Between online sales and this, I sympathize with anyone in brick and mortar retail sales.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Prop-47-which-reduc...
https://news.yahoo.com/looters-ransack-san-francisco-neiman-...
Between online sales and this, I sympathize with anyone in brick and mortar retail sales.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Prop-47-which-reduc...
https://news.yahoo.com/looters-ransack-san-francisco-neiman-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/bogus-bac...
Edit: The media seems to be in a real crime frenzy right now. Exhibit A is this bullshit graph that swaps the x axis to make it look like crime is rising: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/24/cnn-chart-crime
I call bullshit on people saying there's widespread crime not being reported. If your car window got smashed if you are either:
- A Lyft or Uber driver
- Your car was a rental
- You have a lease on your car
- Have "premium" or expensive home or car insurance
you get actual money from filing a police report from your insurance provider.
If your gadgets get stolen in the street a lot of credit cards or stuff like Apple care, and also some home insurance, will cover part of getting a replacement. But you also have to file a police report.
I really doubt most people are "learning to not report crime" when they literally can get payed for it.
Most rationales were people don't have insurance coverage damage or don't have proof of property loss (receipts, ect).
Would not be surprised if actual numbers were 10-50x the reported
This is the "broken windows" theory- if you let minor crimes like shoplifting go unpunished in a city, more people will do it.
... But the hours restriction is interesting. I've noticed weird hours at the Taco Bell near my place, and this is probably purely anecdotal, but it does make me sort of wonder if there's something unique to Taco Bell making it hard for them to flesh out their hours.
Canadian law also has subtle differences such as hybrid offenses whereby prosecutors can decide whether to charge as a felony or misdemeanor, for exactly the same crime/facts. Such a concept would be entirely unconstitutional under US law. So direct comparisons between the countries re possible punishments are complicated.
You're stealing something.
What makes "stealing less than $1k" more acceptable?
The purpose of grading is to provide an appropriate punishment. I'm my state, the grading for retail theft starts low, but depends on the value of the item. After a few times it becomes a felony for anything, such as a man who was in the news as getting a felony for stealing a candy bar. If it's always going to be a felony with potential prison time, then people might think "why not steal that riding lawn mower if the punishment is the same as a candy bar". Same risk, might as well increase the reward.
I don't see how "light theft" is something we should tolerate.
If we want to talk about humane solutions, carve out an exception for food theft. But nobody is stealing a $500 drill because they're starving for power tools.
(And, this isn't just me expressing personal moral preferences. Theft is a tax on everyone who does pay for goods, via price increases)
That's not exactly true. There can be items that are confusing, such as whether or not a bin or bucket comes with a lid. With the advent of self checkouts, it's also possible that someone rings up an item incorrectly just by accident, especially with non bar codes items. People could be prosecuted for this depending on the state's requirements. The burden of proof can be quiet low.
"But nobody is stealing a $500 drill because they're starving for power tools."
Here you are using $500 as an example. Do you feel the same if someone takes an extra 10 cent washer?
"If we want to talk about humane solutions, carve out an exception for food theft."
I don't think food theft should be an exception - just the same as the current grading tier. There are many programs and food banks that people can use to get food.
What are your thoughts on other crimes with different gradings? Should assault always be a felony? Should speeding always be considered reckless endangerment?
Again, the grading is supposed to provide an appropriate punishment based on the severity of the crime.
My personal opinion is that the severity of consequence should be relative to the people the crime affects.
Theft (retail, insurance, etc) exists in this weird limbo where the primary victim (the business) isn't the customer. However, it's ultimately the customer who pays.
So light-touching theft prosecution is effectively not caring about taxing customers. Most of whom don't even know they're being taxed.
Maybe your state is different, but I wouldn't call it light touching in my state. First offense, is a summary offense if the merchandise was under $150. That's a fine, restitution, and up to 90 days in jail. So possibly a light touch if there's no jail time, but generally going to jail means losing your job and such for lack of attendance. Higher amounts or subsequent offenses constitute misdemeanors (up to 3 years in prison), or felonies (up to 5 years in prison. Even without prison terms, people can lose their job, be denied jobs, lose their rights, etc from these higher level penalties. Which I think is fine when there's this step grading for value and repeat offenses (still some outliers like a man getting a felony for a candy bar, although it seemed like he probably had a mental issue that was causing these low dollar thefts, so probably needs to have some exception to get these people treatment). I believe this serves the purpose of preventing and rehabilitating low level offenders so that they don't become larger offenders in the future, and if they do then they get higher penalties.
I don't think you've thought this one out.
Edit: Not sure people recognized your sarcasm.
I bet then somebody will invent a microchipped, DRMed food just for the sake of it.
https://splinternews.com/if-youre-confused-about-what-race-b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_incarceration_in_the_Uni...
>In 1995, African American youths made up 12% of the population, but were arrested at rates double those for Caucasian youths. The trend towards adult adjudication has had implications for the racial make-up of the juvenile prison population as well. Minority youth tried in adult courts are much more likely to be sentenced to serve prison time than white youth offenders arrested for similar crimes.
https://thecrimereport.org/2021/06/17/racial-disparities-per...
>According to the Equal Justice Initiative, Black children are more than twice as likely as white kids to be arrested, even though they’re not committing more crimes, but because Black Kids are burdened by a “presumption of guilt and dangerousness,” which leads youth of color to have higher rates of stops, searches, violence, suspension, and disproportionate contact with the juvenile justice system.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/racial-dispar...
>As of 2013, black juveniles were more than four times as likely to be committed as white juveniles, Americans Indian juveniles were more than three times as likely, and Hispanic juveniles were 61 percent more likely.
http://jaapl.org/content/early/2019/02/13/JAAPL.003828-19
>However, research has documented the existence of racial disparity in the treatment of youth involved in the juvenile justice system for several decades. Studies from the 1980s and 1990s demonstrated that black juveniles were detained and confined at higher rates compared with white youth, and that black youth were more likely to be sent to correctional facilities compared with white youth, who were more likely to be sent to psychiatric hospitals. Additionally, recent studies have documented the continued trend of overrepresentation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system
Did they commit more crimes?
Additionally if the whole racial bias theory is true (i don't agree that it is) then why should be incarcerating blacks less? I think the appropriate response would be to incarcerate white people more often.
As I quoted earlier:
>Black children are more than twice as likely as white kids to be arrested, even though they’re not committing more crimes
You need data showing white kids are stopped for crime and released to prove this, not just some random left leaning organizations that says it's true.
The cost to the victim. Someone grabs a few unsecured tie downs off a truck at a truck stop that's a hundred bucks. Someone scraps some spools of copper stolen from a job site and it could be thousands.
I think having a step function where you define all theft below a dollar amount as one type and then above as a different type is just legacy code from back in the day when it wasn't reasonable for the legislature to just say "the fine will be X-times the replacement cost of the goods or an equivalent jail time as determined by table Y in appendix Z" and expect the courts to be able to enforce it in an efficient enough manner.
The fact that we we have basically two classes of crime that include both violent and nonviolent crime results in a lot of overlap where you can have some pretty bad misdemeanors and some pretty mild felonies all depending on legal technicalities.
Should we lock up everyone who downloaded an MP3 from Napster or Kazaa?
I go in there to buy something small once in a while and 1 out of 4 times I see some guy just grabbing and walking out while the security watches him steal right before their eyes.
I don't know who's in the wrong here, but if the comment you're replying to was correct and DA wouldn't persecute these cases, wouldn't it also mean that they wouldn't appear in statistics you're quoting as well?
I'd say. We just elected one of the architects as president.
*if the value of what is stolen is not more than $5,000, is guilty
(i) of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years*
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-334.ht...
Why? What does Canada have to do with the US?
>and retailers seem to be doing ok.
I'm sure they big box stores are just fine, they just pass the cost on to the consumer. It doesn't end so well for the small businesses.
What is the support for your statement?
Also “the DA” is a ton of different people throughout the Bay Area, and the DA that everybody complains about has exactly 0 HDs in his jurisdiction.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/A-violent-year-Bay...
Misdemeanor shoplifting can still earn up to 180 days in county jail and a fine of up to $1000, but only if a DA prosecutes.
What is preventing that? Is it human good nature or is there some understanding that blatant/planned cases will indeed be pursued?
> The San Francisco Police Department is actually seeing a dip in crime in 2021, part of a larger overall downward trend. Property crimes are down nearly 8 percent so far in 2021, and larceny theft — the category of crime that includes shoplifting — is down 14.4 percent.
Just because crime is increasing doesn’t mean it’s a new problem. We have no benchmark to compare 2019, 2020 and 2021 against and it may be dipping but 2020 likely saw a spike in crime so going down from there isn’t saying much.
Seems pretty reasonable right?
> *no one said crime is not a problem*, they're saying it's not *a new problem ramping up*
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/A-violent-year-Bay...
Hence why their quote is about downward trends in 2021
> The San Francisco Police Department is actually seeing a dip in crime in 2021, part of a larger overall downward trend. Property crimes are down nearly 8 percent so far in 2021, and larceny theft — the category of crime that includes shoplifting — is down 14.4 percent.
It's too early to start screaming doom and gloom about crime taking over
Your stats are reported crime. Not actual crime.
This is why I always doubt people that claim that property crime isn't getting reported. Of course some of it will not get reported, but on the very very very unlikely event that you are a victim of property crime in SF if you like, have a credit card or Apple Care or car insurance, you probably can get free money by filing a police report.
I don't think I've ever seen a big city PD investigate "petty" property crime unless there was something unique about the case, like a gun being involved.
So the stats being compared to have the same limitation
Police dont investigate property crimes unless its someone important enough or has sway gets involved or the media gets involved.
Murders they do investigate, because they have incentives to get a clearance rate down. This does mean they dont actually care if you committed the crime, just that it gets "cleared". God help you if you dont have a alibi and your husband/wife end up dead. Expect ALOT of police attention.
Rapes will get classified as he said / she said not rapes because that way their clearance/conviction rates stay good.
I also find it somewhat odd that people trust what police have to say about crime rates, where they have incentives to make themselves look good, but dont trust police about well anything else these days.
The entire point of the thread is that they have incentive to fan the flames of fear to increase the budgeting.
After all, the police aren't nearly as exposed to the effects of angry constituents as elected politicians are.
So police love to pitch any sort of crime increase as a failing of budgeting or something
Generally speaking police leadership likes to justify their jobs with "crime numbers are going down" its an easy "objective" way to show they are effective and its the primary metric they try to game. Then its ask for more budget because we can make numbers go even more down with more resources.
When crime numbers go up its "we need more resources!". Which is the traditional refrain of well every government agency that is not succeeding in their mission. And succeeding in their mission. Every agency is gonna ask for more money. Always and forever.
Line officers dont care as much about overall metrics but have different incentives put on them. Their immediate leadership want numbers to look good too.
No matter what way the number goes up or down there is a ready narrative that involves we need more budget. If number goes down, its my leadership caused this. If numbers go up then its external things fault.
Typically speaking police chiefs like numbers to go down because it reflects well on them. Detectives like persuing cases that result in convictions because it makes them look good and promotable. Zone leadership likes numbers to go down because it makes them look good and promotable. If you are the Captain of the highest crime rate precinct you are less likely to get promoted than the one with a better rate. This trickles all the way down.
If that's what happening, sure, they use that to support “we're doing good and therefore should be given more resources to do more good.”
If crime stats are flat or going down, they use that to argue “we are stretched to thin to effectively reduce crime, and therefore need more resources.”
The input is irrelevant, the output is constant.
The internal process inside the engine cares though. Police Chief's certainly care about the crime rate going down because they answer to whoever put them in their position depending on the city and that person or group cares about the number going down.
The police captain cares because they want to be picked as the police chief one day and a "crime went down in my precinct" narrative helps that.
The Sheriff cares because in the US that is an elected position, and "crime rate keeps going up with this Sheriff" is easy ammo for them to lose their position in an election.
The police engine will produce the same output either way. (which is a great sign of necessary reform) But the people driving the engine would prefer it to be because of the rate going down that they ask for more money. And the people who put them in that position would prefer thats the reason they are asking for more money as well.
Interestingly enough public education works the same way. Schools failing? Not enough resources! School succeeding? We need more to do more or to keep the status quo of doing well! Pretty much every government body has this feedback mechanism. Every organization for that matters. No large scale org ever says "we have enough resources right now thanks".
My car has been broken into twice in the last few months in front of my house. The last thing I want to do is wait for an officer to come by 4 hours later to tell me there isn't anything he can do.
Why should one go through the trouble of filing police reports if they aren't/can't do anything about it?
Ironically this makes your dip in crime statistics as cooked up a narrative with rhetorical purposes as what you just suggested.
Always take data with a grain of salt, and avoid mixing up the map with the territory.
Incidentally, the Walgreens shoplifter was arrested and is facing 16 charges: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/22/us/shoplifting-san-francisco-...
Arresting a person takes an officer off the streets for several hours, which is a waste of scarce resources if the department knows for a fact that there will be no prosecution and the arrested person will be back on the street with no consequences.
Also, any theft under $950 is a mere misdemeanor - it’s a ticketable offense, with no arrest allowed.
as a politician said recently: > we know we locked down not only the general population, but also criminals.
Weird. Makes me wonder why the guards exist.
Of course there are times hands-on action was taken but the vast majority was no touch communication and de-escalation followed by a whole lot of documentation coordinated with video surveillance.
If the military, with their training, has trouble calibrating force when interacting with civilians.
And if police, with their less but still substantial training, have trouble.
... Then we probably don't want security guards, with even less training, commonly using force.
That some of them are ex-military or ex-police is immaterial, because there sure as hell isn't time made in their schedule to keep up to date.
That all assumes that UPS drivers are honest and that Amazon 'fulfillment' employees get their daily cavity search of course.
Nieman Marcus and Home Depot are still making plenty of profit despite this law changing 7 years ago. Is putting someone in prison for 8 years and giving them a permanent black mark that prevents them from voting and harms employment prospects over $200 really worth improving Home Depot's bottom line? That's the real question here.