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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.

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.

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.

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

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...).

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.

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...

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.

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.