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That's because police don't even bother to report these crimes anymore. See: the article posted recently with the video of shoplifters straight up clearing out

That's because police don't even bother to report these crimes anymore. See: the article posted recently with the video of shoplifters straight up clearing out an entire Walgreens and no police in sight.

sdenton4 5y ago
The police are never around when crimes are going on, though: showing up later is what always happens... Good forbid one should bring stats to an pity party though.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Nice snark, I guess, but it totally misses the point, which is that if the narrative is right, you can't trust those statistics. So trying to use the statistics to disprove the narrative is completely not going to work. You need to have objectively verifiable statistics in order to disprove the narrative (or at least something better than "reported to police").
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    So your position is unfalsifiable. Have fun with that. Can you prove that the SF stats are of worse quality than any other city? If not, they're still of use for comparison. Can you prove that the reporting percentage has gotten worse over time? If not, they're still useful for year over year.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Can we prove that the reporting percentage has gotten worse over time? No, but we can make a plausible argument that a change in policy to not prosecute X will result in people not bothering to report X. We also have anecdotal information that places like Targets and Walgreens are facing increased losses. We now have multiple anecdotes supporting the plausible scenario. That's not unfalsifiable, it's just unfalsifiable by using the statistics that are plausibly wrong. You could think about trying to falsify it by, for example, surveying businesses about their rate of losses due to shoplifting. To my knowledge, we don't have that data. What we do have is reason to question the statistics you're quoting.
      - sdenton4 5y ago
        So... Go get the data. In the mean time, you've got opinions, and that's all.

sdenton4 5y ago

The police are never around when crimes are going on, though: showing up later is what always happens... Good forbid one should bring stats to an pity party though.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Nice snark, I guess, but it totally misses the point, which is that if the narrative is right, you can't trust those statistics. So trying to use the statistics to disprove the narrative is completely not going to work. You need to have objectively verifiable statistics in order to disprove the narrative (or at least something better than "reported to police").
- sdenton4 5y ago
  So your position is unfalsifiable. Have fun with that. Can you prove that the SF stats are of worse quality than any other city? If not, they're still of use for comparison. Can you prove that the reporting percentage has gotten worse over time? If not, they're still useful for year over year.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Can we prove that the reporting percentage has gotten worse over time? No, but we can make a plausible argument that a change in policy to not prosecute X will result in people not bothering to report X. We also have anecdotal information that places like Targets and Walgreens are facing increased losses. We now have multiple anecdotes supporting the plausible scenario. That's not unfalsifiable, it's just unfalsifiable by using the statistics that are plausibly wrong. You could think about trying to falsify it by, for example, surveying businesses about their rate of losses due to shoplifting. To my knowledge, we don't have that data. What we do have is reason to question the statistics you're quoting.
    - sdenton4 5y ago
      So... Go get the data. In the mean time, you've got opinions, and that's all.