitalism and being the nomenklatura trying to keep the shelves stocked once capitalism has been overthrown.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/joseph-stalin-was-ru...
(I'm not suggesting that these thieves are a part of a revolution of any kind)
Maybe the shampoo is really as appealing as the advertisements suggest.
Think of it like always having to go to the pharmacy counter to get anything from CVS or Safeway. Call ahead, app, delivery, or curbside are the other options.
Since law enforcement doesn’t appear to have the tools to stop shop lifting, the stores will need to adapt to stay in business.
One last thing, not in the article, but gangs will rob Walgreens delivery trucks in broad daylight too.
That Walgreens isn't there anymore.
The Burberry store near Union square buzzes you in at all hours. Well at least the two times I visited.
And what if they refuse? From the other comments here it sounds like the manager won't be able to do anything if the thief didn't copmly, continued putting things in his pocket and walked out.
This seems like one of the easiest things to do and the banks in California do this even if they're in low crime areas.
Why haven't the stores done this rather than closing?
I suspect the answer is that this is a nice excuse to get rid of underperforming stores that they would get dinged for racism if they closed them wholesale without a PR excuse.
https://stanfordreview.org/chesa-boudin-san-francisco-crime/
Maybe it will move the other way again?
You don't get let in without an amazon account. Once in, you take what you want and computers figure out what you bought and charge you.
I could take it or leave it.
I certainly wouldn't condemn a location as 'a shithole' simply due to whether or not self-checkout was a thing, but i'm not going to go out of my way to defend LA, either.
P.S. where did LA come into all this? I re-read everything and can't quite figure it out.
SF to me feels like a cautionary tale of a city that had everything going for it but mismanages its fortunes all the way to the ground, very much like a national Resource Curse.
I'm genuinely asking because I'm drawing a blank.
[^1]: https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/bcody99/2020/09/07/a-day-at-the-supe...
Out of control San Francisco shoplifting forcing Walgreens to close 17 stores - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216343 - May 2021 (178 comments)
Rampant shoplifting leads to another Walgreens closing in S.F - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24842412 - Oct 2020 (33 comments)
SF strikes me as the city with the highest highs and the lowest lows.
And, for what it's worth, many pricier essentials are either locked or behind sliding panes in NYC stores. The Duane Reade near me has panes that chime when you push them aside, alerting anyone nearby and also preventing you from swiping an entire row of items into a bag or cart.
[1]: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/homelessness/2020/06/25...
If NYC, if you don't have enough shelter space, there will be large numbers of people dying in the streets in the winter, so the city's hand is forced, and they have to build enough shelters or rent hotels, etc. That's not the case in California.
And likewise, if you prefer to sleep outside instead of in a shelter, that's an option year-round in California. But not in NYC, at least for a few months a year. So your hand is forced and you have to get used to sleeping in a shelter.
SF strikes me as nice but not kind city. If you're destitute they'll give you a dollar. But building affordable housing is too far a step.
Building any housing that's not a McMansion in SF is literally almost impossible. NIMBY politics run deep in California.
where it gets colder
and they are hunted by their own
kind, these men often crawl under car radiators,
drink the anti-freeze,
get warm and grateful for some minutes, then die.
but that is an older culture and a wiser one
- Bukowski, 1973
From what I see in my city, and read about in SF, the real crux of the problem is people blocking the construction of shelters. Very loud NIMBYs show up to every single neighborhood association meeting about this topic. They don't care about stores closing or ultimately solving the problem because they don't shop at places like Walgreens.
I wish I knew how to shift the political deadlock on this, but I simply do not. In my city there's a small amount of progress towards camps with permanent shelters, but it's still just a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed.
Some of these problems require City or Regional policy to manage, deferring to local neighborhoods leads to gridlock.
Don't need to send someone to jail, but there's gotta be something better than shrugging shoulders.
The retail space will become housing, but it won’t be affordable.
As a result Chesa Boudin, the SF DA, is facing a recall campaign (https://recallchesaboudin.org/) as is LA DA George Gascon (https://recallgeorgegascon.com/). Seattle has had massive spikes in low level crimes and business associations have put out reports (https://allianceforpioneersquare.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2...) tracking repeat offenders who cycle through the system and continue to victimize the community.
There was a recent guest article on Glenn Greenwald’s Substack about the consequences of progressive reform policies from the DA in Philadelphia that is worth reading as a deep analysis into the effect of these policies: https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts...
Wow.
2020: 697
2019: 441
2018: 259I also kind of picture The Melt[1] start-up. I'd never been there, never seen photos, but conceptually, The Melt, as an automated grilled cheese restauraunt, seems like a mix between a traditional on-demand restauraunt, and a vending machine.
Amazon Go[2] stores are another interesting data-point to consider, a highly automated store that monitors it's patrons & knows how to charge them. The marketing says "convenience" and lack of hassle, but also there's a huge automation/surveillance power play going on here too. Wait till an Amazon Kiva bot runs out of the wall & starts chasing you around, trying to taser you for shoplifting, & it'll have a different character... but it'll be built on the bones of this high end automated experience none-the-less.
There's plenty of sci-fi examples we could turn to too. In Altered Carbon the book, for example, Takeshi Kovacs stays at a highly-automated self-defending Hendrix hotel[3] ("Bay City", year 2384). There's already somewhat the vibe of living inside of an automated vending machine, which provides you on demand what you ask for,... once it knows it can charge you. In many ways I keep thinking, it's basically going to be like living inside a comfortable, cordoned off, consumer section of an Amazon warehouse, where the robots are still happy to serve.
Atm it seems like this is a somewhat localized problem, so perhaps we'll escape these grim-dark futures.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-trendiest-grilled-cheese...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105689
[3] https://www.looper.com/364474/the-real-reason-the-hotel-in-a...
I don't know anything about him other than what's in those wiki articles, just crazy how much he sounds like a right wing caricature of a leftist politician, to the extent it's hard to believe at first sight. He's living proof of Poe's Law.
Make it appealable in case of issue but if they have you on video you pretty much aren't winning.
If more people than phones approach the door just don't open and play a verbal warning preventing tailgating.
Living in NYC I've watched our politics slowly follow the same mistakes as SF in terms of non-prosecution and catch&release for "non violent" crimes just as COVID hit. The confluence of the two has lead to an insane increase in crime in NYC. We have a similar anti-Asian hate crime epidemic, in addition to a 100% increase in shootings & 50% increase in murders 2019->2020. The trend has continued, we are on track for another 20-50% increase in 2021, and summer, the traditional shooting season has not begun. The murder rate has backtracked 10 years of progress in 1 year.
Some might say "oh well those are non-violent criminals being release, so its not the same people doing the shooting". Well in video after video of dudes beating the shit out of an Asian guy on subway, the clip starts with the guy jumping a turnstile to enter the station. It turns out some criminals do lots of different crimes! When you decide some crimes don't really need enforcing anymore, the criminal can continue to go do more of the other crimes as well.
I suspect the pendulum is about to swing the other way in NYC given the mayoral candidates. The impression I have is that the mayhem has now spilled over into rich neighborhoods filled with the very vocal liberals who previously supported these policies, and suddenly find themselves of a different mind.
These problems absolutely affect liberal cities more than conservative ones. I consider myself left-of-center but there is no point lying about this fact.
After several trips there, I was totally disillusioned, and that's even before the COVID breakout. The glamorous side, that I already know from the Internet. However, the nasty side, that I didn't expect at all. On one hand, there was window busting and all, and there were no effective actions taken to address those. On the other hand, the system doesn't seem to care about poor and homeless people to help them and lift them from their situations. It's the worse situation on both sides of the story, and there's no fix in sight.
An outstanding issue is the price of the rent. I grew up in commie blocks and I hated it, just like everybody else: it was cheap, ugly, and depressing. After traveled around the world, I realized: the counterpart of commie blocks around the world was not nice apartments as we imagined, but slums and homelessness.
Instead of the "Dollar Store", I'd be opening the "Grand Store - nothing under a Grand!"
Cops are the whiniest babies. Everyone else does their job without self-crucifixion at every opportunity. “Wow I’d really like to ruin this persons life but paperwork”. So much wrong with this mentality
No doubt the cop would be harassed in the street whilst others scream 'they didnt do nothin'
Here we are on HN, once again debating criminalizing poor people for not having opportunities, about if it's better to fine poor people or imprison them, treating those as solutions, instead of something just making the problem worse.
The problem is poverty. How come when we try to incentivize the rich, we give them stuff like tax breaks, but when we want to incentivize the poor, we punish them and take their money or freedom away?
People are so focused on if it's wrong to take something that doesn't belong to you, they don't ask if it's wrong to have something and not give it away to someone who needs it more than you do.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269557/gross-profit-and-...
Because it's not comfortably middle class Americans who have good paying jobs who are repeatedly shoplifting, it's poor people who don't have a significantly better options.
Treating their crimes as the most salient aspect of them by calling them thieves and criminals ignores their poverty, instead of treating it as a systemic societal problem which harms us all.
This wasn't a natural experiment in any case, pre/post the law, you can't blame the law for shoplifting, other variables weren't fixed and thus confound the results. I expect rent increases, increases in the prices of food and other consumer goods and so on have a much bigger impact on shoplifting. Even if you could, if it wasn't shoplifting it would be some other means of making ends meet.
Poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, these are problems our country absolutely has the means to address, and investing in stopping them pays dividends not just in higher tax revenues but in decreased crime.
And with that in mind, isn't it smarter to take some of the money dedicated housing prisoners, policing the poor, managing them through the criminal justice system, and using it to help them so they don't have to steal?
You can get free health insurance if you're poor. You can get free food. You can get free shelter. You can get free education, including higher education. Being poor is, of course, no picnic, I'm not trying to say it isn't bad, but I think your post minimizes the extent to which our society offers opportunities to the poor.
I think it's much to worse to say "Okay poor people, you can steal, no consequences" and then step back and let a relatively small number of thieves destroy local businesses. Jobs, stores, wealthier law abiding citizens go away and now you've trapped the remaining poor in a much worse place to live - but hey, at least you didn't punish thieves for committing crimes, right?
1- https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...
Is there any empirical evidence for this? How come there are countries like Vietnam and China that are much poorer than the US, with much higher income inequality, yet have much less crime? How come in San Franciso there was less crime 50 years ago, 100 years ago, even though the city (and country) was poorer then?
Okay, here's international correlations between income inequality and property crime .https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86...
The best thing I could find for the time ranges you discussed suggests you are wrong about San Francisco, at least in terms of the last ~50 years and violent crime rates, which dropped 43% from 1975 to 2015. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in-conte...
The nationwide crime rate also went down during the same period, so I'm not sure that is really fair to your argument.
That said, more broadly here's evidence of a correlation between crime rate and income inequality, including property crime, using US cities that isn't time based. https://www.zippia.com/advice/crime-income-inequality/
Here's one showing that income inequality by neighborhood correlates to property crime rate. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004209801664391...
Here's a study about people on probation in San Francisco that shows that housing insecurity drive recidivism, and that that's particularly strong correlation for low level offenses like property crimes https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leah-Jacobs-3/publicati...
Anyway, This paper suggests that increasing wages among low income workers decreases crime https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90836/1/wp0017.pdf