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Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

> Mandelman added that Safeway told him police rarely arrest anyone for a property crime, by the time they make it on the scene.

Cities need to be able to properly police. If the police don't do anything about crimes, then people are just going to commit more. I respect and understand there is limited resources the police have to work with, but as the article says, business owners across SF have been asking politicians for more support against petty crimes for a while.

I don't have a good solution, but this is a supermarket i'd frequent and would appreciate longer hours.

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I think this is why crime is "falling" in San Francisco. The cops make no arrests, and often don't even take police reports. A few months ago I and everyone else in this store got pepper-sprayed by a shoplifter (the way the security guard told it, a shoplifter attacked a guard with a large can of it which ruptured when he swung at him with it and hit a shelf). I don't even think the police showed up. They weren't there 20 or 40 minutes later when I drove by after going home to clean up.

My business partner used to watch burglars in Pacific Heights go door to door and steal packages out of apartment building lobbies. He'd call the police and they'd say thank you but never even sent a car.

I was in a hit-and-run accident a few weeks ago, and because I wasn't injured, it was "just a misdemeanor" and they categorically refused to take a report at the station, even though I had dashcam video and the plate number.

The SFPD is pretty much entirely useless.

It doesn’t have to be this way many small cities have great police departments. It’s just that large cities and especially liberal cities like Seattle and SF have failed police departments that can’t be salvaged

Seattle is no where near that bad. Also the liberalness of a city is a red herring and doesn't have to be related to crime (most big cities are liberal, its part of being a big city). Being a big city means that unless you have enough officers, you just can't handle every case.

Seattle is a city with very little crime like homicide or theft or drug trafficking, but lots of homelessness and many people see that and assume there is lots of crime. Homelessness may or may not be a crime, but its not the same sort of crime, its pretty victimless.

> very little crime like homicide or theft or drug trafficking

Which part of Seattle do you live in? I lived in north Seattle for the last four years before recently leaving.

Drugs were being sold in broad daylight at the end of my street, and the only time it let up for a few weeks was when one of them crashed their stolen car a block away and died.

We left after a run of shootings and stabbings near the closest library.

It might not be Chicago but it's within an order of magnitude. Chicago has about 5x more shootings per capita per year, although Seattle is trending in the wrong direction with shootings up 30% yoy.

My wife and I briefly returned to Seattle for a work event, and she said the two times she stopped by the CVS across the street from the Belltown hotel there was a mass shoplifting in progress with someone emptying shelves into a duffle bag. The week we moved out of state I-5 had multiple incidents of bricks being dropped into traffic. It is getting pretty bad.

Before moving, the maintenance man at her prior concierge job was sadly killed by a tenant who had made violent threats, because police resources were not available to accompany evictions due to the ongoing riots and CHAZ nonsense.

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