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Petty Thieves Plague San Francisco. ‘These Last Two Years Have Been Insane.’
- jamghee 5y agoAnecdotally I have been hearing this from colleagues in SF
- nkurz 5y agohttps://archive.is/WlnP3 https://archive.is/WlnP3
- jdkee 5y agoIf your local prosecutor will not prosecute low-level crimes then the threshold for acceptable behaviour deteriorates further and further. See Cook County’s failed experiment with bail reform and electronic monitoring of violent offenders.
- loeg 5y agoThe point of bail isn't to keep people who shouldn't be released in prison solely because of their inability to pay -- it's to help ensure people who are safe to release show up for their trial. People that should not be released on low bail shouldn't have higher bail -- they should not be granted bail at all.
- throw_m239339 5y ago> Some former police officials said in interviews that officers don’t feel it is worth making an arrest in low-level cases because they assume the district attorney won’t file charges. They also point to a statewide ballot measure passed in 2014—Proposition 47—that raised the dollar amount at which theft can be prosecuted as a felony from $400 to $950. https://archive.fo/WlnP3 https://archive.fo/WlnP3
- Finnucane 5y agoDespite the focus on SF, this is a national issue. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-punishment-for-theft-depends-on-what-state-you-re-in https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-pun...
- sokoloff 5y agoI read that as "I'm not going to do my job, because this other group isn't doing their job." I guess any city gets roughly the government they want/deserve/tolerate.
- giantg2 5y agoThis is extremely common in most big cities if you talk to the police about their opinions.
- robertlagrant 5y agoThey aren't the government. But if you detect crimes that are not prosecuted, you probably aren't going to get anything out of it, including a criminal brought to justice, so why bother?
- sokoloff 5y agoThe police aren’t part of the government? (They are.)
- germinalphrase 5y agoThere are “strong rumors” that police officers up here in Minneapolis have been engaging in a ‘soft strike’ by refusing to leave the precinct or not answering calls. It’s framed as a defensive action intended to communicate “let’s remind everyone why they needs us”.
- sgt 5y agoWhat San Fransischam needs is a hero. Someone to fill up Alcatraz.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y agoAre we at the stage already where people no longer hide their fascist strongman fantasies of righteous, indiscriminate violence?
- wyclif 5y agoSan Francisco clearly needs Batman.
- WalterBright 5y agoIt's coming to Seattle, too. Thieves smashed several of Nordstrom's windows at $50,000 apiece. Small businesses are simply giving up and leaving. I expect it won't be long before storefronts sprout rollup steel shields that extend from the pavement up and cover the complete storefront. That's what businesses do in Brazil. Amazon is abandoning one of its downtown buildings because the employees don't feel safe there anymore. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/citing-crime-concerns-amazon-pulls-workers-from-office-at-former-site-of-seattle-macys/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/citing-crime-concerns-...
- giantg2 5y ago"Small businesses are simply giving up and leaving." It's already tough enough dealing with all the tax, regulation, competing with large corporations and the internet etc. I can't imagine wanting to stay in business to deal with multiple burglaries and thefts, with the associated costs of security improvements and insurance premiums.
- grumple 5y agoBusinesses already do that in many American cities.
- WalterBright 5y agoIn Seattle, inside the banks, the tellers are separated from the customers by armored glass and sliding trays. On the other side of Lake Washington, there are no such shields. That kinda says it all.
- loeg 5y agoI really don't think what you're saying is universally true of Seattle banks, although I hesitate to comment as I haven't stepped foot in many of them. Have you? In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen armored glass and sliding trays -- but I haven't visited many banks.
- the_cat_kittles 5y ago
- slg 5y ago> Property crimes declined in San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic, but rose 13% in 2021. There is an ongoing national narrative about how shoplifting and petty theft has been out of control and yet the numbers rarely back up this narrative. A two year stretch in which the numbers dropped then bounced back up by 13% is not "insane" by any stretch of the imagination.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoIs it really 13%, or... A. The city has incentive to hide the actual numbers[1], and B. Most business owners don't bother anymore with reporting, because what's the point? I'd say it's probably a combination of the above. Edit: [1]Because it is an election year. High crime looks bad.
- ceejayoz 5y ago> The city has incentive to hide the actual numbers... ... and cops have an incentive to overstate them.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoNot really - as the article says, the cops are discouraged and it's not like there's a bounty per arrest. Overstating the numbers is a waste of time not accomplishing anything if true.
- ceejayoz 5y agoCops outright make shit up to win political points. For example: https://www.businessinsider.com/nypds-shake-shack-hoax-stop-taking-police-word-2020-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/nypds-shake-shack-hoax-stop-...
- gjsman-1000 5y agoSo some cops lied in New York about something unrelated... so they must be lying about well-documented phenomena in Los Angeles over an entirely different issue. Not only that, but they must be somehow incentivized to do so. I don't find that argument convincing.
- micromacrofoot 5y agowage theft still vastly eclipses all retail theft, yet gets far fewer headlines… ask yourself why whenever you see the retail theft reporting hysteria the people stealing from retail have very likely had more of their labor stolen than they’re lifting (it’s likely true for you too) https://fair.org/home/shoplifting-is-big-news-stealing-millions-from-workers-is-not/ https://fair.org/home/shoplifting-is-big-news-stealing-milli... https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/ https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
- robertlagrant 5y agoI can't tell from that epi page what the percentages are. Some of it is pressuring people to stay late with no chance of overtime, which is "time theft" not "wage theft", for example.
- bcj7393nsk 5y ago> wage theft still vastly eclipses all retail theft, yet gets far fewer headlines… ask yourself why whenever you see the retail theft reporting hysteria Try to stop wage theft, get an unproductive conversation, or worse, get fired. Try to stop petty crime, get assaulted, or worse, get killed. There’s a reason no one gives a shit about wage theft: they simply don’t care.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoFunny that the companies reporting high volumes of retail theft are the same ones often perpetrating wage theft. CVS, for example, has paid out over $100 million in wage theft settlements. https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/cvs-health https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/cvs-health
- giantg2 5y ago"the people stealing from retail have very likely had more of their labor stolen than they’re lifting" I'm skeptical of that. Do you have any info on the demographics and work history of the perpetrators? I'd imagine that many are younger and may not have worked enough to have this be true. Even then, I doubt they're stealing from the company that stole from them, and it doesn't make it right.
- truthwhisperer 5y ago
- drewwwwww 5y agowhen the collective no longer seems interested in providing basic guarantees, the individuals will turn on each other. not because of a moral failing, but rather morality is a function of incentives. the sf city government is a failed-state kleptocracy beholden to the inertia of the political machine and rich landowners who shortsightedly vote against their own interests, in a massive region with no regional governance, in a state kneecapped by antitax demagogues abusing the initiative process, in a nation whose already rickety performance under decades of neoliberal austerity and privatization was then intentionally reduced to rubble by a TV star, and his replacement has pudding brain.
- sokoloff 5y ago> a state kneecapped by antitax demagogues Is California known for low taxes or being anti-tax? I don’t live there, but as an outsider, I have the exact opposite impression. This puts it at the 10th highest overall tax burden: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494 https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...
- drewwwwww 5y agoI was referring to Prop 13, specifically
- juanani 5y ago
- armchairhacker 5y agoHN probably won’t like this, but facial recognition might be solution here. When a thief steals something from a shop or damages property window, the cashiers can’t (and shouldn’t) try to stop them. But they can get a video recording of the evidence. If they upload the recording to a shared database, other security cameras can recognize the criminal and match them with other crimes. In theory, if someone accidentally steals $3 of goods or something it’s not worth doing anything, so normal people shouldn’t be affected by this. I imagine repeat offenders commit the majority of petty theft and they would be the targets: the recordings would be used to stack up charges and figure out their patterns, and eventually police would be pre-alerted to catch them in the act. In practice I have no idea. But considering how much companies spend on security systems, and petty theft is a real issue, I bet some are looking into this kind of thing.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoImplementing SkyNet(TM) isn't going to solve the fact that there is no political will to prosecute petty property crime.
- Lammy 5y agoYeah yeah, widespread human suffering, homelessness, blah blah blah whatever — won't somebody get their priorities straight and please think of the Property Crime instead??
- wmf 5y agoIs San Francisco stuck in a situation where they only want to address the root of the problem but they don't have nearly enough money to do that so they do nothing?
- Overtonwindow 5y agoWe’ve had a few years now of this escalating behavior in San Francisco. It would seem logical that voters would blame their elected representatives, and vote them out, but they haven’t. What could be the explanation for this? Is there a general sense that this is just city life? Or is it something more philosophical about the lives of those who commit crimes?
- wyclif 5y agoWhy is this flagged? I swear, I'm getting so tired of HN allowing any story critical of San Francisco to be flagged into oblivion.