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Comment by floren | Hacker News Reader

The SF city government seems to have realized that there's another way to make crime "go down": refuse to prosecute for anything, ideally make it pointless for the cops to even show up, until people stop bothering to report crime. Wow, shoplifting is at record lows!

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We're approaching a strange post-empirical world where the right chart or graph can be used to justify any public policy, and often changing how the data for the chart is collected, analyzed and presented is easier than solving the issue. The collective anecdotes of thousands/millions of people can be dismissed because the chart says otherwise.

Disagree that crime in your neighborhood has dropped? Just because your car has been broken into and your neighbor got robbed doesnt mean there's a trend. Anecdotes arent data. Do you have a source for that?

This is a toughy.

People who don't believe in covid vaccines -- for instance -- are living in a world of anecdotes, untrusting of easily manipulable data.

But it's where we're at. In a world where you can't trust the data and your friends are addicted to consuming propaganda, what the fuck is truth?

In your opinion, did the multi-decade drop in American crime, regularly discussed by academics who have some tentative theories to explain it, happen or was it all faked?

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...

That was real and everyone can agree on that based on what they see as well as the data. However you can't go to a single SF neighborhood and find people that think crime has dropped recently. There are boatloads of articles about people having their cars broken into so often they leave them unlocked because replacing windows was so expensive. Videos of people shoplifting while security stands by and does nothing because of the laws. Articles about criminals that kill someone but had been in and out of the system for years with fairly severe crimes but always let off by a rouge DA or out on bail (or without bail because bail is racist).

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-announces-homici...

??? A couple of months ago I literally saw a man get tackled for stealing ties from a high end store in SF nearby union square.

every time I go to target in the metreon, I see someone shoplifting a substantial amount of merch.

every. single. time.

usually what I see is someone with a roller luggage fill it up and then calmly walk out the door

No one considers that perhaps ever-increasing inequality in the Bay Area has also increased both the incentive to commit crime and the disincentive to prosecute it. It would stand to reason that the people who are desperate would be more desperate than ever, while the people who are well-off would be more able to eat the costs than ever. No one is happy but the dynamic is grotesquely sustainable.

Why unvoting? Of course it would be too easy for themselves justifying their actions blaming inequality, but if in some place life isn't sustainable for others but the super-rich... That's of course going to push people to commit more crimes.

> the people who are desperate would be more desperate than ever

This does not follow from increasing inequality. The poor do not get poorer, rich just get richer (faster).

> This does not follow from increasing inequality. The poor do not get poorer, rich just get richer (faster).

The poor stay poor. The lower-middle class becomes poor.

Maybe if the CVS/Wallgreens/etc took a different tactic. Don't let people inside. Take orders online or line outside, deliver or pick up at the door. Distribute more intelligently.

Everywhere else, stores can let people inside without crime being rampant, so obviously this isn't the problem.

What about only letting in people in who have phones attesting to a unique id.

Don't let in people without a device and ban people who are caught stealing once. If they force the doors and come in call the cops and prosecute for felony burglary even if they were only originally banned for stealing socks originally.

Share bad lists and stealing socks means that you are suddenly banned from every store in 100 miles.

Make exceptions for curbside pickup and pre scheduled trips to the grocery store/pharmacy where you will pay for the security that will walk around with you.

Expire people off the list after 5 years of one theft or never after a string of thefts.

For the normal customer nothing happens your phone silently attests from your pocket that you aren't on the list by pinging a service and retrieving a token not sharing your info with the store.

Losers here an alarm sound and a voice telling them to buzz off on penalty of jail.

> Losers here an alarm sound and a voice telling them to buzz off on penalty of jail.

If they're not going to jail for openly shoplifting, why do you think they'd go to jail for this?

Forcing your way into a place to commit a crime is automatically a felony in almost all states. This is true even if the planned crime would be a misdemeanor.

Why does it matter whether it's a misdemeanor or a felony, if Chesa is going to drop the charge either way?

At some point the government actually has to enforce the law. There is no system that can be imagined that obviates that.

That's exactly my point. But once we have a prosecutor who actually prosecutes criminals, then the crime levels will reduce without needing the phone ID system.

You’re making a mistake in thinking something has to happen. It may not, and things may just continue to go downhill.

This should not be necessary in a first-world country. Public institutions should actually do their jobs, or we should stop having to pay for them

> Public institutions should actually do their jobs, or we should stop having to pay for them

There's been a rather noteworthy series of protests over the past summer on the subject of whether or not it's worth it to pay for some of these institutions.

>let off by a rouge DA

By rouge do you mean red, as in left-leaning? Or rogue?

> That was real and everyone can agree on that based on what they see as well as the data

It’s a pretty well-observed fact (opinion polls etc) that most people across the country think crime has been going up over the last few decades, even as the crime rate has been going down.

So I don’t think “just ask people what they think” is a sound approach here. Most people are just wrong on this point.

That said I’m open to the general causal chain we’re discussing here; I’d just like to see some actual data on prosecution rates and crime reporting in SF.

You should change, “I’d just like to see some actual data…” to “I’d just like to see someones hand chopped off for stealing.”

murders are hard to fake. The rest of crime data is more subjective than people realize. I was robbed at gunpoint for 1$. I did not report the crime.

That’s really scary, over a damn dollar?!?

What was the context here if you don’t mind sharing, why one dollar and not your whole wallet? Why pull a gun?? Isn’t that a felony? Won’t police respond immediately to the report of someone threatening your life via brandishing a gun in public (more people in danger if not caught)?

Usually robbers pull the gun before determining how much money the victim has in their wallet.

They could ask the potential victim first, and then, if the value is too low, not bother pulling a gun. But all potential victims have an incentive to lie and say they only have $1. Knowing that, a rational robber would pull a gun without requesting the info first.

Regarding police responding immediately: you can't call the police until after robber has lowered their gun and/or left the scene. So by the time you call the police, you're no longer being threatened.

I was agreeing with your comment until I looked at the OP's reply, apparently the robber literally requested a single dollar. Super weird.

Still good to report it so they can look at cctv footage and figure out what criminal looks like pulling guns on people

They walked up and indicated they had a gun in their pocket. They had a buddy that was across the street. They asked for 1$ which is what I gave them. Other people I knew in the area were also robbed at gunpoint for 1$, but on their porch. They did call the cops.

As for why I don't know.

Also the police don't come quickly in most places. My wife was pistol whipped and it took 30 minutes to get a car to our house 1 mile from the station. Also I lived in a bad neighborhood for a long time so this may not be typical.

Damn sorry I can’t imagine how I would feel, would probably end up in jail or shot myself if some goon tried that to a loved one in front of me.

You should have reported the crime, because by not reporting it, you feed the people that are enabling it. You allow them to promote the idea that their policies are actually working. Then, you're more likely to have it happen to you again.

Ever try to report a crime that the police officer doesn't want to write a report for? They will do everything in their power to not write that report, including accusing you of crimes, or gaslighting you.

Our police has a website to put in the report yourself. In like a week it will change to 'reviewed' and nothing will happen. But it will end up on the dashboard as a theft under $5000 of whatever.

https://data.torontopolice.on.ca/pages/bicycle-thefts

Yes, I reported twice very small crimes (like stolen bicycle worth ~$50). Officers just filed the report, no questions asked.

Even murder is ambiguous over time, because trauma care has substantially improved. The same gunshot wounds that would have resulted in a homicide 50 years ago now are now just assaults (which may not even be counted) because of skilled ER physicians.

Are they really just assaults and not attempted murders?

Not as hard as some might think. Are manslaughters counted in the murder rate, does it matter if it's voluntary or involuntary? Do we put justifiable homicides in the murder rate? What if we can just charge it as aggravated assault. What about when there's no charge, do we write it out as a murder or a suspicious death until we have a suspect? Accidental shooting? Potentially self inflicted?

I would not be surprised if the murder rate reduction is significantly attributable to changes in statistical reporting. I know a few cities that play games with the numbers even on murders.

> In your opinion [...] was it all faked?

Please don't flamebait. The poster is talking about year-on-year changes in a neighborhood, not decade-on-decade changes in a whole country. The relevance of personal experience is drastically higher in the first case.

But I think it's worth noting that "crime is rising" and "crime is not rising" tend to be aliases for the real opinions: "crime is too high" and "crime is not too high".

It's all real.

Violent crimes had a multi-decade drop. SF is a very localized anomaly in regards to property crimes.

Definitely not localized.

Los Angeles and New York to name two other prominent cities, are drowning in an epic ongoing crime wave.

SF, LA, NYC all have the same malfunction in terms of city governance.

LA -

LA Mag, July 2021: "‘It’s a Puzzle’: Experts Are Trying to Figure Out What’s Causing L.A.’s Crime Wave"

A puzzle. Experts. Ha ha ha ha. Ha. Bullshit.

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/crime-in-los-angeles/

NYC -

"NYPD Announces Citywide Crime Statistics for May 2021"

"For the month of May 2021, overall index crime in New York City rose 22% compared with May 2020, driven by a 46.7% increase in robbery (1,182 v. 806) and a 35.6% increase in grand larceny (2,848 v. 2,101). Felony assault saw a 20.5% increase compared to May 2020 (1,979 v. 1,643), and shooting incidents increased to 173 v. 100 in May 2020 (+73%)."

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0603/nypd-citywide-cri...

Some of that is Covid reductions in 2020 (year over year comps), and some of it is still up considerably over 2019 figures. Murders in May were up 100% vs 2019 for example, burglaries were up around 17%. Felony assaults were up slightly vs 2019. Grand larceny was up about 25% vs 2019.

Is there a reason May 2021 should be particularly instructive vs year-to-date (YTD) for NYC? [1] has murders down 1.3% (299 vs 303) and burglaries down 24% YTD. Felony assault is up 5%, but overall crime is down 0.9%. It's definitely a stretch to say NYC is "drowning in an epic ongoing crime wave", given those numbers.

[1] https://compstat.nypdonline.org/2e5c3f4b-85c1-4635-83c6-22b2...

That’s how it works online. You may be trusted by people you know in person, but here you’re just another random stranger, and we don’t know where you live anyway. Don’t take it personally.

Creating trusted data is a social process that many forums aren’t designed to facilitate.

From 1993: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_know...

Humans like having justifications for their actions. We prefer the tool that can do 5 things to the tool that can only do 2. We like charts and graphs because we can use them to justify our policy positions. The trouble, as always, is that when you rely too much on metrics then the metrics become the target instead of the real thing (Goodheart's law). It makes you wonder how many (economics and sociology )studies exist to provide support for policy rather than further science.

It's almost like training an ML algorithm for the first time, it'll almost always find a bug in your fitness measurement instead of actually solving the problem.

I will never not share Goodhart's Law when the opportunity arises: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". You couple that with redefining what counts as a 'crime', and bam, you get the situation SF is in right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

In The Wire, this is called juking the stats.

"Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels."

--Prez

Same with bike theft in Vancouver. Nobody bothers reporting it, so the statistics aren’t too bad

Isn't there any incentive for your claim on your theft insurance?

It's fairly uncommon to have insurance specifically for your bicycle, so most people would be filing claims against their renters' (if they have it) or homeowners' insurance. Given the size of those deductibles ($500 is the US average for homeowners', I would think Canada is similar [1]) lots of people would just buy another bike that costs less.

1: https://www.insurance.com/home-and-renters-insurance/home-in...

even for claims above deductible but still relatively minor (2-3x maybe?) it might not be worth it financially (in the long run) depending on your provider and any previous claims of course

In NL you can insure your bike for theft upon purchase ( or later ).

Baltimore, too

But the nice neighborhoods are hiring private security and in some cases threatening tax revolt

I don't know if that was the intention or not, but that is precisely the outcome of SF policies.

It seems to apply to traffic, too. Sabotage the road system to prove that driving is terrible. A few extremely major streets were basically off road driving for a year while I was living there. Light timing is terrible at several intersections, guaranteeing gridlock. Traffic cops get stationed at the next intersection over, so nothing changes.

Mission accomplished: fewer cars on the road! But no money coming in either.

You can do the same thing in education by closing down magnets schools and lowering the bar for everyone...

You don't even have to close them. Just remove merit-based admission, in the name of equity.

Then, because many students won't be able to keep up, the 'magnet' school will lower standards.

If we stop labeling lots of things crimes, then of course crime rates go way down.

Exactly. Stop calling criminal activity "crimes", and then the stats look great. And, the local SF media participates and pushes the "crime is actually down" narrative: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/stats-sh...

Corporations want taxes cut to nothing and complain when the public doesn’t want to protect their private property.

Funny how that works.

I notice it’s WSJ complaining.

More “government is inept” sentiment to justify private armies.

This is Sf, California. Hardly a bastion of small government.

Shoplifting is at record lows. Shoplifting is at record highs. Ah, forced perspective.

Unintentional consequences of the California three strikes law perhaps? Prosecutors unwilling to hand out mandatory 25 year sentences for petty theft?

Nice catch actually

This is not how the three-strike law works. You don't get a life sentence for petty theft.

Under Penal Code section 667(e), you can receive a life term if you are convicted of a serious or violent felony AND you have twice before been convicted of serious and violent felonies. See https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

That is how the law works after it was amended in 2012.[1] From the time of adoption in 1994 until 2012, even relatively minor crimes could result in a life sentence.[2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/us/california-convicts-ar...

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-archives-steven-bell-the-bic...

That is a bad idea. It leads to vigilantism, or even worse, local organized crime steps in with attendant protectionism racketeering.

With the American System each year failing a larger and larger percentage of the population, while the upper elites continue to hoard wealth and starve the government, then it makes more and more poor people turn to illegal means to make money.

Much like drug gangs in the inner city. However this will also turn into the nasty spiral of gang-controlled neighborhoods chasing out legit economic activity and becoming even more poor.

What we need is a decent civil society. But America is an oligarchy and they've figured out how to use social media to block any meaningful populist progressive reform by organizing a sufficient opposition with astroturfing and fake news.

Yep, but if the police aren't going to do anything I find it hard to blame the people in SF Chinatown who started doing their own patrols: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/S-F-Chinatown-patr...

Do you think the government is starved? At what level of spending would it not be starved?

The government is incompetent at protecting people. Call the police and you'll see how it goes. And this is happening while the government is spending 13B per year. I wonder, where does the money go, if basic services are not provided?

I'd rather spend my money on a network of competing private protection companies if I didn't have to pay taxes for the police. Once the system is in place you can create all sort of charity based options - or tax funded, if you like the idea of forcefully stealing money from citizens' profit - to grant protection to those who can't afford it.

> I'd rather spend my money on a network of competing private protection companies if I didn't have to pay taxes for the police.

I'd prefer to fix the cops rather than sign up for a MetaCops subscription in my burbclave.

That looks like a Snow Crash reference (Neal Stephenson). Absolutely worth a re-read if you want to explore this scenario.

Edit: spelling

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