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Comment by TuringNYC | Hacker News Reader

I've heard of the Walgreens issues, the topic, and am not doubting you -- however, i'm curious what is stopping more widespread theft. Given the no-prosecution stance, I can even imagine theft-tourism where people come from other cities and states to steal. Recalling NYC in the 1980s, people would even reach arms through and under metal hoods to steal, I could only imagine what happens if it can be done w/o consequence.

What is preventing that? Is it human good nature or is there some understanding that blatant/planned cases will indeed be pursued?

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Consider the possibility that the crime wave is not real but a narrative being spun up to try to get "tough on crime" laws back on the agenda. From: https://www.relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/no-san-franc...

> 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.

Kind of hard not to see a dip after how summer of 2020 went. I'll wait to see whether the trend continues.

That's an artifact of people no longer reporting theft for inefficacy.

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.

Police don't do anything about it in other states. It's not due to this law. Police steal more than the people they're supposed to catch.

When police serve a search warrant for career criminals (e.g. drug dealing, car theft, basically any criminal activity that you can make a decent regular income on) it's SOP to cross-reference serial numbers on expensive stuff that's lying around (power tools, electronics, etc) with the list of serial numbers in their DB of police reports so they can tack on a charge if they get a match. It is absolutely a liability to have a bunch of stolen stuff lying around.

This is moving the goalposts vs. the GP. He claimed it was the DAs not prosecuting that was the problem. Now the police are in on it too and not even arresting suspects?

Incidentally, the Walgreens shoplifter was arrested and is facing 16 charges: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/22/us/shoplifting-san-francisco-...

Why would the police arrest a suspect if they already know the suspect won't be prosecuted That's what's really happening here.

It’s not a matter of being “in on it”, it’s just the reality of a) how policing works and b) California’s decriminalized crime laws.

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.

I'm not in California, but over here, the cops call the DA first to see if they will accept charges before making an arrest. In which case, it would not make sense to say crime is going down based solely on arrest statistics. Arrests and crime are not the same thing. What these statistics could really be indicating, since arrests are down but crime is up, is that accountability for crime is down.

Just because crime isn’t increasing doesn’t mean it’s not a 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.

It literally isn't a problem then. Otherwise you're just trying to spin a narrative that doesn't line up with facts.

Again, something can be a problem without growing into a bigger problem.

First off, no one said crime is not a problem, they're saying it's not a new problem ramping up. So let's fix that bit of putting words in someone's mouth and see why doesn't the logic flow the other way?

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?

There are charts over time available here

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/A-violent-year-Bay...

The entire point is 2020 was a known anomaly (because of the tiny globe changing pandemic)

Hence why their quote is about downward trends in 2021

It's too early to start screaming doom and gloom about crime taking over

Ah, I was just sharing the data but yeah -- we're trending towards returning to the hellscape that was 2016. We're all gonna die! (Despite the fact that, well, we all lived through 2016...)

The backwards logic doesn’t work because my assumption is that all crime is a problem.

Aren't quants supposed to be good at reading?

> *no one said crime is not a problem*, they're saying it's not *a new problem ramping up*

didn't san francisco experience covid and lockdowns?

as a politician said recently: > we know we locked down not only the general population, but also criminals.

I was the victim of a property crime in SF and I never reported it. Why would I? No follow up by police. Same with neighbors.

Your stats are reported crime. Not actual crime.

Did that change recently? Prosecution tactics may have changed, to even get to the that point the police have to be willing to investigate.

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 wont investigate armed robbery with a firearm if there is no body. They may if you hand it to them on a platter (license plate number from getaway vehicle for example) or if there is a string of incidents in a very specific area and time of day. But string of incidents just results in maybe more cops around in that time and place and not a real investigation. And most people who do the armed robbery racket will tell victims to look down and keep their eyes down and respond not pleasantly if you do too much to try and identify them very well.

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.

What makes you think they have incentive to make themselves look good?

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

I used to work in law enforcement. Its a tails you lose, heads I win situation for the police.

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.

> Generally speaking police leadership likes to justify their jobs with "crime numbers are going 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 output to you the citizen is the same yes.

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".

This is normal most places (in the US, at least) AFAIK. Cops don't really investigate property crime unless it's very serious (I know for a fact that several tens of thousands in stolen goods via a break-in spree at multiple businesses isn't enough for them to put forth any effort, in my very-much-not-SF city) or someone with connections was the victim. They're like "OK here's your report for insurance, bye. No, stop trying to show me a list of places the culprit and their car's plates were assuredly caught on camera, I don't give a shit. Bye." Anyone who's been through this once already only bothers to report anything if an insurance claim will be made, since they know the cops won't do anything even if there's a very high likelihood they could track down the culprit. Unless they catch them in the act, nothing's gonna happen.

You don't have any insurance? I never directly bought any insurance but two of my credit cards and my life insurance policy from work cover some amount of money in some cases if I get stuff stolen. They just need a police report, and that's why a lot of property crime does get reported. Apple Care also has a theft and loss protection that needs a police report. If your car window gets smashed you can get money back from insurance, but they will ask for a police report...

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.

Why would anyone report something if they know nothing will be done about it? Even when the DA prosecutes it's still unlikely reporting it will do much good.

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.

Because you'll need a police report to file an insurance claim.

I always wondered who paid for those low deductible plans.

People don’t want to be caught on cellphone cameras stealing, because of shame.

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