5 ms·

‘No one wants to open a restaurant in San Francisco’ because of break-ins, costs

47 points by jseliger 7y ago

Bostonian 7y ago
If you reduce the chance of going to jail for "non-violent" crimes such as burglary, you will get more such crimes, because burglars are neither deterred nor incarcerated.
- Bostonian 7y ago
  For some reason my comment was downvoted. Here is a quote from the end of the article showing that burglars are not being punished severely enough to deter them: When Martin recalled the June break-in at the Pine Tar Grill, what sticks in his mind wasn’t losing the computers or bobbleheads. Instead, it was a conversation he had with a police officer who viewed the footage of the break-in, who told him that he recognized the person in the video and that he had been arrested multiple times, Martin said. “As a business owner,” Martin said, “that’s just really hard to hear.”
  - taobility 7y ago
    Liberal doesn't agree with you so they downvoted :)
- thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  I really don't know why this was down voted. This is absolutely correct. With less dis-incentive for crime, crime will only go up.
  - Traster 7y ago
    It's downvoted because it's a horrible simplification of a very complex problem and it isn't supported by evidence. If it were true then we would see a very clear correlation in the data between sentencing policy and crime rates, but we basically don't. In fact as sentencing laws in almost all developed countries have reduced, we've seen reductions in crime.
- jeffrom 7y ago
  data doesn't really bear out the effectiveness of broken windows theory
- journalctl 7y ago
  Too bad that’s incorrect. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crime-and-punishment/201804/why-punishment-doesnt-reduce-crime https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crime-and-punishment...
  - tropo 7y ago
    We shouldn't mix up "chance of going to jail" with "severity of punishment". Potential criminals easily dismiss severe punishment, but they don't dismiss near-certain punishment. Quick and reliable punishment is highly effective. Increasing the severity is weakly effective. There is also the simple fact that people in custody are physically separated from potential victims. This very obviously works.
TaylorGood 7y ago
Is this all a long-time coming for SF, finally reaching a tipping point? The press and chatter across many frustrations is omnipresent across the internet.
dmitrygr 7y ago
This is what happens when your newly-elected DA says shit like "crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted" Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/What-s-the-answer-to-quality-of-life-crimes-in-14563426.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/What-s-th...
- xsmasher 7y ago
  I don't see the connection you are making. The DA elected two weeks ago can hardly have caused this issue. Putting enforcement priority on burglary and vandalism (the problems mentioned in the article) instead of the issues you listed seems like the right thing to do.
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    The DA was freely elected by the people FOR these views. The previous DA had similar views. SF needs a DA who will actually prosecute crime, not make excuses for it. My car has been broken into multiple times in SF. Once in front of a police station. Once near a school which had security cameras rolling which filmed the entire thing. Police are uninterested. They told me "these people have it hard enough, we're not going to make things harder for them"
    - wahern 7y ago
      > The DA was freely elected by the people FOR these views. That's debatable. Another perspective: Boudin was nobody's first choice, but because of ranked-choice voting and some political infighting among moderates that split the vote, Boudin took home the prize. See https://missionlocal.org/2019/11/s-f-election-wrap-how-could-this-happen-and-what-are-we-in-for-now/ https://missionlocal.org/2019/11/s-f-election-wrap-how-could... Which is not to say that he wasn't fairly elected, just that I seriously doubt he was specifically elected for his platform. The man is a Rhodes scholar, a great speaker, and got a lot of press, precisely the kind of person you vote for in ranked-choice after you've checked off your top pick(s). For example, Boudin did well among the Chinese community, which is generally conservative. But their first choice was Tung, a moderate-conservative who supported prosecution of quality of life crimes at least as strongly as currently. As the SF Chronicle put it, "Tung was a natural choice for Chinese voters, who make up a third of the city’s voters, and Boudin campaigned heavily in the Chinese community. He speaks some Cantonese and Mandarin and won the endorsement of the Sing Tao Daily, the largest Chinese language newspaper in the Bay Area. That could be a reason he won a lot of Tung’s second-choice votes, even though their politics were at opposite ends of the candidate spectrum." https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/How-Chesa-Boudin-a-public-defender-who-never-14826323.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Ho... As the Mission Local implied, this is the sort of oddball result you can sometimes get from "the fetid rabbit hole of San Francisco club politics, that perfect amalgamation of Tracy Flick and the Soviet politburo." (That quote is just amazing. Are there journalism prizes for soundbites? 'cause that journalist deserves one.)
sharkmerry 7y ago
-Property crime is down year over year "Property crime rates have actually declined in the city over the last year, but reported incidents may tell only part of the story." 3,475 this year vs 4,375 at the same time last year. 20% decrease -No one wants to? "“No one wants to open a restaurant in San Francisco,” said Alter, "who wants to expand in the city" but isn’t sure it’s currently a good idea.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  Why would anyone bother to report a crime that they know the police and prosecutors aren't going to lift a finger to address?
  - cmdshiftf4 7y ago
    Claiming insurance would be one use case.
- wahern 7y ago
  Property crime is not down. It ticked down briefly earlier this year, unsurprisingly. Crime numbers vary. But you can see here, https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rate-and-property-crime-rate https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat..., that they've quickly rebounded as of August, 2019.[1] The trend line is clear. Look, I supported sentencing and enforcement reform at least as much anyone, but we can't hide from the facts. It's one thing to say that these facts don't prove a causal relationship to sentencing reform, etc. That's absolutely fair. But it's another to deny or diminish the problems. We can't be defensive, fearful of consequences to reform efforts. If we can criticize the tough on crime crowd for ignoring 20 years of steadily decreasing crime, then we should be prepared to recognize when the numbers don't go our way. Facts aren't for our convenience; they keep us honest and grounded. [1] See the first slide which includes August, 2019. The second slide with the property crime breakouts end in May, before the regression to the mean.
  - sharkmerry 7y ago
    That was burglaries that the stats said from the article. Your data is interesting but it also shows crime is trending down if dates are limited to 2017-2019, which the data you presented only goes to 2010 so doesnt really show long term trends either
blackswan101 7y ago
Break-ins, cost of labor, homelessness. The plight of SF restaurants is dire and the situation might only get worse. Far cry from what the situation was 20 or so years ago. Companies like cloudkitchens are poised to take advantage of the situation
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Can't you get insurance for break ins?

47 points by jseliger 7y ago

If you reduce the chance of going to jail for "non-violent" crimes such as burglary, you will get more such crimes, because burglars are neither deterred nor incarcerated.

Bostonian 7y ago
For some reason my comment was downvoted. Here is a quote from the end of the article showing that burglars are not being punished severely enough to deter them: When Martin recalled the June break-in at the Pine Tar Grill, what sticks in his mind wasn’t losing the computers or bobbleheads. Instead, it was a conversation he had with a police officer who viewed the footage of the break-in, who told him that he recognized the person in the video and that he had been arrested multiple times, Martin said. “As a business owner,” Martin said, “that’s just really hard to hear.”
- taobility 7y ago
  Liberal doesn't agree with you so they downvoted :)
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
I really don't know why this was down voted. This is absolutely correct. With less dis-incentive for crime, crime will only go up.
- Traster 7y ago
  It's downvoted because it's a horrible simplification of a very complex problem and it isn't supported by evidence. If it were true then we would see a very clear correlation in the data between sentencing policy and crime rates, but we basically don't. In fact as sentencing laws in almost all developed countries have reduced, we've seen reductions in crime.
jeffrom 7y ago
data doesn't really bear out the effectiveness of broken windows theory
journalctl 7y ago
Too bad that’s incorrect. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crime-and-punishment/201804/why-punishment-doesnt-reduce-crime https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crime-and-punishment...
- tropo 7y ago
  We shouldn't mix up "chance of going to jail" with "severity of punishment". Potential criminals easily dismiss severe punishment, but they don't dismiss near-certain punishment. Quick and reliable punishment is highly effective. Increasing the severity is weakly effective. There is also the simple fact that people in custody are physically separated from potential victims. This very obviously works.

TaylorGood 7y ago

Is this all a long-time coming for SF, finally reaching a tipping point? The press and chatter across many frustrations is omnipresent across the internet.

dmitrygr 7y ago

This is what happens when your newly-elected DA says shit like "crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted" Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/What-s-the-answer-to-quality-of-life-crimes-in-14563426.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/What-s-th...

xsmasher 7y ago
I don't see the connection you are making. The DA elected two weeks ago can hardly have caused this issue. Putting enforcement priority on burglary and vandalism (the problems mentioned in the article) instead of the issues you listed seems like the right thing to do.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  The DA was freely elected by the people FOR these views. The previous DA had similar views. SF needs a DA who will actually prosecute crime, not make excuses for it. My car has been broken into multiple times in SF. Once in front of a police station. Once near a school which had security cameras rolling which filmed the entire thing. Police are uninterested. They told me "these people have it hard enough, we're not going to make things harder for them"
  - wahern 7y ago
    > The DA was freely elected by the people FOR these views. That's debatable. Another perspective: Boudin was nobody's first choice, but because of ranked-choice voting and some political infighting among moderates that split the vote, Boudin took home the prize. See https://missionlocal.org/2019/11/s-f-election-wrap-how-could-this-happen-and-what-are-we-in-for-now/ https://missionlocal.org/2019/11/s-f-election-wrap-how-could... Which is not to say that he wasn't fairly elected, just that I seriously doubt he was specifically elected for his platform. The man is a Rhodes scholar, a great speaker, and got a lot of press, precisely the kind of person you vote for in ranked-choice after you've checked off your top pick(s). For example, Boudin did well among the Chinese community, which is generally conservative. But their first choice was Tung, a moderate-conservative who supported prosecution of quality of life crimes at least as strongly as currently. As the SF Chronicle put it, "Tung was a natural choice for Chinese voters, who make up a third of the city’s voters, and Boudin campaigned heavily in the Chinese community. He speaks some Cantonese and Mandarin and won the endorsement of the Sing Tao Daily, the largest Chinese language newspaper in the Bay Area. That could be a reason he won a lot of Tung’s second-choice votes, even though their politics were at opposite ends of the candidate spectrum." https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/How-Chesa-Boudin-a-public-defender-who-never-14826323.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Ho... As the Mission Local implied, this is the sort of oddball result you can sometimes get from "the fetid rabbit hole of San Francisco club politics, that perfect amalgamation of Tracy Flick and the Soviet politburo." (That quote is just amazing. Are there journalism prizes for soundbites? 'cause that journalist deserves one.)

sharkmerry 7y ago

-Property crime is down year over year "Property crime rates have actually declined in the city over the last year, but reported incidents may tell only part of the story." 3,475 this year vs 4,375 at the same time last year. 20% decrease -No one wants to? "“No one wants to open a restaurant in San Francisco,” said Alter, "who wants to expand in the city" but isn’t sure it’s currently a good idea.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
Why would anyone bother to report a crime that they know the police and prosecutors aren't going to lift a finger to address?
- cmdshiftf4 7y ago
  Claiming insurance would be one use case.
wahern 7y ago
Property crime is not down. It ticked down briefly earlier this year, unsurprisingly. Crime numbers vary. But you can see here, https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rate-and-property-crime-rate https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat..., that they've quickly rebounded as of August, 2019.[1] The trend line is clear. Look, I supported sentencing and enforcement reform at least as much anyone, but we can't hide from the facts. It's one thing to say that these facts don't prove a causal relationship to sentencing reform, etc. That's absolutely fair. But it's another to deny or diminish the problems. We can't be defensive, fearful of consequences to reform efforts. If we can criticize the tough on crime crowd for ignoring 20 years of steadily decreasing crime, then we should be prepared to recognize when the numbers don't go our way. Facts aren't for our convenience; they keep us honest and grounded. [1] See the first slide which includes August, 2019. The second slide with the property crime breakouts end in May, before the regression to the mean.
- sharkmerry 7y ago
  That was burglaries that the stats said from the article. Your data is interesting but it also shows crime is trending down if dates are limited to 2017-2019, which the data you presented only goes to 2010 so doesnt really show long term trends either

blackswan101 7y ago

Break-ins, cost of labor, homelessness. The plight of SF restaurants is dire and the situation might only get worse. Far cry from what the situation was 20 or so years ago. Companies like cloudkitchens are poised to take advantage of the situation

nickthemagicman 7y ago

Can't you get insurance for break ins?