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Comment by bluejekyll | Hacker News Reader

> Crime is rampant

According to the data, crime in SF is lower that it was a few years ago: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ...

> Drug use and filth is everywhere.

Voters can’t seem to wrap their head around better housing policies to get people off the street. It’s disappointing, the entire Bay Area is guilty of this.

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> According to the data, crime in SF is lower that it was a few years ago: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ...

Every time I see something like this I will point out that during the anti-police movement that happened a while back, many police started reducing their activity either because they were told to, because prosecutes would refuse to prosecute, or because they didn't want to be the next person on the news. Many people in the LE community that I knew reduced the proactive policing, because of the hostile nature of it.

Every single one of them predicted that crimes would stop being reported and recorded, and that a year from now everyone was going to point to the fact crime has gone down as proof that things are getting better, when the reality was that people were going to stop using or relying on the police for help because they police wouldn't do anything because they had been instructed not to.

Crime isn't any lower, reported crime is.

This theory falls down when you look at murders. They're down with all the others on that link, and they're highly unlikely to go unreported.

for 3 year old data, yes - but they are up 30% over that in 2021

[1] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...

Looking at that link murders are down from 34 to 33, not exactly stunning success. Especially if a murder is ruled something else.

Not sure which link you're looking at; the link I see shows murders going from a peak of 100 in 2007 to 40 in 2019.

2017: 56 2018: 46 2019: 41 2020: 48 2021: 56 2022: 50 (projected)

In fact, it looks like murders in San Francisco have been in roughly that range since 2009 (https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/murde...).

When people talk about "high crime areas" they are usually not talking about murder or arson.

They're usually talking about large amounts of more "petty crimes" - because even in the murder capital of the US (currently St Louis) it is 64.54 per 100,000 residents. Just not that many overall and you probably won't actually know someone who was murdered, especially if you're more toward the richer parts of town.

But the other crimes are much more common and you will see them relatively often if they occur. I wonder what percentage of people have seen shoplifting or had a car broken into, etc.

It's more about the "feel" of the city than the "real", unfortunately.

> It's more about the "feel" of the city than the "real", unfortunately.

Well, yes, that's the problem. It's a perception easily manipulated, by media breathlessly covering the latest incident, interest groups like police unions making false claims, etc. Americans have a wildly incorrect perception of what crime has done over the last ~50 years.

Being murdered isn't what most ordinary citizens (and voters) are worried about. There is no reason to think that murder and arson rates are correlated to everyday property crime rates.

Put another way, the guy stealing your catalytic converter isn't doing it because he's afraid to kill you or burn your house down. He's doing it because he has every reasonable expectation of getting away with it and getting paid for it.

> Put another way, the guy stealing your catalytic converter isn't doing it because he's scared to burn your house down. He's doing it because he has every reasonable expectation of getting away with it and getting paid for it.

Catalytic converter thefts are up everywhere, though. Not just in liberal bastions, but in places like Arkansas and Mississippi, too.

Cops saying "if you just gave us more money and toys, we'd stop crime" is a claim that should come with significant evidence to accept.

True to some extent, certainly. But if a cop in Arkansas catches you stealing a catalytic converter, the rest of your day is going to play out very differently compared to how things would have gone in SF.

> But if a cop in Arkansas catches you stealing a catalytic converter, the rest of your day is going to play out very differently compared to how things would have gone in SF.

I don't doubt it. I doubt the cops' unsupported claim that said difference is an effective deterrent against the crime.

I disagree with your premise that effective law enforcement isn't a deterrent, but the trouble is that there seems to be no fair way to settle the debate. The population density in SF, vehicle ownership demographics, even the typical location and security of parking spots is radically different compared to what you'd find in other areas.

We'd need some solid numbers on converter theft rates relative to the car-owning population. But even then the numbers wouldn't be comparable, so it'll always come down to my "common sense" versus yours. My common sense says that when cops see a crime in progress and walk away whistling, it encourages further crime... and also discourages the victim from bothering to report it.

Heck, if an uninvolved local sees you stealing a catalytic converter in Arkansas there's a "high enough you can't write it off" chance you'll get their footwear on your ribcage. In SF the bystanders will probably just film.

do you have statistics/links for this "crime not being lower, only reporting is lower" claim?

That isn’t easily shown in official studies as it only makes them look bad. Do this for me; in the middle of the day, go park your car with some boxes in the back near embarcadero, go to lunch, come back to broken windows and call the police. No one will come to take your report, then let me know what you think.

i would report it, so i don't think it would effect the stats in your way.

Possibly true if you look at property crimes and misdemeanours. But you can't "hide a body" or fail to report an arson. Major crimes are down too: https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...

The narrative that reported crime is down because of underreporting is very credulous of LEOs, because it's in the interest of police departments embroiled in controversy to make things look bad to justify their own budgets/jobs. Hence all the news stories about how SF is a crime-ridden hellhole. However, the police department's own numbers contradict this and they are forced to lean on "vibes".

So you can totally "hide a body" but using %s with homicide is a bit unclear as homicide is less that 100, so the 2.9% drop is only a difference from 34 down to 33.

That... is literally their job. if they are unable or unwilling to do so, maybe they should find another profession. There are countless stories on reddit of police officers actively witnessing crime taking place and doing nothing about it. Blaming it on the DA or whatever perceived political backlash they might get is akin to EMTs not taking patients because a doctor might not be able to save them.

It's a bit of a difference, but many of them are which is exacerbating the problems is that everyone who can in some of these places are leaving for other jobs.

But the difference between the EMT scenario is that there is that there is a potential that by getting involved you may not go home to see your family that night. In addition if you get involved and something goes wrong, you're going to be the next police officer on the news for "police brutality" and the rest of your life you'll forever be in fear of your life even if you did everything right. Furthermore the job of the police is not to protect citizens or stop crimes the supreme court has ruled as much, the police are an investigative force.

With the DA angle makes it even worse, because you spend the time and effort to arrest somebody and then they are back on the street a day later, what's the point in the first place. To put it other terms let's imagine for a second every day your boss took all the code you wrote and deleted it all, deleted all the backups and everything else, are you going to continue putting your best effort into coding, are you going to make sure the code compiles and the unit tests past? No you're going to do just enough to not get fired.

We can argue it shouldn't be that way but that is the reality of the situation, it turns out when you demonize a large group of people simply because they do their job, and criticize all of them as inhuman monsters and tell people that every single one of them is a bad person they start to lose some motivation.

I wouldn't be so sure about the official stats. We've had a similar phenomenon in Vancouver, where perceived crime has been going up in downtown core, especially during the lockdowns. However, people have given up on calling the police for property crimes and random attacks on residents. This has led to lower crime stats.

Anecdotally a lot of friends in SF don’t bother reporting crimes because they know the police won’t do anything and it’ll be just a waste of their time reporting it.

Or if you call the police, they just never show up, or when they do, tell you not even bother filing a report.

Citizen: Someone stole my backpack and laptop out of my car!

Police: And?

Ok, imagine for me the society for which you can file a police report for a stolen backpack, and you relatively efficiently have your backpack returned, and the perpetrator brought to justice. What does that society look like? How does that happen?

Unbelievably, I had a stolen bike returned to me two years later by the sheriff, so it is possible if the item is registered and reported as stolen. No perp justice, but getting the bike back was a pleasant surprise.

This is my experience even in some of the poorer parts of Europe. You describe stolen items or provide photos of them and the police usually have a rough idea of who might have stolen it or have recently arrested someone in possession of your items.

That you won't get it back doesn't mean that it's not useful to count the crime. It won't get counted if not reported.

I agree. I just think expecting to get back a stolen backpack, at any measurable rate is pretty unrealistic, unless the society in question is so draconian that the solution is worse than the problem.

So file a report online.

https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/get-service/police-report...

https://www.oaklandca.gov/services/report-a-crime-online

https://www.sjpd.org/reporting-crime/report-crimes-online

And have nothing come of that? Been there, done that. They do not give a shit.

If you want to make an insurance claim don't insurance companies require a police report? I would assume this is the case regardless where you live.

Few people are going to make an insurance claim for a few thousand dollars, especially with what the premiums would be in areas with high crime. It is not a big enough loss to have to deal with filing a claim and then being subject to even higher premiums. You either replace it with your savings, or you learn to live without.

This delusion that if only we build houses, the homeless, mentally ill and drug addicted will magically disappear from the streets...is based on what exactly? What does "housing policy" mean in the context of streets lined with tent cities filled with drug addicts?

surely you are not arguing it won't go down at all, right? So the question really is, what amount of homelessness will disappear. It may be that it is not cost effective. That is a reasonable possibility, i suppose. I think tho, it is a difficult prediction to make, and so shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

You'll be subsidizing their drug habit, and increasing the number of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicted people that reside in your city that taxes will have to pay for (simply to exist in the houses you gave them, and keep abusing drugs). Of course it won't be cost effective because it's not accomplishing anything except paying them to ruin whatever building you give them, which they likely won't stay in anyways. They're out there because they want to be out there doing drugs. At the very least, the drug addiction would have to be stopped, which isn't likely in any case, but certainly not by just giving them a house.

There's an entire thriving economy in SF with jobs these people could be doing. What aren't they doing them? If cost of living is too expensive there, why not go to a cheaper city and do work there? If they have skills to be a white collar worker, SF is a great place to do that work and easily afford housing. Why aren't they doing it? Mental illness and drugs dominate the problem by such an order of magnitude that anything else save for harsh imprisonment to get off streets....especially subsidization of their lifestyle, will accomplish less than nothing.

> This delusion that if only we build houses, the homeless, mentally ill and drug addicted will magically disappear from the streets...is based on what exactly?

Peer-reviewed research: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20063061/ & https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183666

i agree that this is delusional and i see it repeated a lot -- homelessness isn't just a byproduct of a lack of housing or a lack of affordable housing.

i remember having a conversation with a LICSW who did a tremendous amount of work with drug addicted and homeless populations; she explained that when she really needed to, she could "beg, borrow, or steal" a way to find better housing for someone, but that really wasn't the crux of solving the individual's problems, it's only one facet.

even if someone who has untreated mental illness or drug addiction suddenly has a great new place to live, they're not going to stay at that address long if their other needs aren't treated.

i'm not saying there shouldn't be more affordable housing ASAP, or that it wouldn't radically improve some lives, but i get the impression that a lot of folks think homelessness is mainly a housing problem when it's really not so simple, and i think that needs to change if the problems have any chance at getting improved.

If the "the homeless, mentally ill and drug addicted" can live in a tent they can live in a house. They may need assistance, the house may be nearly a blast-proof concrete box, but it can be made to work.

Houston has done it, and it can be done: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-...

Crime can be down but still remain rampant. Your own link says that crime in SF is "higher than in 94.1% of US cities".

That data is 3 years old, and only accounts for reported crime. If you look at the numbers for 2021, it doesn't look so good - and that doesn't account for all of the non-reported crime, or incidents where the cops just don't show up.

[1] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...

> According to the data, crime in SF is lower that it was a few years ago:

I think the data on the page you linked to only goes through 2019.

In addition, anecdotally, there is a decent amount of property crime that is not being reported because it is felt is is not worth the effort as the police are not able to do anything about it.

Having worked with PD crime data before (we were trying to make heat maps of crime levels across cities), I wouldn't put a lot of weight on it. High quality data collection doesn't seem to be a priority for most police departments, which is especially obvious when you compare across cities. Based on friends in SF, property crime in SF is at ridiculous levels, especially in the seedier parts like the Tenderloin. One friend started maintaining a car window replacement fund, because they lost multiple windows over the last year.

Regarding crime, that data only goes to 2019. I'd be shocked if things are not much worse now.

Crime is down - but so is population.

Is the decrease statistically significant after adjusting for population loss?

Violent Crime IS low in SF. It's pushed into Oakland. Property crime is insane and artificially held low by apathy with regard to reporting and redefining offense levels.

Also wondering how much this has to do with Shoplifting and other crimes simply being decriminalized.

  Shoplifting and other crimes simply being decriminalized.

Shoplifting was never (formally) decriminalized. SFPD stopped bringing anything to the DA because he was investigating and prosecuting police misconduct. Now that the mayor's installed a new DA and the new DA's disbanded the group that investigates police misconduct the police have started bringing more cases forward. Unsurprisingly the new DA is not prosecuting cases at a higher rate.

https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/jenkins-removed-prosecutor-...

https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/narcotics-enforcement-spike...

https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/mayors-office-takes-hands-o...

I have never met a homeless person that wanted to get work, have a steady income and pay for housing that didn't eventually make it. (I lived on the streets)

Those that were overcome by drugs and mental issues would either destroy the housing or simply leave it or never take free housing.

(yes, there are many homeless that actually do _not_ want an apartment/house to take care of)

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