> 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?
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
> *no one said crime is not a problem*, they're saying it's not *a new problem ramping up*
Your stats are reported crime. Not actual crime.
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".
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.
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.