I just want to know why do people let the current status quo be in SF? I mean hearing cases like these makes you lean to the right even though you disagree with them, but when you look what the left is doing, you are left with no alternative..
The push to shut down private prisons, especially in California for example.
By proxy that made it a right leaning thing.
I’ve heard my more right wing friends suggest that a big Democratic donor has been specifically backing DAs who do this type of thing. I have no references for it at all, but I know that Desantis even mentioned it in the press while discussing the Trump charges in NY.
Have the private prisons been replaced?
Surely this can't be the blanket cause?
Everything I've been able to find indicates that crime statistics are trending downwards and are already much lower than historical levels.
People generally are uncomfortable with crime being up 50% in 3 years, even if it's still down 30% from 1991.
Where did the 50% number come from?
Q1 2023 appears to be down nearly 10% on Q1 2022 and 25% compared with Q1 2017.
2022 as a whole was lower in most areas than 2017 with 9,000 fewer incidents.
[0] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
Underreporting seems like a huge problem, even here with our blooming crime rate. I've had to call the police twice since covid, once because by house caught a stray bullet from a car chase/shootout, and the cops said that the only people who bothered to report were myself and the elementary school down the street. The folks in the other house that took rounds had no desire to interact with the police.
However, I work in the physical security space (eg: cameras, video AI, access control, etc.).
Overall, it does not feel like actual crime rates are down, but there are many things that are simply going unreported. Thus, the stats might look better, but they are not always a representation of reality.
As one example, loss prevention departments have always been busy, but they could usually get a response from the police. Now you have retail theft gangs/rings openly walking out with thousands of dollars of product, getting into a stolen vehicle, driving off, and police more or less just not even returning a phone call in many areas.
This is not everywhere at this point, but a lot of major metropolitan areas are seemingly observing significantly increased "petty" crimes, which are going unreported and unresponded to.
It's a weird social phenomenon. Groups based on trait X will tend to choose the most radical and forceful members for trait X as their leaders. To the point where trait X is actually warped beyond recognition.
2017-2022 [0]:
* ~9,000 fewer incidents in total.
* Rape halved.
* Robberies decreased to 2/3 of 2017 numbers.
* Burglary/Motor vehicle theft increased but Larceny theft decreased by more than both combined.
Q1 2017/2023 [0]:
* ~4,000 fewer incidents in total.
* Only Motor vehicle theft and Arson were slightly up on 2017 levels.
Q1 2022/2023 [0]:
* Total incidents down by 9.7%
* Burglary down by 11.2%
* Motor vehicle theft down by 8.5%
* Larceny theft down by 12%
* Assaults did increase by 2.2%
* As did Robberies by 13.6%
[0] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
My car was broken into 3 times in 10 years. I reported it once because “what difference does it make?”
See, that's the thing about crime stats: they only tell you successful convictions. They do not factor in police inactivity, people not reporting, police not filing, plea bargains to misdemeanors, DAs not prosecuting, cases getting dismissed.
Homicides however mean a cadaver is involved, and that can't be policy-washed: it is there in the morgue on file with the medical examiner.
Homicides are included. If you had kept reading you would've seen that the next sentence is:
> Homicides reflect the number of victims and are not based on the incidents.
It appears that homicides have generally been below, and haven't risen above, 2017 levels.
> See, that's the thing about crime stats: they only tell you successful convictions.
It's not mentioned specifically but it's implied that these are reported incidents rather than convictions:
> Incidents that are unfounded or unsubstantiated have also been excluded from the dataset.