San Francisco Shoplifting: Much More Than You Wanted to Know (2022)
applieddivinitystudies.com
applieddivinitystudies.com
The article quotes this and responds that people need to come up with their own data for crime.
I’ve visited SF every few years for the last 20. On my last visit about 6 weeks ago it looked like Covid was still a thing. Streets that were previously safe, around what was DSO bar and Monarch, were dangerous. It feels like a lawless environment. I could have measured this by counting incidents of crime or homeless people but it seems pointless to measure something you can see.
On a reddit city subreddit that had bubbled up to the frontpage this morning I noticed three or four people claiming that a certain bus route had basically become a mobile homeless shelter constantly full of migrants playing music and being obnoxious. About two or three other people were chiming in saying 'I commute on this line daily and I've literally never seen that, the buses are clean and usually empty'
The 'regular commuter' comments stand at -15 or something making them invisible, the instigatory comments are heavily upvoted.
Bezos' statement is a bit circular in a way - yes, genuine anecdotes may well be right, but to determine that you have to gather enough of them in a random pattern to avoid anomalies. When you've completed that process of randomly sampling genuine anecdotes you now have data.
If you want to gather genuine anecdotes you've basically ruled out the internet as a source of data.
You also can't do a townhall or call an assembly as you'll have people being bussed in (I remember a video of a Florida school board meeting in which literally every speaker had a different regional accent)
You basically have to canvass the streets and buttonhole people, and that's automatically excluding people who WFH etc.
You're right. I had a friend from Malmo, Sweden who talked about the weirdness of the city being used as a talking point both left and right wing Americans.
Her feeling was the left were saying everything was fine, the right were saying it's a dystopian nightmare, and neither were accurate. It's a city with unique problems.
You won’t get stabbed walking on 6th st, but I know plenty who had a homeless in SF hit them with chicken, hit with food trays, chased, yelled, needles thrown, etc.
Petty theft is also generally never reported. What the heck are the pd going to do about your stolen iPhone. Why are you going to file a report when there’s no outcome.
The SF metreon target 10 years ago didn’t need things locked up. Now they lock up much. The only explanation I have for why retail in SF has recently started really going overboard on shoplift preventing is that shoplifting has gotten worse.
It's all security theatre. Theft does exist and happens, but it becomes an excuse by management to lock up toothpaste behind glass cases so that they can pretend their store isn't falling apart.
I was just in (bigger) US city where the pharmacy was picked over for what I wanted but none of it was locked up except the razor blades or whatever you'll find locked everywhere. They didn't feel the need to put plastic barriers up. They also didn't have a security guard at the front. In SF, I know you need both because I have seen dozens pile into the residential Walgreens at once and clean it out. But yeah, it's all theater and just marketing to make SF look bad.
I understand SF Bay Area residents are embarrassed of what they created, but denying the problem isn't helping.
FWIW, I currently live in a "high crime" east coast city -- the kind Californians hold up as a boogeyman versus their "safe" cities. I chose it after years of "safe" SF declining.
This is what I'm responding to. I don't see anything I said which implies anything. I don't see anything in this thread of discussion which I have erroneously responded to. You're making broad statements about CA in this thread and stating its just like all the places you have been. Knowing you don't have firsthand experience in this area explains why your posts have seemed so, frankly, ignorant. For those that have lived there recently and have lived other places, we are patiently telling you it is different.
I think this particular observation is related to rising costs and some people struggling to afford things. These are probably younger people doing the thefts or outsiders going into Irvine to steal. I noticed a combo package with a razor and separate blades and someone ripped out the blades from the package because the back of the package was cardboard. I thought it looked really weird at first and then later realized someone probably stole the blades out.
CVS in Palo Alto doesn’t lock up goods. Target in EPA doesn’t lock up drugs or formula. Etc.
SF city has a theft problem that is clearly worse than other Bay Area towns.
Whenever I read something like this, I wonder what it's actually based on. Did they personally observe somebody getting stabbed or gunned down? Or is it vague vibes that may not actually be backed up by anything?
I've often made the kind of experience where comparable sheltered people claimed that, say, some part of a city was really bad and dangerous. But when I actually went there (during the day, at least) I felt perfectly safe.
Why wonder, rather than ask? People sizing others up to rob them, people abusing others to start a fight, human shit and piss (in public, not alleyways). Basically SF downtown now = Tenderloin 2005.
> comparable sheltered people claimed that, say, some part of a city was really bad
If you think I'm sheltered ask where else I've visited.
* https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/business/target-retail-theft-...
> Target’s business has struggled for more than a year with company-specific challenges, including a glut of unsold inventory, backlash to its Pride merchandise collection and a pullback in consumer spending on discretionary items such as apparel and home goods.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/26/target-says-it-will-close-ni...
Calling it this seems a bit disingenuous.
"Pride" is a pretty broad word. Who's proud? What are they proud of, exactly?
For example one of the stores being closed is in the UDistrict here in Seattle. It's one of the worst targets I've ever gone to, with the store consistently having nothing on the shelves, the layout being awful and generally poorly managed.
It's incredibly bad compared to the Safeway or HMart a block away and that's been a consistent experience since it opened up. None of the other stores in the area are struggling with these issues.
> It's incredibly bad compared to the Safeway or HMart a block away and that's been a consistent experience since it opened up. None of the other stores in the area are struggling with these issues.
Ballard Safeway has a shoplifting problem, but they lack many of the goods that unhoused neighbors can fence easily for drug money (and stuff that they could is locked up). Hmart is probably even a worse target because they don't offer things like detergent, aspirin, baby milk powder, etc...that would be fenceable at all. I would still love to have an HMart in Ballard, maybe they can take over Target's space that they are vacanting.
It seems like downtown Kirkland and even Juanita (now part of Kirkland) are more dangerous now. I guess it really was just the mall.
What am I supposed to believe? The videos I've seen of the city and the "flash mobs" (lol) emptying stores make it seem really bad. Should I just wait for the city to put out a tourist friendly "look how great SF is" video and take their word for it?
“ The shelves were mostly empty and there were a number of people just sweeping stuff off the shelves into their backpacks”. Is that right? And what was it these people were sweeping from empty shelves? Dust?
I was staying at the Hyatt Regency in SOMA, so I think it was probably the one on Pine and Montgomery.
Anyway, I figured if they were stealing chex mix and snacks and stuff the place was probably out of beer so I didn't stick around long. The security guards were on the phone with the cops watching these people. That's all I know. Maybe it was a freak occasion. I view the videos online with skepticism too, which is why it was kind of jarring to see it in person. If it's like that all the time, then I don't know why they still operate there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/swwdt3/san_...
Usually this is interpreted as a bad thing, as the electorate being uninformed, uninterested, etc. But it might actually be good in the opposite way, because the feelings and experiences of real-world people are ultimately what matter. No one can tell you, “Sorry, that experience you had isn’t valid and my gish-gallop of 500 pages of data analysis shows why.”
Not.