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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

From personal experience, people don’t even report property and violent crime anymore in SF. The rate of property crime is way more than those statistics say.

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I agree. I'm in the Los Angeles area and have been told by Sheriff's that unless it's violent crime, the won't deal with it.

What sort of violent crime in SF do you suspect is going unreported? I get that there's some earnest frustration that reporting things like car break ins, shoplifting, etc. is futile and wasting your time but is the any reason to think people aren't reporting being assaulted or face-to-face robberies?

I report mine - and you should too!

In my experience SF Police are extremely on it. They caught the suspect in my case based on Nest video camera footage.

My neighbor’s car was stolen, he knew where it was to within meters from the tracker, in Oakland. SF police and Oakland police bounced him back and forth until they eventually found the car on their own, totaled, after being used in a crime.

LOL where do you live?

SFPD in the Mission is useless: they came to a property theft and told the residents to watch youtube videos about how thieves are opening garage doors, issued a perfunctory report for insurance, and left. No -- none, zilch -- attempt to find the perpetrators. Total time on site was less than 5 minutes. They were scared to be out of their cruiser and on the actual sidewalks!!!

SFPD's office is a a mere 3 blocks from the BART/16th street open-air drug market, there is very rarely a police officer on site. Another 3 blocks away, Capp street, just got closed to auto traffic by SF politicians because the police were so incompetent that it was becoming a fire risk (for SFFD vehicles on 19th). They cannot even police their immediate vicinity!

SFPD mostly are known for zooming around in their SUV cruisers in packs of two, blocking traffic, shooting at the unhoused, and ignoring traffic violations. This after arriving in caravans of police SUV cars (at least 3!) with lights blazing, streets on which mission residents walk every day unarmed.

Completely useless. I've seen one cop walking patrol on the central mission sidewalks in 11 years. SFPD mission station is so afraid of the people they are ostensibly there to protect that they barricaded themselves from the street for 3 years after the BML marches. Should be completely disbanded and rebuilt from the ground up to be a violent crime unit only, with traffic, property, unhoused, responses going to another entity entirely. Since the SF homeless outreach campaign went into effect I've felt much safter walking around the mission. More of that, less of SFPD. Is there even a vice squad? SFPD doesn't care about sex trafficking.

SFPD leadership should be publicly accountable and subject to recall. Looking at you William Scott.

Of course that sentiment sailed over the relevant parties (said chief, SFPOA) and landed on....Chesa Boudin of all people.

I may be old fashioned, but I believe that when someone intentionally creates a situation with predictable bad outcomes, they should be fired--even if they didn't intend to produce the bad outcome. Chesa Boudin was one of many people in SF who did that - the saying "the fish rots from the head" is not wrong. His recall was a good start.

Right... but none of the things you are describing are violent crime.

Yes, it is obvious that SFPD doesn't give a shit about the sex work on Shotwell st, etc. in the Mission - but that is different from saying they would not follow up on a violent assault or murder.

Just google "sfpd refuses to arrest"

https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-f...

https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/03/columnist-sf-police-ta...

etc etc

Again, both non-violent crimes.

Not going to keep replying, my point is merely that i think the SFPD will respond to violent crime reports.

Really? I sent this video to SFPD, they called me, told me that they knew the suspect, asked if I was willing to testify and never called me back. https://youtu.be/xRjuii_jtgM

That has not been my experience at all. For one of my break ins, I had a license plate and footage, they never bothered to even come out to get it. The next few times, they responded in a way that basically meant “stop calling us for smashed car windows, just call your insurance and get it fixed”. I stopped reporting after that unless it’s something major.

When I had a break-in, they came within an hour or so and apologized for taking so long. It was a weird experience after hearing complaints like yours for so long.

There was no suspect or anything, I didn't have good evidence, I did not expect them to solve anything because that would be an unreasonable expectation. They gave me a report number to give to insurance.

I'd like to Echo the importance of reporting. It is an important part of holding police and City Hall accountable and creating change.

I had a half dozen car and home break-ins in San Francisco that I did not report. I now regret this as I should have done my part to at least make the statistics accurate, even if it wouldn't help me recover my goods. I see it as being part of the solution opposed to part of the problem

I also recommend getting renters insurance, which can help with the financial burden

How do you know? Your personal experience of not reporting crime or a few people you've talked to?

I don't believe this at all. I've participated in numerous debates with people who have a tough on crime position in regards to San Francisco, and you hear this one a lot. When the statistics show that crime is lower than 10 years ago, they say that there's some phantom crime going unreported and a conspiracy to conceal it. I literally do not have the energy to explain why this is nonsense anymore, because I've had this discussion too many times.

>I literally do not have the energy to explain why this is nonsense anymore, because I've had this discussion too many times.

Why make the comment then? What can anyone gain from reading it?

It's a bullshit line and it's common. If the statistics don't match your bias, you question the statistics rather than your bias.

I think "I can't be bothered to explain" is much more of a bs line.

People don't bother reporting it because nothing happens.

Did something happen 10 years ago and people were getting successful resolutions to small property crimes?

Prop 47 at the state level, plus local-level decisions to not go after misdemeanors, plus political influencers telling the public not to report crime because ACAB or whatever.

Plus the city cops are “quiet quitting”, which is a huge and rarely-discussed dysfunction that heavily contributes to demoralized citizenry failing to report crimes - maybe it’s uniquely a Portland thing? Are SF/Seattle people having this issue?

It's hard to say without actually knowing the internal workings of the police departments, but one thing that's happened in Seattle is that although the police budget did go up, the SPD is having a really hard time hiring, and a lot of that money has gone to headcount that has remained vacant.

I've certainly read theories that it's a malicious strategy of the police union to make the city council look bad, and the SPOG president has made some pretty shocking political statements, so it honestly wouldn't be that surprising.

I'm guessing it's a mix of both, but I can't really prove anything.

Yes, overwhelmingly. In 3 experiences asking SFPD for help with property crimes (1 stolen car and 2 car break-ins), they seemed highly annoyed that I was even asking or reporting. My car was stolen 2 blocks from an SFPD station with a GPS tag. So I walked over, showed the cops exactly where the car was on my phone, and asked if they could send a car to meet me there. The dude at the desk rolled his eyes and told me to go get my extra set of keys and retrieve the car myself. No regard for the fact that that might be dangerous if the thief were around. And in fact, the thief was around. I walked past the car on the street, saw a big dude eating in the front seat, and kept walking. So I called the cops again and told them the thief was with my stolen car. They begrudgingly said they'd send a car, but didn't give a time estimate. 2 hours later, after repeated calls to dispatch, I was still hiding around the corner, occasionally peeking at my car, and the cops finally arrived. I told them the thief had walked away but I didn't know if he was still in the vicinity. The cops were pissed at me and said I shouldn't have wasted their time. They explained they can't do anything unless they catch the guy red-handed with the actual car. I get that, but it's not my fault they didn't show up for 2 hours. At least I was lucky enough to get my car back.

I feel bad for you, but you know what the answer is: LEAVE!

I didn't bother reporting it when my car got broken into. The insurance company didn't even ask me too, since it would have been pointless.

The same was true of both SF and Austin, to be fair.

If you do not have the energy to contribute to the conversation then do not contribute to the conversation.

I didn’t even bother to report my second catalytic converter theft because the first time they didn’t even bother to retrieve my camera footage.

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