Nearly Half of San Franciscans Have Been Victims of Theft, New Poll Says
sfstandard.com
sfstandard.com
A police officer was rolling through, telling people not to leave anything visible in their cars (nothing was visible in mine). I asked him if I could file a report, and he told me I would have to go to the station. He told me he wasn't sticking around and refused to take a report.
I had a similar experience last year with an officer who tried to talk us out of filing a report for a man with a hatchet who had shattered car windows with it, and I had a dispatcher refuse to send an officer for a theft crew that I'd stopped in the middle of breaking into a car before they waved a gun at me and drove at me and my son over the sidewalk.
I've also had them refuse to take reports at our neighborhood station, forcing me to go to the Mission station to file a report.
The police in San Francisco are less than useless. We should fire the whole set and start over.
There was an entire recall election becuase of "lawlessness" but it turns out that it was not the DA that was the problem, it's the police force refusing to address crime.
Seems pretty likely to be direct corruption organized with the thieves.
The day before that 6 cops with chain saws in full uniform parked in front of my house. They spent several hours cutting up and hauling a fallen tree with my neighbors.
Maybe people should talk more about the good things cops do.
Strange, when service workers act that way, they either start pretending that they are helpful and respected, or they get fired.
And as for cops, they've been useless for a very long time, certainly prior to the events of the past few years. The tantrum they throw every time they are subjected to any oversight is purely performative.
I'll also point out that it's a really stupid idea to send an armed gunmen to do, say, a wellness check, but that's a marginal problem, not a root cause.
Don't like the homeless camp in the park near you? Have you tried pitching your tent there, and reforming it? Don't like Russia getting truculent? Go there and fix it. Don't like Amazon behaving unethically? Join it as a janitor and fix it from the inside.
What a conversation ender.
In other words, either we show them obsequience and respect they don't deserve, or else they'll "act accordingly" and just start robbing and killing people en masse.
That's no better than the mafia. Actually it's worse than the mafia because at least when the mob shakes people down it's illegal.
Are you delusional? This has been a very hot issue for over a year now.
I'd be inclined to blame low numbers of police rather than police apathy. But I haven't actually seen a policeman on the street in my country - outside protests - for at least a decade. The fact that you actually found one outside in the wild is remarkable to me.
I effing hate that attitude. We shouldn't have to live in a society where every moment you have to be vigilant against the bad guys.
It keeps piling on. I suspect if we keep this up there will be signs "don't use your phone in public" (because people will steal phones from your hands). "don't eat in public" (because people will steal food from you). "don't drive a car" (because your car will be wrecked/stolen). "Don't leave your house" (because outside you're likely to be mugged).
The whole point of having police instead of having to walk around with your own armor and armed guards is so we can not have to put up with this stuff. But nearly everyone, at least on the west, takes it for granted that "it's just the way it is". It's not. It's the way we let it be. Not every place/country has this issue. We let it get there by both by encouraging it ("looking for a partner in crime") and by letting it slide (see police response above)
This isn't just SF. In Berlin I was told not to put my bag between my legs because someone would steal it from behind. In Paris a friend had her wallet stolen from her purse in ~15 seconds. She reached into her purse for her camera, took a picture, looked back into her purse, saw her wallet was gone.
> having to walk around with your own armor and armed guards is so we can not have to put up with this stuff
The net result wont be hyper vigilant people (as in they modify their behavior). The net result will be fight or flight. Vigilantes, or migration. I found myself getting increasingly ready for violence in SF. I didn't want that to be my story and I have the self control and self awareness to do something else. So I left, and though it pains me I will probably never live there again. California as a piece of the earth is amazing, but a minority of the people there make it terrible.
I might catch tuns of downvotes for this, but the Police in SF are to protect the interests of the elite. It is not in their interest to worry about "petty" crime. The police are not legally obligated to protect the public.
That encounter with the thieves sounds awful, and then being unable to get police help sounds doubly awful.
I hope your son wasn't traumatized by it.
FWIW, not all cities are like that. The couple times someone pulled a gun on me on the sidewalk in Cambridge (Mass.), a large number of police cruisers responded, and started a very professional-seeming search. The time that I called police before I got home, after they got a description and then statement from me, one of the officers gave me a ride home. Cambridge isn't as great as it could be for founders (not as much action as the Bay Area, and the bottom-end apartments might be $2K+ and still have peeling lead paint and the occasional mold or rat), but you do get good police.
As a German that sentence sounds so absurd. I am in my mid-30s and have never held a gun myself. The only weapons I saw in Germany were (holstered) guns on policemen.
The reason I've been mugged multiple times is that I used to walk many, many more hours late at night in cities than most US people do. (I also discouraged numerous opportunistic mugging approaches, before they happened.)
I've never held a gun. And I'd guess most US coastal city people almost never see guns in person, except like you describe. Despite the impression we get of the US from TV shows and movies, about half the US votes for the political party that says we need more restrictions on guns.
For weeks after I was walking through all the homeless chop shops looking for it. About a month after the theft, I received a call from someone who bought a frame (just the frame) with my serial number at a San Jose flea market. Told them to keep it -- at least it's in the hands of someone who cares.
The point of my story is that theft sucks, can happen to anyone, and it takes a toll on our communities. Wish law enforcement took the problem more seriously.
What kind of sociopath would get job satisfaction from felony marijuana busts or harassing queer people trying to have a drink at a bar when you could be going after bigger fish?
Maybe the effective Altruism folk can do a law enforcement spin-off to grade the impact of different enforcement strategies in a way that more people would understand.
And that's a law, that in theory, I might be convinced had some merit. Not some War on Drugs BS.
How can you exist in the year 2022, have strong opinions on law and order on the internet and feel deep sympathy with police officers forced to do a thankless task as public servants and yet be blissfully unaware of this entire concept?
They have a distinct pattern, and most of the crimes mentioned in this thread fit that pattern. So, if you try to be "tough on crime" by locking up people with addictions rather than helping them break their addiction and/or even just in some scenarios giving them drugs for free, then you are wasting both lives and money.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/DRRC.PDF
> Another dimension of drug-related crime is whether the offense is committed to obtain money (or goods to sell to get money) to support drug use. According to BJS national surveys, the most comprehensive information available, an estimated 17% of 1991 State prison inmates and 13% of convicted jail inmates in 1989 reported committing their offenses to get money to buy drugs (table␣3). Offenders convicted of robbery, burglary, and larceny/theft were most likely to commit their offense to obtain money to buy drugs. Offenders convicted of sexual assault and homicide were among the offenders least likely to commit the offense to sustain their drug habit.
I'm suggesting that we should listen to experts, and get the former group medical help, which frees up police time and resources to go after the second group of murderers and rapists, which helps the idea appeal to the tough on crime types even if it has the drawbacks of being more humane, more effective and cheaper as well as actually reducing crime.
But the War on Drugs was never really about the drugs in the first place, so it's not like this was some innocent mistake, it's a problem that got created and is now exploited to push more of the same bad policies.
If in some wierdo universe where programmers had to stop hackers by busting down their door in the middle of the night to stop a hack, maybe programmers would be facing the same scrutiny.
Public: You're going after too many minorities!!!
You: I'm just trying to stop the hackers!!!!
Public: Defund the programmers!
You: Look we stopped 40 white hackers last month! We'll stop going after the others, we promise.
(then you just stop doing anything)
Actually they do. It's called law enforcement discretion. They could watch you get murdered and have no legal responsibility to help you (they would likely be fired, but that's about it).
The city affirmatively decided to decriminalize petty crime. Why would you blame the cops for that.
FWIW I don't live in SF but I've had a couple of car break-ins and I don't even remember if I reported them; it was a formality for insurance purposes if so and I never expected nor saw evidence of any police follow up. Are there cities where that's different?
> “Bragg said the office will stop prosecuting people for theft of services, trespassing (unless it accompanies a stalking charge), aggravated unlicensed operation, routine traffic violations not accompanied by felony charges, obstructing governmental administration, resisting arrest, and prostitution.“
https://gothamist.com/news/manhattan-da-bragg-tells-staff-st...
The Manhattan DA subsequently claimed to roll back the policy, but they are still not interested in prosecuting. I travel to NYC on business regularly, and I’ve seen 6/6 times in the last 8 months people at various stations openly evading Subway fares. In one case, a dude was holding a gate open and yelling at people to come through and not bother paying - with 2 NYPD sitting there talking about 10 feet away.
In my small upstate city, they’ll only even pretend to investigate a burglary. We have issues with people partying (drinking, smoking weed, having sex, eating and dumping trash in the street) in cars in nice neighborhoods. We have muggings, car thefts, robberies, etc like never before. The cops shrug, as their operating orders prevent them from doing anything.
The “progressive” governance model is to suck up to activists to get the campaign cash. Activists want the cops to stand down to street crime. Ultimately the people who live on the wrong side of the tracks suffer. It’s gross.
Nobody has ever cared about this (nor should they, IMO; disclaimer: I have never lived in NYC). Occasionally journalists go to NYC to interview random residents about fare evasion, and the main response is a shrug.
Frankly, we’d all be generally better off with free public transit. Governments end up paying most of the bill anyway, and increasing transit use would be a big benefit to those most needing help.
Not for long. If you turn public transit into a de facto homeless shelter people who have other options will avoid it. No country with good public transport has it free.
And who ends up paying for all that? That's right, the taxpayer.
In case you are serious... Fare evasion vs. stealing library books are clearly categorically different. Routine health checkups should be free for everyone; the US profit-focused healthcare system is totally fucked up: outrageously expensive for society, outrageously ineffective, and outrageously unjust.
Is fare evasion a thing? Sure. But when prosecutorial discretion decides that public transit is going to be de facto free, that’s a governance failure that undermines confidence in government.
If the DA wanted to be the public face of a movement to transform public transit by eliminating fares, that’s one thing. Saying “we’re not interested in prosecuting theft of services”, that’s not the same.
Not that you were asserting otherwise but it doesn't seem like support for disinterest in theft being a prosecutor choice rather than a cop choice.
Typically, it’s difficult to prosecute things like muggings or car theft.
So using lesser acts that are easily demonstrated is a more scalable process. If you’re in my garage, charging you with trespass and petit larceny will get plead out as trespass. If you have to go to trial for the theft, you need to establish that the property was there, etc. That means witnesses, testimony, etc.
These issues are nuanced. I don’t want to see my neighbors abused by out of control police. But letting criminals run wild isn as bad as letting police run around without accountability. Conservative politicians used to bleat about “the rule of law”. Law requires justice, and that means police and prosecutors must be held to a high standard of conduct and competence.
MTA is a public authority with a board controlled by the governor - the mayor of NYC has limited influence over the subways and bridges, but the NYPD (formerly transit police) are the main enforcement. There was an infamous rivalry between the two officials and sending in state police, etc was part of the show.
There is a risk/reward analysis that should go into the decision to loot a Walgreens. If you have nothing to lose or are desperate you're more likely to give 0 fucks and the system just has to deal with you.
If you want to know where shop lifting is taken seriously, it's Walmart. If you steal from Walmart, they know it, they know who you are and it goes in your file. They will bust you at a felony amount level with all the evidence documented and wait until you are somewhere in a jurisdiction they know will prosecute. They will trespass you and have their LPs hold you and the off duty cop they employ transport you.
I'd say it's pretty serious when it's to the point that places are going our of business because of it. Any business can expect some shrinkage, but when that number surpasses rhe already low margins in most industries...
I'm not saying that police should hassle someone for sleeping on the street. I'm saying they should arrest people for stealing stuff. That's not harassment. That's justice.
Wage theft is the go-to example of people who say "shoplifting doesn't hold a candle to the thefts the rich do," so I was preempting that argument.
[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
> wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/
Swing and a miss on the Clean URL auto-generator
(and plus, when you bust a big operation and now have a ton of bikes whos owners can't be located you now have an endless supply of bait)
https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/bait-bike-program-cu...
Bike thieves are the freaking worst.
For theft, it's quite hard to think of a situation where someone could put you in a state of mind that stealing this thing isn't against the law. The closest I can come is a signed statement by the police department saying "it's not against the law to steal this," and that's more because some jurisdictions will give you the defense if the government lies to you about the law. (And I suspect it still wouldn't qualify because it isn't exactly reasonable to believe that theft could be legal.)
Putting a bike a place and manner an ordinary tourist would, which you just happen to be monitoring is not going to cause someone to steal who otherwise wouldn't.
The most important function cops serve is enforcing property restrictions. Someone might be able to walk out with $10 of items from a shelf, but they certainly aren't able to seize the business and do what they want with it. That's how SWAT teams show up and shoot you. I doubt Walmart wants to invest in a standing army, tanks, automatic weapons, seige weapons, etc.
A friend in San Francisco casually mentioned their car getting broken into. The normalization is funny when one recognizes it.
The best documentation of this I know of is from Chicago about 10 years ago. The above was the first article by the journalist I associate with it.
It's funny, this is exactly what happens when I talk to my SF friends about crime. They have an immediate defensive reaction to insist it's not that bad, but then they slowly start recalling various crime experiences they've had in the past year. It's as if the constant background level of crime has reset their expectations of what's bad and what's normal.
Have lived in LA, Santa Cruz, SJ, SF, DC, New York and PA. SF is the only city where I have had my car broken into and all of my things stolen. Told the police I found literally at the Starbucks two parking spots away from my car and they legit declined to look into it.
In Denver, when I worked for a neighborhood paper briefly ca. 1980, one of my jobs was to check the blotter at the local precinct. I discovered that the Denver police kept two lists: one for burglaries, one for all else. My recollection is that there were usually a dozen or so burglaries each week.
The distinction is that this isn't just a small town, it's a town with a strong community and it's just out of the way enough to be unappealing to transients.
This is baffling to me. I'm currently in a medium sized city. When someone in my social circle has something stolen, it's a big deal. The last time it happened was several years back, and it upset the person enough that they moved to a new neighborhood as soon as possible.
It's so weird to read these accounts from people who think constant theft and crime are just normal.
Absolutely not. You may not believe it, but you're living in a bad place.
Japan. Been here for over 5 years, zero theft.
I live in Germany. The only time I ever had something stolen was at age 9, by a classmate who was shortly thereafter diagnosed as a cleptomaniac and who received therapy to deal with it.
Generally speaking, thefts do happen here, too. But if theft is of particular concern for you, it's not all that hard to significantly reduce your chances. Pick an apartment that's not on the ground floor, so people cannot get in through the windows. Put your wallet in a pocket that can be closed with a zipper, and pickpockets won't bother with you. Armed robberies are just not a thing because of gun control laws. Sure, there are a few ones across the entire country every year, but it's rare enough to make the news every time.
What a crazy world we live in, where not wanting to be mugged and have your stuff stolen is politically unpopular....
I had what I assume was a drunk person, try to get into my apartment once. Not something that should be too scary but I felt uneasy for some time after that.
I'd be out wiring the house like ft. knox the next day, if that happened to me haha.
Despite all the stories in this thread, me and my neighbors here in SF leave our cars out and haven't hade break ins. Even the $100,000 convertible with a soft top parked outside our place most nights hasn't been bothered in the year I've lived here, and I live in NOPA, so not exactly the outskirts.
I think the saying "crime doesn't travel up hill" is very real in SF
But its small enough that there's only a few "big" crimes a year which becomes the town gossip. This mostly involves some superintendent embezzling money or some criminals coming into town to steal catalytic converters lol
It is certainly not worldwide. Take Japan for instance. Your stuff[0] left in the open will almost never be taken. And in the event they went missing, there's a good chance it's because someone took them to the nearest police box.
[0] Umbrellas on rainy days are notable exceptions. But they're so cheap (a few dollars) many consider them "communal" items.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/how-demographics-contribute...
There's also kind of an unspoken rule among the people here: if something is left on the road where it might be spoiled or destroyed, (and is not valuable of course), things are moved to the sidewalk so the owner can find them easily and/or are not destroyed by careless passers-by. I have seen a handkerchief that was tied to the railing at eye-level, so that the owner could find it easily when they came back to look for it.
If the thing in question is valuable (like wallets, cellphones), it will most likely be deposited to the nearest police box where they will hold on to it for a while.
My apartment was broken into, my car was broken into multiple times, my roommate was mugged at knifepoint and stabbed (she was fine), my bike was stripped for parts (they stole the handlebars / shifters and seat while it was locked up), and my car was stolen, driven around the neighborhood in broad daylight when I spotted it at 19th and South Van Ness and tried to steal it back and was almost run over, and then it was disposed of in Hunter’s Point completely stripped and wrecked (no passenger seat, interior panels, stick shift, battery or wheels).
Amusingly though I moved to NYC because of boredom, a bad breakup and the abysmal dating prospects, not the constant crime.
I still have nightmares about the time I woke up on a Saturday morning to the sounds of a disturbed and dying woman screaming after she doused herself in gasoline and lit herself on fire at Dorland and Guerrero.
Some of the screams were from people who had tried to help her and ended up injuring themselves.
https://missionlocal.org/2012/07/apparent-attempted-suicide-...
When I was a (fairly reckless) teenager, I got into a fight and got "stabbed" in my side (minor wound). Honestly, it's not something I consider as traumatic.
It _was_ an effective way to stop the fight though.
It wasn't particularly bitter – just, wtf. Bitter was when I was bedridden because of a flu, and when I finally had energy to go out to get some food, my bike got stolen in the 10 minutes I was in the grocery store. It was a miserable trip back home.
It really is bad, right, and not my imagination? I feel like I’ve wasted a decade of my life here on an endless string of bad first dates with no mutual attraction.
It wasn’t like that in other places I’ve lived. I mentioned this to a family member recently, and they said it’s harder because I’m getting older. That’s probably true, but I swear it’s rough in this city.
It’s a bit like buying a house here: you spend a huge amount of time, effort, and money, and end up with less than you’d get back home.
Hope NYC worked out better for you.
If not, I hope you can get over your FOMO, or just keep searching for this imaginary ‘best’ partner that may or may not exist.
The pursuit of the "the best" is one of the most toxic parts of Bay area culture. In want of the "the best" I've seen people double/triple book themselves for events so they can flake on 2 and go to the one they want in the moment. I've seen people endlessly date, permanently unsatisfied with every human they encounter (if you can have 100 dates in 2 yrs and no one lives up to your standards, high probability thats more about you than them). In pursuit of "the best" people undermine eachother at work, and fail to keep their words. On and on it goes.
This was a top3 for leaving. I realized that in the same way my politics are not welcome in the company I work for, so I just disengaged, the politics of SF made me an unwelcome, unwanted form of "diversity". So I left, along with all my tax burden, cultural contributions, and normally positive nature.
I expected the same SF problems you hear about to be issues in that area, and they really aren't (at least where I live)
Idk if I would ever move into the city tbh, it just seems like a shithole. I'm sure it's less boring, but I like not having to deal with theft or BS politics
I remember asking someone from the area at my job orientation if I should live in SF, and they pretty much said "no it's a literal shithole it isn't worth it" and it was such candid advice I took it
Also another weird thing is I expected all the locals around here to be super progressive, but a lot of the people I've talked to were pissed off about what's happened to SF
Also a question for people who know the bay area: where do you guys recommend to live for both commute and safety?
I went there once for the library and it just seemed really sketch. I never thought I would say this but maybe the nimbys aren't all bad :/
also should have clarified original comment, but what I meant was the suburban stretch from like Burlingame to Sunnyvale
Moral underlying reason? We don't want people to overdose. We're saving lives.
I'd say, Tokyo's policies are far more moral. They'd save thousands of lives vs. 2 overdose lives in a reactionary measure.
Things are easier when you have a good start.
This strongly suggests that incarceral policies are not the most effective solution to reducing crime.
Put it the other way, if crime rates would increase hypothetically in Japan, you'd see a proportinal increase in incarcination rate. May be, that there are cultural differences and the crime rates are vastly different between Japan and USA. Disincitivization from hard-on-crime policies could be a non-linear function that we're just glossing over. Highly functional at low crime rates.
But the answer shouldn't be to throw the baby with the bath water and turn public parks into heroine shooting sites. Progressives have been doing this consistently, destroying our nation for last 3 decades of lies and misunderstandings of criminal justice system. Experiments like CHOP and CHAZ, which abandon all law & order are the epitome of the progressive dysfunction.
No it doesn't, because you've only changed one variable, and there's a lot more that differentiates the US from those countries other than prisons
Where I'm from this is pretty much unheard of. It's yet to happen to me in bay area, but also my car isn't super nice and I never leave anything in it. Hoping it doesn't happen
This explains the Chesa Boudin recall, and will explain the results of elections in the months and years ahead.
Also,
> a quarter have been threatened or physically attacked
That's a much scarier thing. 1/4 people were threatened or attacked in a 5 year period? That's pretty rough
During that time, I was asked if I wanted to buy drugs 5 times, I shook a suspicious-looking tail (someone/multiple people following you) twice, and I had a bottle full of blood thrown at my head because I refused to acknowledge a screaming crackhead when I walked past them on the street.
I'm surprised it's only 1/4.
I live in San Diego now.
I live in Cambridge, MA now, and it's a million times better. Only thing remotely close that I've seen was one time biking past the Woods-Mullen Shelter in Boston (saw two other comments here call it "Mass and Cass"), except it's just one block and extremely tame compared to what you find all over the Mission, SOMA, and Tenderloin.
Also called the cops twice on people shooting up in front of the middle school near my house in the morning while I was walking my dog. That wasn't even in the TL - that was Nob Hill.
Been here since 2007 and seriously getting fed up with this shit.
With all that said, San Francisco is a beautiful city.
It only takes minority number of people to damage reputations of country, and the source of problem must be kept in check. And, I am really sad to hear that the beautiful San Fransico have been plagued by such a people. And, it seems government is doing nothing to ameliorate the situations.
The thing is that people steal things everywhere. Bikes. Cigarette lighters. Money left out. Scam items off Amazon or eBay is a form of theft. Your beer at parties. Lawn gnomes.
I don’t know many people anywhere who haven’t had something stolen from them at some point, so I’m not sure what this is saying
San Francisco's problem is rampant property crime: Property crime is still real crime and harms people mentally... but it also means SF is physically safer than many cities that have less overall crime rates, because of their higher violent crime rates.
Since it's often beneficial to an agenda to conflate the two so you'll always see something like:
"San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime"
(https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-mos...)
Isn’t this a direct effect of the DA refusing to prosecute? What’s the point of police getting involved if the crime isn’t even considered a crime by the prosecutor?
Recently my plumber neighbors had their truck stolen with their tools in it and told the police precisely where it was but the police wouldn’t do anything, so my neighbors found the thief and beat him up. The police came to ask why there was a fist fight in the middle of the sidewalk. The thief ran away, so the police shrugged and left.
That was in June of this year. Do you really believe that the change will happen that fast?
How much of this is a consequence of prosecutors and judges who don't jail thieves or people who commit assaults? I'm not fan of the police, but what is the point of arresting people and giving them a ride to the police station only to be released back onto the street?
That's rather uncharitable given the sheer volume of property crime facing the city. Literally hundreds of calls a day... while in 2020 the mayor bragged about cutting the police funding by $120 million and moving it to other organizations. It has since been restored (I think?).
Even a B-corp with a very liberal owner couldn't take it anymore when their windows were broken 5 times and organized theft groups raided the store on a regular basis (posted 2 days ago): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davismsmith_its-sad-but-san-f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Their highest rate is Spokane, WA at 5,408/100k, which would mean at most 5.4% of people report a theft. SF is a close second at about 5%.
Curious, let's look at the poll sourced by the article. It was a questionnaire of about 1500 people conducted online or by telephone. But there's no link to a paper, and they don't clarify how the online poll was conducted.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfnext-poll-meth...
Not every victim will file a police report, but it's usually required for insurance payouts, and an order of magnitude difference is hard to swallow. They might have some sampling bias in favor of people who wanted to be interviewed about the state of the city.
Someone stealing a lawn gnome would weird me out a bit.
Also notable that Orlando, FL is high on the list. But Irvine, CA and Tampa, FL are at the bottom of the list.
Please also read the Criticisms sections before jumping to conclusions when making comparisons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
My truck did get broken into, though... guy couldn't figure out how to disconnect the 2m radio, though, so he settled for the owner's manual and nothing else.
It’s owned entirely by one of the largest (maybe the largest) real estate company in the US, The Irvine Company. They also have a heavy presence in Sunnyvale CA.
Irvine buildings and neighborhoods - all of them - are built intentionally to be anti-crime. Things like alleys and dark corners are virtually non-existent.
I guess Devil's Night is still a tradition. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Night
EDIT: This chart is accurate to 2019. The picture for SF/Oakland must be much worse using EOY 2021 statistics.
Crime goes up when income gaps get bigger.
https://financesonline.com/how-income-inequality-affects-cri...
Do you mean cities with lower arrest rates? I don't know of any reliable source that shows actual crime rates.
> Suggesting the crime problem we're discussing is the cause of income inequality
We already know that income inequality causes higher crime. So it's almost certainly a factor. If anyone has sources to evidence for other factors, there's no reason to not be open to that evidence as well.
To wit, in Seattle we had our car broken into once. We also had a habit of forgetting the car keys /on top of the car/, such that we would have said we live in a very very safe place. Despite the time the car was broken into.
When I lived in Atlanta, the general practice was not to lock your car, so that they wouldn't have to break in to it.
At some point you need the police to arrest all these people and throw them in jail. Even a few weeks behind bars can drastically improve behavior among a population used to zero consequences for theft and violence.
I still don't claim it is a safer city than Seattle. Not by a long shot. Just as I don't recommend walking downtown Seattle super late. Though, of course, have done so many times. Similarly, we never had package theft in Seattle. I don't know how I could claim that isn't a thing, though.
I too am a victim of theft!!
Drama aside, that's exactly once, about 16 years ago, and it was (i reckon) some kids that came in through an open window and took a backpack (cool cameo design), a gaming console, and my sons bike.
(Perth, Westerm Australia)
Total cost - well under theft insurance rates which I have yet to subscribe to.
Point being "nearly half" doesn't convey nearly as much infomation as the scare reaction to the statement warrents.
Why not? High crime rates are bad in any city. It doesn't become okay if multiple big cities have high crime rates.
It's weird to see how so many people are trying to normalize crime rates this high.
My point is, as someone that doesn't live in San Fran, I don't know how this compares. Is it actually high? Or, is half actually low for comparable density locations.
Back when I was in a low population area, but lived in duplexes, I had my apartment broken into. And way more petty theft than now that I live where I do. Yet, I don't know that I would expect crime is higher there.
reading that some other city has X armed robberies per capita doesn't give a great sense of how that would actually impact my day-to-day life. obviously I'd like X to be as low as possible, but if it's already lower than where I currently live and the place has other positive qualities, I would consider moving there.
Crime more typically happens between people with connections to each other. For example, my city has a per capita crime rate similar to San Fransisco's, but most don't experience it unless they live or work in a few neighborhoods (or single intersections in some cases.) In my city, something like 5-10% of people would report having recently been a victim of a crime, despite the number of crimes per capita being similar.
It's useful to also gather the sentiment. It doesnt matter if SF is the best city if they're all bad. At a certain point it doesnt matter if you're slightly better than unacceptable -- it's still unacceptable.
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/murde...
- 2 stolen bike seats (one by 4th and King, one in the Mission)
- 1 entire bike stolen (left out in the Castro overnight)
- 1 rear wheel stolen (in a parking garage by the SF Symphony)
- 1 seat post clamp (literally just the clamp they had to remove the seat, take off the clamp, then put the seat back; during a 30 minute piano lesson in the Mission)
But that doesn't included the most egregious thing that I ever witnessed: I was running up to Twin Peaks on a Saturday morning, and right around noon, in the mini parking lot between the actual two peaks, with dozens of people milling about, heard someone break a car window while there was someone in the vehicle and grab a bag. A woman was seated in the passenger seat and they broke the rear driver-side window. Within seconds a car pulled up with no license plates, the guy jumped in and they sped off.
I always keep a roll of duct tape and some cardboard in the car now. I tape up my quarter glass (the smallest of the rear windows that thieves love to break) and cover it with cardboard, to make it look like its already been broken into. I also leave my back seat down w/ a clear view into the empty trunk. That's the only thing that works.
I’ve lived in SF twice and in a few other Bay Area cities, and I honestly can’t tell you that my personal experience with crime in SF is all that different from the norm in most urban areas.
There are places I’ve lived which seem devoid of crime, but these places seem to have more community in common than leadership or laws.
Although I’ve experienced crime, I also know that the level of crime, violent or not, has dramatically dropped over my lifetime and the probability of experiencing it is greatly reduced by living in densely populated areas.
One of my friends when I moved to Shanghai has been in multiple fights in or near bars. I had never had that happen to me. During the next two years as I acquired an active social life involving a great deal of alcohol and spending a lot of time around a friend who does not back down and has a strong sense of personal honour and virtue I was threatened with a baseball bat and got the world’s tiniest stab wound. After my friend calmed down and went out and drank less I just don’t experience this stuff anymore. The variety of human experience is large.
Potentially bigger "rampant crime" issues:
- Corruption in SF municipal government
- Local power company keeps causing devastating fires, killing people. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/24/pge-should-be-b...
- There were more than 300 news stories about a single shoplifting incident last year, and comparatively little coverage about the chain's much larger wage-theft problem. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/07/want-t...
Similarly:
- it's socially acceptable for techies to consume some drugs while hanging out in Dolores park, where we can be heard complaining about the visible drug use in the tenderloin
- people have mostly given up caring that Uber, AirBnB grew with a playbook of entering markets and initially ignoring local laws.
- people care if their delivery is stolen, but a lot less if their tip to the delivery person is stolen. https://www.mselaborlaw.com/news/doordash-pay-25-million-tip...
- people care if their Amazon package is stolen, but less if Amazon steals from its delivery people. Again. https://paycheckcollector.com/amazon-wage-theft/ https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/10/04/delivery-driv...
Yes, we are surrounded by and drowning in crime. No, it is not just bikes, packages and car break-ins.
That's a really odd reading. From my vantage point it looks more like anecdotal evidence from within an area with usually lower crime rates and attempting to extrapolate to the larger city/ies.
I don't see a value judgment at all.
Not that it should have, but that it can be expected.
Again, one person's anecdote is not a reliable way of measuring these things.
Now that the tax base is racing for the exits it is going to be the next Detroit. Detroit used to be the richest city in the US. What will they call it, the digital rust belt?
Never lost it until my parents were using it and leaving it locked around SD. Ah well.
My friend lost locked bike from his locked garage in apartment building few days ago.
The whole California coast is pretty moderate. Once you’re a bit from the ocean it can be pretty nice year-round, many houses don’t have heating or cooling to speak of.
This is my primary explanation when I lived in the city. I would walk my dog to the top of Buena Vista park nearly every morning at sunrise and marvel at the city in awe.
Just to clarify for those who won't fully understand this.
The temperature range is very tight and mild so you don't need to think very hard about how to dress for the elements. For me jeans and a tshirt was basically year round attire. When it rained the extra warmth of a rain jacket was enough to offset the slightly cooler weather. You can run outdoors year round, save for a couple weeks of heat wave, or a bit in the "winter" if you refuse to run in the rain.
However, it's not the sunny beach, wear a bikini / no shirt weather that many have come to understand of California from hollywood movies.
Schwalbe make some great commuting tires but I doubt they can withstand discarded needles.
The actual scary thefts are home breakins and muggings. I feel like the headline wants you to think it's those, when it's mostly stolen packages or something.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfnext-poll-crime-sfp...
Responses to the question "During the last five years, was any item you owned ever stolen from you, or did that not happen during that time?"
Note that it does not specify that you reported a theft. Note that it does not ask any real context about what was stolen and how.
If I was answering this, in Chicago, I’d have to say yes to how that was worded, because I’ve had an Amazon package or 2 disappear. But while that’s a valid question, I’d prefer more granular questions, because let’s be honest here, Amazon does refunds, there’s a big gap between a bag of dog food going missing and getting your car broken into.
“Have any of your vehicles or properties been physically damaged by theft?”
“Have you been physically assaulted for theft?”
“Have you been pickpocketed?”
(I’ve love numbers on that in Chicago. I feel like almost everyone I know has their phones stolen in 2021 at various festivals.)
These years, I think you'd have a hard time finding many houses where I live in Chicagoland that haven't had a package theft. And, like, I don't like that package theft is a nearly risk-free crime? But it's very low on my list of public policy priorities.
Bike stolen in locked garage in locked bike cage with u lock. Usually take it in my apt, but stolen the one time I left it overnight.
Saw techies get shoved into fences on embarcadero
Wine bottle thrown across the store in Safeway. Saw things being stolen from Safeway ~25% the time I went shopping. Mentally Ill people perpetually wandering the store.
Saw many physical altercations between security guards in Walgreens many times. Saw someone being tackled then spitting in the Gaurd’s face while trying to be held down.
People following me while my parents were visiting shouting profanities
Seeing car break ins in the middle of the day.
Many scary situations
Lived there 9 years. Can confirm it got much worse in the past few years.
You can't just look at a snapshot in time.
Even the new techies can’t afford houses at this point
New Jersey used to be a major economic hub in the US. Now it's a state with corruption, high taxes, low quality of life and a net migration out for a long time.
Nothing says it can't happen here. Hell, SF lost like 20% of it's population between 1950 and 1980.
But things have clearly gone off track. As a political conservative, I tend to think about political excess (on the left side). Others may see it differently, I wouldn't blame them if they did. No matter what, I hope SF pulls things together and quickly. I also hope the solutions are transferable, because it seems some other cities have the same kind of sickness.
How is this okay?
You can find those same jobs remotely.
And with the pandemic, all my favorite restaurants have closed.
Come live here in Baltimore. Plenty of tech jobs and a nice home in the city will cost 300k.
Don’t get me wrong, Baltimore has fun bars and Orioles games are fun..but I’ve never once heard anyone try to sell Baltimore as a great place for tech workers to live and work from
Just one recommendation. Don't move to Charleston. It's awful here, you'll hate it. ^^;
It's no surprise that SF, Portland, and Seattle are the worst of the worst. Tech workers exasperate inequality and vote in virtue signalers (to be clear, I agree with the goals, I don't agree with deciding to do nothing about these problems). If you have a good spot, seriously, keep it secret
One annoying thing in Baltimore is the squeege kids. Umm I have no need for you to come up to my car and wash my windows..I have windshield wipers.
As for homeless, drug addicts, and the mentally ill ..they do not litter the streets along with their problems like they do in the wasteland that is San Francisco.
SF has ok public transit for the west coast I suppose. But overall it’s quite poor compared to the east coast from DC north, or a city like Chicago.
A lot of us who were born and raised in Cali have roots too deep to abandon.
Too bad the poll isn’t broken down by how many years they’ve lived in SF, and how many thefts they’ve been victims of.
I'm surprised it's so low.
https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21537593/san-francisco-proposi...
See, here is the problem.
The problem is that what helps the last segment will enable the second segment and not help the first, but everyone talks as if all the homeless are down on their luck. Maybe it's because there is no obvious solution to how to care for the mentally ill, and the previous solution of institutionalization turned out so badly that anything resembling that is just off the table. However, people that do not have the ability to take care of themselves need some sort of sheltering environment, which is basically an "institution". And there is no solution for people who choose not to participate in society, which is relatively okay if they just keep to themselves, but the idea that some people choose of their own volition to do things that cause a breakdown in community (like stealing, defecating on the streets, etc.) seems to be a forbidden concept to Progressives. But each of those three groups needs a different tactic.
Ideology gets the best of people and they don't want to believe.
Sure, there have been nadirs before, the 80's after all industry left and only some financial services were left downtown --there were vagrants and muggings but for the most part, if you kept away from the bad neighborhoods, you were unaffected.
Now, theft is rampant and unabated. It will take years to recover from "Defund the Police" and No-bail, charge drooping DAs. It takes time to recruit Police and good Prosecutors.
https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/jenkins-removed-prosecutor-...
In the latest reorganizational move from appointed incumbent District Attorney
Brooke Jenkins, the attorney prosecuting former police officer Christopher
Samayoa for the shooting death of unarmed civilian Keita O’Neil will be removed
from the case.
The announcement came in the form of an Aug. 12 all-staff memo from Jenkins,
obtained by Mission Local. Assistant District Attorney James Conger was the
last remaining prosecutor hired by ousted DA Chesa Boudin in the Independent
Investigations Bureau of the DA’s office. That unit investigates police
shootings and most police misconduct cases that may warrant criminal
prosecution.Seems like the rule of law isn’t much of a deterrence in this case
https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21537593/san-francisco-proposi...
>The proposition also requires San Francisco to end a requirement that there be a specified number of full-duty sworn police officers assigned to neighborhood policing and patrol — a number law enforcement officials say has never been met due to resource constraints.
Down from 2398 in 2021.
Voter capped SPO at 1,971.
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/2021-...
For things to straighten out support for rule-of-law has to manifest from bottom to top and back. From Citizens, to Public Figures, to Influencers, to Representatives, to Captains, to Prosecutors, DAs and the Mayor. We have some of that. You can't have situations where the police try to arrest someone and you get a mob questioning police motives and then complain when the police don't come.
Maybe we should find some cops who are capable of doing the job they’re paid to do, instead of insisting on a wholesale cultural revolution to protect their fragile egos at all costs.
So the 'tough on crime' stuff is very new, at the speed the courts move.
As for the police, the people said they hate the police and the police heard them loud and clear, and are leaving on their own. For the same reasons, far fewer people are interested in joining their police force.
Why be a police officer in a place that hates you?
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-grap...
https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-police-department-shortag...
Anyone who has visited SF knows exactly whats going on.
Anyone who lives in SF also knows exactly whats going on. They'll just desperately point to some statistic from a tiny town they've never been to that actually measures and enforces the law.
Anything to justify continuing to vote for whatever the media tells them to vote for next.
In ideas and options.
Groupthink of any ilk leads to death.
Just a quick Google implies that this is a complete fabrication
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-Che...
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/san-francisco-crime-r...
>Ideology gets the best of people and they don't want to believe.
The irony of saying this with no data to back up your claim, and the data that exists showing the exact opposite of your claim, is truly palpable
Are you aware that you’re countering data gathered by a long-standing reputable newspaper with data gathered by the police department?
Do you think there’s some other way of measuring theft besides people saying “I am the victim of a theft”?
Would you be able to figure out the acceleration of a body given only it's velocity at one time?
The only evidence available to us implies that crime is going down. Ideology is the only reason you might believe otherwise without evidence.
Note that I didn’t say “without evidence” at the end - smoke is evidence, as is an article that you’re commenting on talking about thefts that are common enough to make half of a city’s citizens victims in a five year period. And, you cite a source that notes that people aren’t reporting because nothing comes of it.
I mean, what reason other than ideology would explain your unwillingness to take that stuff as evidence?
In this example you cold point to the smoke as first-hand evidence. Can you point to equivalent evidence that people are underreporting crimes?
I'm only asking to see evidence showing underreporting, a claim you made. No ideology here.
There has not been any reduction of the SF police budget in this century.
The Mayor made a speech in 2020 suggesting that some funds would be redirected from police budgets into some social programs, but this did not represent any actual reduction in police funding.
If you are under the impression that SF was in any way affected by “defunding the police,” you are mistaken, because that didn’t happen.
I agree that ideology gets the best of people. For example there is a baffling group of people set on blaming all current and future crime on a previous DA and absolving the current DA, mayor and SFPD leadership of _any_ responsibility for what goes on in the city.
It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me rationally, but I understand the appeal of having a singular boogeyman to blame everything on, kind of like Evangelicals and their fixation on Satan.
When I first came to SF the city was int he grip of a crack epidemic and. I've seen people get shot in the face broad daylight and been in the middle of a driveby. The city is going through an uptick in crime at the moment but its mainly property crime. I don't feel significantly less safe, though that's partly because I have a lot of experience with unsafe situations.
A large part of this is simply driven by poverty and prices. Policymakers, business owners, and pundits naturally want a city full of high-earning go-getters whose money will increase the general level of prosperity, fair enough. But there's some sort of naive belief that people at the bottom end of the scale magically teleport themselves away to other labor/residential markets where they'll be more competitive, because economics class made it look just that simple.
Did that actually happen though?
The initiative failed when it came to a vote in Minneapolis, crime was up already anyway, even without such initiatives.
San Francisco's population could use some good spirituality right now.
All San Franciscans that pay tax have been victims of theft!
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...
It's just plain corruption, and it won't stop until voters make it stop.
[0] https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat...
I've heard stories that SF is so inundated with car theft that it has created a portal that automatically approves car break in claims for insurance.
So does basically legalizing theft for under $950
Those other states still prosecute though.
I wonder if the police have become apathetic about making arrests.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-boudin-announces...
The people who vote in SF and run the government there are obsessed with punishing some undefined "privileged" set of people who are somehow causing all the issues. Of course they are themselves highly privileged so it's a self hatred.
It will keep getting worse.
In Lisbon you can easily find the part of town where everyone is smoking weed outside.
With Switzerland if you want your free heroin it's at the doctor's office and you get it injected there. So it's not a matter of not allowing it. Addicts not surprisingly go where the drugs are. Which is inside now.
Back when they treated it as a crime problem they would shut down outdoor drug camps and the camps would just reappear somewhere else nearby.
The theft went down because the addicts don't need to pay. It's not about better enforcement as you implied. The theft also went down because a lot of the addicts are now employed. As long as you can get your daily injections, most heroin addicts are highly functional. Dr. Halsted - one of the founders of John Hopkins hospital and a hard working doctor - was addicted to morphine for most of his long adult life.
The Swiss approach was also somewhat specific to heroin. If you read about it, it's always heroin that's being discussed. The policy could work because there aren't huge numbers of addicts and the number has been in natural decline for a long time. Addicts are mostly old so the population is shrinking, the cost of giving them free drugs is low. Heroin addiction was a phase, people moved onto different drugs now, but the decline is often attributed entirely to this policy.
So what do we see if we look at e.g. crystal meth or cocaine? Not so successful there. Swiss cities dominate cocaine consumption in Europe:
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/drug-use_why-swiss-citi...
Numbers of addicts are growing and the police do enforce the law, albeit in Neuchâtel for the first meth offense (of possession) you can get out of it if you attend some counselling sessions. After that it's back to prosecution.
https://www.thelocal.ch/20161003/neuchtel-dubbed-crystal-met...
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/crystal-meth_power-cut-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/05/swiss-police-s...
They aren't handing out crystal meth, suffice it to say.
There is also the ethical issues involved with forcing people who stayed clean to pay for other people's addictions, which is what this boils down to. Of course it can still be rational when considering other costs but that doesn't change the underlying ethical issues.
Lot's of people applying for CCW (gun carry permit) because they feel unsafe and it is near impossible to get one in SF city.
I am going to be following suit, I purchased a gun last year and going to apply for a CCW, but seems like the waiting list is 3 years and they are actively rejecting Bruen ruling by SCOTUS.