24 ms·
San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge
- nodesocket 5y agoI used to live right near Union Square in SF (the heart of downtown). Police are prevented from enforcing laws because of the constant backlash and outrage from the very vocal, but minority of people. I never understood this ideology of anti-police and laws that seems to permeate the bay area. Eventually after 5+ years I decided I'd had enough and moved out of SF and California for greener pastures and couldn't be happier. "You reap what you sow."
- bluishgreen 5y agoTo the point that Fremont PD had to bust a crime ring operating out of SF, the politics there is ridiculous at this point. Also moved out a few years ago.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- billylindeman 5y agoAlso moved, don’t see myself going back
- SilasX 5y agoLate to the party, but I just saw a FB update from a (liberal, anti-cop) friend in SF who is flabbergasted that, in her words, "downtown SF doesn't exist" now, and all shops are boarded up or empty except for Swarovski and Skechers, and the smell of urine is much stronger.
- stevecalifornia 5y agoThere are many, many videos like this: https://youtu.be/arss9V3A1VA?t=44 https://youtu.be/arss9V3A1VA?t=44 Warning, there is nothing NSFW, but it's just sickening to watch.
- waynesonfire 5y agowow, savage.
- dicomdan 5y agoThat video is racist, take it down immediately.
- guepe 5y agoMost people commit crimes because they are desperate. This is likely the root-cause here, especially given the type of crime here.
- baggy_trough 5y agoIf you don't actually prosecute the crimes, that changes the equation.
- knubie 5y agoDesperate for makeup?
- zorpner 5y agohttps://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm "By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensibly necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person, of either sex, would be ashamed to appear in public without them."
- acchow 5y agoI fully expect San Francisco stores to disappear entirely and replaced with 1-hour delivery services. Hopefully we can replace most of this retail space with more housing (unlikely).
- yyeess 5y agoSounds like exactly the dystopia that the United States has been aiming for. But what’s the end game? The retail space will become housing, but it won’t be affordable.
- albertop 5y agoNot US but SF and other progressive cities.
- yyeess 5y agoWhat is “progressive” about SF? It’s just another neoliberal port city. There’s nothing even slightly progressive about it.
- dicomdan 5y agoSF is antithetical to neoliberalism. It’s a NIMBY central. Neoliberals want unrestricted zoning, land value tax, and freedom of enterprise. SF is all about blocking new housing and punishing corporations.
- diogenescynic 5y agoReplace punishing corporations with rewarding property owners.
- jfoutz 5y agoMy wild guess is City of London. Massive amounts of office space. Like 500 housing spaces, no shops, no kids, quite a few restaurants and bars to cater to the workers.
- flyinglizard 5y agoI remember going out to the Safeway near Castro sometime late at night, and while minding my own business I see two guards doing an NFL chase and tackle on a shoplifter which attempted to run out. That was a while ago, 2015 or so. I understood it's a very routine thing, happened every night sometimes multiple times. SF to me feels like a cautionary tale of a city that had everything going for it but mismanages its fortunes all the way to the ground, very much like a national Resource Curse.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoWhat do you suppose they did to cause this? I'm genuinely asking because I'm drawing a blank.
- flyinglizard 5y agoThe city became insanely rich and successful due to external factors. It never had to enact reasonable public policies around housing, policing or development because money and people just accumulated regardless. It became a testbed for the insane and incompetent.
- yyeess 5y agoAggregate increases in petty crime, robbery, etc. always have a socioeconomic precedent. As a result of being ruled by capital and neoliberal policymaking, SF has rapidly become unfit for those who previously lived there. The neoliberals themselves will blame it on policies like rent control, suggesting that the free hand of the market would solve everything if given a chance. But the contemporary United States, and especially California, is itself the most radical experiment of free market solutions on Earth.
- dang 5y agoWe've banned this account for using HN for ideological flamewar. That's not allowed on HN, regardless of what you're flaming for; nor are single-purpose accounts generally. If you'd please not create accounts to break HN's rules with, we'd appreciate it. Everything here is there for good reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- baggy_trough 5y agoSan Franisco's DA is the son of two convicted murderers, one of whom is still incarcerated since his childhood, and as a result of which he was raised by literal domestic terrorists. This seems to have caused him no little psychological trauma which is why he is extremely reluctant to prosecute even hardened criminals. Unfortunately for the law abiding citizens of SF, that is his job.
- jimmont 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin please provide corrections if this is incorrect; via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_District_Attorney's_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_District_Attorne... also https://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/ https://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/
- seisvelas 5y agoWow, I thought the original commenter was exaggerating but nope. He was raised by members of the Weather Underground. Before law school he also worked for the Chavez regime in Venezuela. I don't know anything about him other than what's in those wiki articles, just crazy how much he sounds like a right wing caricature of a leftist politician, to the extent it's hard to believe at first sight. He's living proof of Poe's Law.
- haram_masala 5y agoHis adoptive parents were part of a circle of people who, in the 1970s, suggested that up to 70 million Americans might have to be interned and executed in order to bring about Communism. And to be specific, they felt that this would be an acceptable price to pay.
- yupper32 5y agoAnd the solution that many stores have been doing is to put basic cheap items behind a lock and key. The last time I went to a Walgreens I needed to buy: 1. Mouth wash 2. Tooth paste 3. Shaving cream I had to drag some poor employee over for all three items to either unlock a lock, or go into the back to find the item because they only had a display box. Another time I went and I couldn't find anyone with a key. The person behind the counter said they didn't have one and they didn't know where the person with the key went. After waiting around for a few minutes I left to go to the Safeway nearby to try there instead. Only to find the item I needed was also locked down. I gave up. No one wanted my money. I just drive out of the city to do my shopping now. It's a much better experience.
- mc32 5y agoWalgreens have started to respond by closing stores. Good on them. No one can survive with widespread unmitigated and unprosecuted shoplifting. Once shops start closing down, people will ask and complain why stores don’t exist in their neighborhoods, or they’re too expensive but low quality. It’s cost of doing business. ‘Cheesy Pudding’, the DA, is high on the list of everyone’s favorite target for a recall, but sadly, I think most people won’t bother with the recall effort and the downward spiral will continue. Some of the people who espouse these policies see Marxism as an example but Marxism would never ever put up with rampant delinquency.
- ghufran_syed 5y ago>Once shops start closing down, people will ask and complain why stores don’t exist in their neighborhoods, or they’re too expensive but low quality. And the answer by the people who implemented this policy will, no doubt, be “institutional racism” by walgreens…
- TMWNN 5y agoDon't forget "food deserts"!
- 5y ago
- pdx6 5y agoEventually shops in eastern San Francisco will need to implement mantraps and buzz customers in to browse. Another is to only offer kiosk service. Think of it like always having to go to the pharmacy counter to get anything from CVS or Safeway. Call ahead, app, delivery, or curbside are the other options. Since law enforcement doesn’t appear to have the tools to stop shop lifting, the stores will need to adapt to stay in business. One last thing, not in the article, but gangs will rob Walgreens delivery trucks in broad daylight too.
- hn8788 5y agoI'd be suprised if they'd go with any system except their current one. They probably make a good chunk of money by having people walk around the store and impulse buy things like magazines and snacks, and this also seems to be a local issue. The Walgreens near me has titled mirrors high up on the walls so staff can see down every isle no matter where they are, and I've seen the manager catch somebody stealing, so he made them empty their pockets then kicked them out of the store.
- gruez 5y ago>I've seen the manager catch somebody stealing, so he made them empty their pockets then kicked them out of the store. And what if they refuse? From the other comments here it sounds like the manager won't be able to do anything if the thief didn't copmly, continued putting things in his pocket and walked out.
- mountainb 5y agoNo, you will just not be able to shop in San Francisco. This is a massive country and San Francisco is a tiny city that doesn't even have a million people. There are over 9,000 Walgreens locations nationwide. The company will do just fine after closing a few dozen of them.
- an_opabinia 5y agoOther cities lag what happens in San Francisco.
- the_absurdist 5y agoEveryone is terrified of stating the obvious. The police, the politicians, and the press won't carry out their jobs due to fear of reprisal...because the perpetrators are overwhelmingly African American.
- president 5y agoSerious question - is the city actually interested in fixing the problem? I haven't seen any evidence of it outside of paying lip service. One can only assume this is the result of negligence or someone's benefiting from the increased crime.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoThis isn't rocket science. We know the solution to homelessness is to build sufficient shelters. NYC did it in response to shifting opinions about letting people freeze to death on the streets. Utah did it for religious reasons. From what I see in my city, and read about in SF, the real crux of the problem is people blocking the construction of shelters. Very loud NIMBYs show up to every single neighborhood association meeting about this topic. They don't care about stores closing or ultimately solving the problem because they don't shop at places like Walgreens. I wish I knew how to shift the political deadlock on this, but I simply do not. In my city there's a small amount of progress towards camps with permanent shelters, but it's still just a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lumost 5y agoThis actually seems quite solvable by reducing local neighborhood's ability to influence new development. Everyone wants the situation to improve, NIMBY's know how to block it. On a ballot measure the majority can rightly assume that development will not affect their immediate neighborhood. Some of these problems require City or Regional policy to manage, deferring to local neighborhoods leads to gridlock.
- dehrmann 5y agoNot building shelters is only part of the problem. SF can't build any housing. It's also astonishingly inefficient to build homeless shelters in one of the most expensive cities in the country. That, and it induces demand from other homeless people in the region who flock to the city for its services (some already do this). On the other hand, the state housing homeless people somewhere outside Bakersfield isn't morally viable, either.
- zests 5y agoI struggle to figure out why the homeless are so visible in SF but not in other cities like Manhattan. My only haphazard guess is that it has to do with the weather. I could ask the same question about why SF is the only city that has to lock up soap in their grocery stores. SF strikes me as the city with the highest highs and the lowest lows.
- asdff 5y agoManhattan has orders of magnitude more homeless but shelters over 90% of them.
- darkhorse22 5y agoYep, and anyone who thinks SF's homeless situation is bad needs to take a trip down to LA. LA's a step away from favelas.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoPeople in favelas typically have built their own home and often have electricity. LA is worse because having a tent is fortunate.
- yardie 5y agoI can say it's a lack of forward thinking policy. My city, for example, has a very small but visible homeless problem. The majority are housed in shelters and shared housing. The remainder are the mentally, pedophiles, and physically violent. There is also a quantity of pet owners, pets aren't allowed in shelters so they chose the streets, but will use the shelter's showers. Our chronically homeless count has gone down from 8,000 to just over 1,000. SF strikes me as nice but not kind city. If you're destitute they'll give you a dollar. But building affordable housing is too far a step.
- thatfrenchguy 5y ago> But building affordable housing is too far a step Building any housing that's not a McMansion in SF is literally almost impossible. NIMBY politics run deep in California.
- starik36 5y agoAn interesting write-up about the SF District Attorney, who appears to be enabling this injustice. https://stanfordreview.org/chesa-boudin-san-francisco-crime/ https://stanfordreview.org/chesa-boudin-san-francisco-crime/
- jimmygrapes 5y agoThis is absolutely an important part of it, but.... you get what you vote for. Chesa never hid his stances.
- bpodgursky 5y agoWell, there's an interesting point that a ton of SF residents cannot legally vote at all. So it's harder to claim that the average SF resident voted for him.
- tinyhouse 5y agoMany of the major US cities like San Francisco suck. They are full of homeless people, drug addicts, and general idiots. I would say NYC is an exception. They turned it around over there and I still like visiting. No wonder everyone lives in the suburbs. When I want to visit an urban place I go to Europe.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post national or regional flamewar comments to HN. This isn't going to lead anywhere interesting or good. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tinyhouse 5y agoWell, the major US cities like SF and Seattle have major issues you don't see in most European cities. It's very clear when visiting those places. The homeless and drug addicts are visible everywhere. It's not very pleasant to visit these places. I'm not trying to start a flamewar, just stating my experience traveling. The US is still my favorite place to travel, but outside of NYC not because of its cities.
- dang 5y agoPast related threads: Out of control San Francisco shoplifting forcing Walgreens to close 17 stores - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216343 - May 2021 (178 comments) Rampant shoplifting leads to another Walgreens closing in S.F - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24842412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24842412 - Oct 2020 (33 comments)
- tinyhouse 5y agoAnother city the crazy liberals ruined. Is anyone surprised? (this is coming from a liberal, just not the new breed of brain washed ones)
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/u27h4 https://archive.is/u27h4
- skybrian 5y agoHistorical note: in the days before supermarkets, all the inventory was kept behind the counter. Someone had to come up with the idea of letting customers browse the shelves and that shoplifting was an acceptable loss. Maybe it will move the other way again? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly
- michaelmrose 5y agoI think there is certainly a space for picking everything in an app on your phone before you actually go to the shop or pay a bit more for the shop to come to you. Presumably this would be less costly to run than a traditional store.
- testific8 5y agoPerhaps today you could have machines manage many clerical duties. Essentially like a giant vending machine.
- michaelmrose 5y agoI mean have hyper local delivery and pickup only stores everywhere.
- chucknthem 5y agoThe tech solution is amazon go https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16008589011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16008589011 You don't get let in without an amazon account. Once in, you take what you want and computers figure out what you bought and charge you.
- tintor 5y agoYou jump over turnstile without an amazon account. Once in, you take what you want and leave.
- 5y ago
- azinman2 5y ago> And they told the supervisors that Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified nonviolent thefts as misdemeanors if the stolen goods are worth less than $950, had emboldened thieves. And that's really it. We've put to the people in ballot initiative after initiative to reduce crimes and penalties for 'nonviolent crimes', which people will happily vote with good conscious for because of the word non-violent. But nonviolent to whom? We're forgetting that they're still crimes, that they add up and degrade quality of life, and can violently ruin lives without striking a blow. Whoever worked in these Walgreen stores now need to find a new job, and had they been small businesses, closing up shop could ruin their entire career. I had someone come into my garage in the middle of the night in December, who woke me up and I confronted him. He ran away, so it was technically a nonviolent crime, yet I couldn't sleep for weeks and haven't felt fully safe in my home ever sense. The psychological damage is done. We have a tendency to focus on the criminals with open arms trying to reintegrate and not overly punish people, and completely lose track of the victims. And when there's no credible consequences for bad actions, criminals become emboldened.
- khuey 5y agoTo most voters "a misdemeanor" is not equivalent to "totally legal" but yet that's how the police and district attorneys have chosen to treat it.
- YoyoyoPCP 5y agoProp 47 misled the public and needs to be repealed.
- proc0 5y agoI bet the locals will cuddle the shoplifters and protect them from police. I'm not even exaggerating that much.
- jwilber 5y agoUnrelated pull from the article: “The city has had twice as many fatal drug overdoses as coronavirus deaths.” Wow.
- s5300 5y agoWas there a statistically significant outlier of a year of increased overdoses recently though? If not, all this says is that the city of SF handled Coronavirus well.
- rahimnathwani 5y ago# accidental drug overdose deaths in SF: 2020: 697 2019: 441 2018: 259
- knowaveragejoe 5y ago...So yes.
- meowster 5y agoMy take is "no" - It looks like it was already trending up prior to Covid-19. I don't think there were any shutdowns until 2020.
- dehrmann 5y agoIt's a city with a large homeless and drug abuse problem that shut down hard for covid.
- rektide 5y agoI hate to say it but automation & robotocization of the store seems semi-inevitable in these conditions. Hell, it's somewhat near-to the advancement of vending machines, which have evolved to survive fairly hostile environments, although i'm imagining this at a bigger scale. I also kind of picture The Melt[1] start-up. I'd never been there, never seen photos, but conceptually, The Melt, as an automated grilled cheese restauraunt, seems like a mix between a traditional on-demand restauraunt, and a vending machine. Amazon Go[2] stores are another interesting data-point to consider, a highly automated store that monitors it's patrons & knows how to charge them. The marketing says "convenience" and lack of hassle, but also there's a huge automation/surveillance power play going on here too. Wait till an Amazon Kiva bot runs out of the wall & starts chasing you around, trying to taser you for shoplifting, & it'll have a different character... but it'll be built on the bones of this high end automated experience none-the-less. There's plenty of sci-fi examples we could turn to too. In Altered Carbon the book, for example, Takeshi Kovacs stays at a highly-automated self-defending Hendrix hotel[3] ("Bay City", year 2384). There's already somewhat the vibe of living inside of an automated vending machine, which provides you on demand what you ask for,... once it knows it can charge you. In many ways I keep thinking, it's basically going to be like living inside a comfortable, cordoned off, consumer section of an Amazon warehouse, where the robots are still happy to serve. Atm it seems like this is a somewhat localized problem, so perhaps we'll escape these grim-dark futures. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-trendiest-grilled-cheese-venture-got-burnt/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-trendiest-grilled-cheese... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105689 [3] https://www.looper.com/364474/the-real-reason-the-hotel-in-altered-carbon-differs-from-the-book/ https://www.looper.com/364474/the-real-reason-the-hotel-in-a...
- throwawaysea 5y agoThis is a result of soft on crime policies, also known as “restorative justice”. It involves changing laws to reduce penalties, directing police departments to not enforce certain laws, releasing offenders instead of sentencing them, and following activist driven demands when it comes to the justice system. A number of cities have seen shoplifters and even dangerous criminals released repeatedly due to these progressive policies, and it has had the same effect of encouraging crime in each location. As a result Chesa Boudin, the SF DA, is facing a recall campaign (https://recallchesaboudin.org/ https://recallchesaboudin.org/) as is LA DA George Gascon (https://recallgeorgegascon.com/ https://recallgeorgegascon.com/). Seattle has had massive spikes in low level crimes and business associations have put out reports (https://allianceforpioneersquare.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/SYSTEM-FAILURE-Prolific-Offender-Report-February-2019-1.pdf https://allianceforpioneersquare.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2...) tracking repeat offenders who cycle through the system and continue to victimize the community. There was a recent guest article on Glenn Greenwald’s Substack about the consequences of progressive reform policies from the DA in Philadelphia that is worth reading as a deep analysis into the effect of these policies: https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts-doubt-over-c77 https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts...
- tinyhouse 5y agoIt's always the poor people who get screwed by such policies. People who can afford it move to safe suburbs while the poor people are left in the shitty neighborhoods. I don't mind policies that encourage being soft on low crimes, but you cannot let those people walk free and keep that behavior. You need to invest in rehabilitation and eventually jail those who keep committing crimes.
- knowaveragejoe 5y agoBeing "tough on crime" is what got us into this mess in the first place.
- fnord77 5y agoI don't see any reason to pay for anything less than $950 now. Lots of goodies at the union square apple store.
- fomine3 5y agoMake sure to pick goods without OTA lockdown feature.
- fnord77 5y agojust have to resell it before they lock it down
- meowster 5y agoJust sell everything for $951 dollars and offer a discount for actually paying :-)
- fnord77 5y agothat's actually kinda brilliant. Sunblock: $951, but today only we're giving a $946 discount to people who are not shoplifters.
- greggman3 5y agoI'm planning to move to SF for a job. A friend told me to sign up for a neighborhood facebook group to one of the nicer neighborhoods in SF, Cole Valley, because I might see a message about a good place to rent. Cole Valley is a small neighborhood on the south east corner of Golden Gate Park. In the 3 weeks I've been on the list 5 cars have had their windows busted and things stolen, 2 garages have been broken into and things stolen. 2 garages have had their doors damaged from attempted break-ins costing the owners hundreds to get fixed. There's been videos of people staking out places to rob (people walking from house to house inspecting garage door locks and trying to peak inside the garages). And ~10 or so posts about various other thefts or results of thefts. This sounds more like one of those lawless 3rd world countries than a major city in a first world country. And worse, many people on the list just react as "that's life in a big city", no big deal. It's not, having lived in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Singapore were property crime is extremely low. People get defensive whenever I bring this up, making excuses why crime needs to be high where they live. It doesn't.
- rahimnathwani 5y agoIf you want more of that type of news, make sure you install these apps: * Ring * Nextdoor
- tayo42 5y agoDon't let the doom porn get to you. I lived in bernal for 5 years and never had a problem. Cole valley is right next to haight ashbury which attracts a fair amount characters. There's other neighborhoods that aren't in the middle of everything. Bernal heights, glen park, noe valley, pacific heights, the richmond and the sunset will be a little less crazy. I think any American city will have some culture shock compared to Japan or Singapore. Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.
- michaelmrose 5y agoSome thoughts make someone wirelessly attest to their identity via their phone if they want to be allowed to come into your location. If someone while inside your establishment walks out with the merchandise then suddenly every store in town auto locks their door when they approach or wont unlock if they approach without their phone. Make it appealable in case of issue but if they have you on video you pretty much aren't winning. If more people than phones approach the door just don't open and play a verbal warning preventing tailgating.
- randomhodler84 5y agoWhat kind of dystopian world are you imagining here. No, and I hope people make it their life’s work to publish bypasses for such a tyrannical regime.
- michaelmrose 5y agoThe fact that you visited ____ could be stored by law nowhere while still denying bob the shoplifter from visiting any walmart or partner org the opportunity to continue his crime spree.
- testific8 5y agohow is this any better than security cameras? It's not like it would even stop them from forcing their way in
- michaelmrose 5y agoThere entire career is based on stores being unwilling to risk employees by forcing a confrontation and turning stolen consumer goods into drugs. Change the dynamic without putting people at risk. Trying to break into a business is a different sort of crime. It's one in a lot of jurisdictions you can legally shoot offenders, it's worth prosecution, it's a felony worth 5 or more years in prison. Enforce it and this career won't make much sense anymore because it's too hard to be practical for the same reason that junkies aren't robbing banks regularly.
- somesortofthing 5y agoTo be honest, I have a hard time believing that the change in laws is what's actually driving more theft. Is the average shoplifter really doing cost-benefit analysis by planning out the value of their theft and then googling what punishment they're likely to receive before going into Walgreens and taking stuff?
- akomtu 5y agoThey do: they see how their buddies get away with increasingly more brazen crimes and become more brazen themselves.
- glangdale 5y agoA lot of non-impulsive crime has long been planned with probable sentences factored in - both in terms of quantities of drugs carried, types of things stolen, age of perpetrators used, etc. They don't need to Google; they can talk to fellow criminals.
- aksss 5y agoIf you lighten consequences for bad behavior, you’ll get more bad behavior. If you incentivize good behavior you get more good behavior. It’s how the world works.
- steveBK123 5y agoI first got an idea of this "petty crime" epidemic when reading on a car brand forum when doing research about a model. Owners were constantly complaining about their rear quarter windows getting punched out. Over and over again it was west coast, but especially San Fran owners talking about it. It was so common that people were taking the recommendation to put down the rear seats so thieves could see the empty trunk and not punch out your window to check the trunk for stuff to steal. The criminals became experts in technique because even when handed dash cam videos with license plates and faces of perps, there were no investigations, arrests or prosecutions. You could see videos of them pulling in, making a hit and leaving in under a minute. Living in NYC I've watched our politics slowly follow the same mistakes as SF in terms of non-prosecution and catch&release for "non violent" crimes just as COVID hit. The confluence of the two has lead to an insane increase in crime in NYC. We have a similar anti-Asian hate crime epidemic, in addition to a 100% increase in shootings & 50% increase in murders 2019->2020. The trend has continued, we are on track for another 20-50% increase in 2021, and summer, the traditional shooting season has not begun. The murder rate has backtracked 10 years of progress in 1 year. Some might say "oh well those are non-violent criminals being release, so its not the same people doing the shooting". Well in video after video of dudes beating the shit out of an Asian guy on subway, the clip starts with the guy jumping a turnstile to enter the station. It turns out some criminals do lots of different crimes! When you decide some crimes don't really need enforcing anymore, the criminal can continue to go do more of the other crimes as well. I suspect the pendulum is about to swing the other way in NYC given the mayoral candidates. The impression I have is that the mayhem has now spilled over into rich neighborhoods filled with the very vocal liberals who previously supported these policies, and suddenly find themselves of a different mind.
- tamaharbor 5y agoI never understood why anyone would shit where they live.
- artichokes 5y agoI haven't paid for anything at a gas station, Walmart, CVS, etc. in well over a year. Same as normal but you skip the part with the cashier. "Cashless" I believe the term is. "You're a bad person"- Correct. "I don't need laws in order to not do bad things"- Sure, I do. There is no incentive to pay for an item at a retail store.
- Google234 5y agoWait, you browse and post on HN and also shop lift?
- haram_masala 5y agoI’m sorry, but I really don’t believe you and it seems like you’re just trying to agitate.
- WalterBright 5y agoThe solution is to reprice every item in the store to over $1,000.
- Seattle3503 5y agoAttach a "$1000" security device to each item. It gets taken off at the counter.
- WalterBright 5y agoHaha, I was thinking offer a thousand dollar discount at checkout! Instead of the "Dollar Store", I'd be opening the "Grand Store - nothing under a Grand!"
- nazgulnarsil 5y agoIf it is illegal to defend property then you don't have property rights.
- bunfunton 5y agoThis is a great point. I don't see why somebody should be able to steal my motorcycle- the object of my affection- and me being helpless. What's next, somebody kidnaps my girlfriend and I have to watch them take her away?
- logicchains 5y agoThis is literally the case in many places that have laws about the "proportionality" of self defense. If the guy is much bigger/stronger than you, but unarmed, if you use a knife or gun to stop him you could go to jail. But as the saying goes, better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
- feverfew 5y agoYou own your girlfriend?
- ARandomerDude 5y agoIf you were a cop in SF would you be brave enough to chase criminals and arrest shoplifters? I wouldn't. Way too much Monday morning risk.
- rtpg 5y agoSounds like someone that afraid of shoplifters shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun, or really have any punitive enforcement capabilities on anyone. Cops are the whiniest babies. Everyone else does their job without self-crucifixion at every opportunity. “Wow I’d really like to ruin this persons life but paperwork”. So much wrong with this mentality
- randompwd 5y agoLol! You think the risk comes from the arrest and not man-children like you who will castigate the cop for making the arrest. No doubt the cop would be harassed in the street whilst others scream 'they didnt do nothin'
- mynameishere 5y agoIn liberal cities in the US police can be charged and convicted of homicide if they arrest people who overdose while in custody. You may be unaware of this, but the police know all about it. Every time they do their jobs, it's a gamble as to whether the media will decide to destroy them.
- kstenerud 5y agoI lived in San Franciso for a few years (2010 to 2015) and hung around with some of the "low class" people, and this theft spike doesn't surprise me at all. It was already astronomical while I was there. San Francisco is a strange place, where the only places you're allowed to be poor are in the tenderloin, 6th and market, or the projects. It's the only place I've lived where I regularly had to dodge human excrement on the sidewalks, car windows are all smashed, deodorant is locked down in the stores etc. The poor don't consider themselves of the same people as the rich. The infrastructure is not for the poor, the police are not for the poor, the parks and sidewalks and houses and cars are not for the poor. Hell, while I lived there the poor weren't even allowed to sit or lie down! So why should they feel any civic pride or duty or identification at all? It's like some sort of Elysium and Deponia. The Elysians are so far removed from reality that crimes against them are hardly crimes at all as far as the poor are concerned. They'll never taste of the good things Elysium has, so why even care? Better to just grab whatever you can from them and try to eke out whatever existence you're able to. It's similar in many ways to the bandit camps and highwaymen of the Roman era. I've traveled and lived in many places, and this sort of behavior only happens when there's massive inequality, tempered a small amount by the severity of the law. I know this will get downvoted to hell because almost everyone on HN is rich, so they're blind to this. For you, the answer is better policing and stronger laws, because those are the only things that can help keep you separated from the rest unless you're rich enough to afford private security.
- b9a2cab5 5y agoThis doesn't happen in wealthy cities like Irvine, or even large cities like Boston or NYC. This is an SF phenomenon.
- wfhbata 5y agoYou can’t really compare it to Irvine, which is almost completely suburban and has 1/15th the population.
- b9a2cab5 5y agoWhich is why I included other large cities as an example. Although I would argue the density in SF is not that much higher than some parts of Irvine due to restrictive zoning in SF.
- properdine 5y agoI live in SF, it's normal to see someone run out of a Walgreens while an employee tells another employee not to chase the person down (because they don't want to get injured). There's no accountability for theft. Don't need to send someone to jail, but there's gotta be something better than shrugging shoulders.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- baby 5y agoMy first week moving here, in 2018, I took a bus and saw a girl getting mugged in front of everyone. I froze. I stopped taking public transport after that. It’s sad how much money I waste on ubers just because I’m scared of public transport here.
- lsiebert 5y agoTL:DR Poverty is the true problem, and we need to think about things more holistically. Here we are on HN, once again debating criminalizing poor people for not having opportunities, about if it's better to fine poor people or imprison them, treating those as solutions, instead of something just making the problem worse. The problem is poverty. How come when we try to incentivize the rich, we give them stuff like tax breaks, but when we want to incentivize the poor, we punish them and take their money or freedom away? People are so focused on if it's wrong to take something that doesn't belong to you, they don't ask if it's wrong to have something and not give it away to someone who needs it more than you do. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269557/gross-profit-and-net-earnings-of-walgreens-in-the-us-since-2005/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269557/gross-profit-and-... Because it's not comfortably middle class Americans who have good paying jobs who are repeatedly shoplifting, it's poor people who don't have a significantly better options. Treating their crimes as the most salient aspect of them by calling them thieves and criminals ignores their poverty, instead of treating it as a systemic societal problem which harms us all. This wasn't a natural experiment in any case, pre/post the law, you can't blame the law for shoplifting, other variables weren't fixed and thus confound the results. I expect rent increases, increases in the prices of food and other consumer goods and so on have a much bigger impact on shoplifting. Even if you could, if it wasn't shoplifting it would be some other means of making ends meet. Poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, these are problems our country absolutely has the means to address, and investing in stopping them pays dividends not just in higher tax revenues but in decreased crime. And with that in mind, isn't it smarter to take some of the money dedicated housing prisoners, policing the poor, managing them through the criminal justice system, and using it to help them so they don't have to steal?
- logicchains 5y ago>TL:DR Poverty is the true problem, and we need to think about things more holistically. Is there any empirical evidence for this? How come there are countries like Vietnam and China that are much poorer than the US, with much higher income inequality, yet have much less crime? How come in San Franciso there was less crime 50 years ago, 100 years ago, even though the city (and country) was poorer then?
- pharmakom 5y agoI’ve always wondered if California and other places perceived as more liberal have greater problems with smaller crime, homelessness, etc because they are more tolerant of people in these situations and therefore attract them from across the USA?
- mixmastamyk 5y agoThat and the weather. Wonder no more.
- Zanneth 5y agoI grew up in Arizona which has a mixture of conservatives and liberals but tends towards conservative on most issues. Before I moved to SF, homelessness and petty crime were previously unknown concepts to me, and I grew up in a pretty poor part of Phoenix that had a large immigrant population. These problems absolutely affect liberal cities more than conservative ones. I consider myself left-of-center but there is no point lying about this fact.
- namelosw 5y agoI live in East Asia. I was once dreamed I could work and live in SF one day, as many tech people do. After several trips there, I was totally disillusioned, and that's even before the COVID breakout. The glamorous side, that I already know from the Internet. However, the nasty side, that I didn't expect at all. On one hand, there was window busting and all, and there were no effective actions taken to address those. On the other hand, the system doesn't seem to care about poor and homeless people to help them and lift them from their situations. It's the worse situation on both sides of the story, and there's no fix in sight. An outstanding issue is the price of the rent. I grew up in commie blocks and I hated it, just like everybody else: it was cheap, ugly, and depressing. After traveled around the world, I realized: the counterpart of commie blocks around the world was not nice apartments as we imagined, but slums and homelessness.
- Zanneth 5y agoI recommend giving it another chance. SF really is an amazing city despite all of its problems.
- julienfr112 5y agoThat could be the end of self-service, and a roll back to the counter type shop, where you pay and then are handled the merchandise. Inventers will provide a mechanical and digitalized solution to keep large inventory and optimize space.
- fnord77 5y agoI'm kinda surprised the amazon go store in the westfield doesn't get hit.
- haram_masala 5y agoYou can’t enter without an Amazon account and the app on your phone, I believe.
- fnord77 5y agojump the turnstile
- haspoken 5y agohttp://archive.is/Sp6tZ http://archive.is/Sp6tZ