Retailers say thefts are at crisis level. The numbers say otherwise

I live in dogpatch and like SF (the area I live is nice).

The shelves were 90% empty (likely because they were closing shortly), what remained on the shelves was entirely locked down. They had one security guard. Behind the counter in the pharmacy was a sign that said "we will get through this together" that looked like it had been put up by the employees (it wasn't some corporate poster, but something that looked printed). The lighting was harsh, the employees seemed stressed out.

The tiny room they took us into for the shot was dirty, and the entire place was in generally pretty poor shape. This was one of the ones that got hit a lot by people with garbage bags emptying shelves repeatedly.

Relatedly the raids in Union Square also looked pretty extreme and there are lots of pictures of boarded up retail to try and prevent future raids. There's also a ton of car smash and grabs and you see a lot of window glass on the street walking around. I think London Breed's response is the right one, hopefully she's able to do what she says.

This is controversial off topic politics for HN, but lots of police presence in the tenderloin, a strong crack down on dealers, and giving addicts on the street an option of treatment or prison seems like the way forward (in addition to building a lot more housing to increase supply/lower costs generally).

These are "shrink" numbers not police reports.

Source: former front end/grocery manager for a grocery store.

> If organized retail thieves steal $70 billion annually, and California accounts for 10% of the U.S., California’s losses add up to $7 billion, meaning the Bay Area “is likely in the billions itself.”

CA being 10% of the population does not mean you can take a national $ of retail theft and divide it by 10. Yet, the author tries to conflate this multiple times in the article and then comes up with a non-sensical conclusion in the last paragraph. There are so many leaps of logic that it made my head hurt.

0.07% is the estimate for "organized retail theft" which does not include "employee theft, regular shoplifting and fraud". How often did gangs of thieves break into the Walgreens to steal all the cosmetics?

"The walgreen shut down."

There was a restaurant near me, a local landmark. It closed down when the original owner retired, but was reopened by one of his relatives several months later. It lasted about a couple of months, then closed abruptly with hilarious signs on the door about the government stealing all the money---apparently the new operator hadn't realized that employment taxes were a thing. Was it the evil government that killed the restaurant, or the new operator's incompetence?

It still made crime rates skyrocket in the area, people were advised not to walk in the area alone, etc. It didn't get "handled", it festered a long while before it was finally dismantled.

I'm having trouble figuring out what to believe, whether this is a handful of brazen thefts amid normal theft rates, a small increase, a true theft epidemic, or maybe theft has decreased even.

I honestly don't know and don't know how I could gain that knowledge. Watching a few videos isn't going to do much for me though, evidence wise.

What is more puzzling is that the real estate prices show no correlation with any of this 3d-world stuff. The FAANGs don't show any sign of concern for losing engineers either. So apparently they don't expect much impact.

"At a local level, more up-to-date statistics sharpen the image of a waning problem. Property crime in Los Angeles is up 2.6% from last year, according to LAPD numbers published Nov. 27, but down 6.6% from 2019. The category that includes shoplifting — “personal/other theft” per LAPD — is down 32% from 2019. A San Francisco Chronicle analysis of that city’s shoplifting crime data showed that the number of monthly reports had changed little in the last three years, though it also raised some major questions about the accuracy of shoplifting reporting to law enforcement. Smash-and-grab thefts are classified differently because they involve violence, trespassing and high-value hauls, and suspects have been charged with robbery, burglary or grand theft after recent incidents in L.A. and San Francisco."

Anecdotes weren't data in 2010, either. Not that any body cares then or now. But that's pseudo-intellectual nonsense. How long do you expect it to be before SFPD has an officer in riot gear with military weapons in every Walgreens, convenience store, and bodega?

it wasnt handled in 1992 leading to public taking matters into their own hands

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/roof-koreans

In the case listed above, they have reason to report in insurance claims, yet it isn't manifesting there either.

Which was, itself, a response to another crisis...

The experiment failed, and it's now time to clean up the mess and resume normal order.

1) considering that retailers aren't actually behind the moral panic, but rather politicians who run on law-and-order platforms and the funders that back them. Funders who couldn't care less about retail theft but have a vested interest in those politicians.

2) A gang of unarmed teens robbing a store at once is good footage for the news, and now that everyone has a cellphone it'll get filmed, and since the kids aren't armed, filmed with impunity.

Stores can pursue _civil_ lawsuits and that's it.

Also I wouldn't consider the NRF to be a state source; they are an industry retail group.

There are two main sources of crime information in the US: the FBI's reports of reported crimes, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics' surveys. (https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ntcm_2014.pdf) The latter do not depend on police reports.

"The numbers" would have to climb quite a bit to get close to peaks in 1990 or so.

I was surprised at the sheer brazenness of the theft - the jewelry store is basically smack dab in the middle of the mall, and the theft occurred during a crowded Sat evening, so it's not like the thieves were attempting to get out undetected.

What many people are reacting to is the clear belief by thieves that they won't be confronted or significantly prosecuted, and that breakdown in the social fabric is what many people are reacting to.

This article comes off very cavalier. "Some times you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette."

I'm seeing an explosion of blatant moving vehicle violations - things that are hard to believe are "oopsie dasies". I drive _less_ now than I did ten or fifteen years ago, but I'm seeing double of careless red light running, stop sign running, excessive speeding, people spinning donuts in the middle of intersections, hit and runs. It's appalling.

On a similar token, I feel like I've never seen the level of clearly unregistered vehicles on the roads - expired temporary tags, expired tags, and often, no registration displayed at all. They seem to operate with virtual impunity.

Then you have people raising a fit about mask mandates, stealing in broad daylight, and the like. They know there's basically nothing going to be done about and it police departments all over are unlikely to respond. Petty theft of property (bikes, cars, etc) is through the roof and rarely is anyone implicated.

It's honestly depressing. I understand a lot of the factors are likely to be traced back to a diminishing economic prospects, but it's hard to see society coming apart at the seams like it is.

"Proposition 47 did not end prosecution of thefts under $950 in California"

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-160551360299

But if the retailers are closing up shop, it is not fine. They wouldn’t forego the profits this article assumes exist just to make a political point.

I don't believe the group's claims of damages. Could you visualize stealing 3.6 Billion dollars worth of retail items in just San Francisco and Oakland a year? Making up such a figure serves no one any good, especially not your own interests because it reduces your credibility.