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My understanding of the situation in SF is that many things simply are not illegal and/or not enforced (for example, stealing bellow $950 in value). If that is

My understanding of the situation in SF is that many things simply are not illegal and/or not enforced (for example, stealing bellow $950 in value). If that is the case why would police need surveilance cameras if they don't enforce basic laws in the first place? Can anyone from SF or who understands the situation explain?

aaroninsf 4y ago
This was my reaction as well. The justification of this is pretty obvioulsy, police love [d-cking around with] Police State surveillance tools, which have as much allure as their military cosplay as well as providing a rich vein of feeding off public funding and associated grift payback and political donation. The actual use case which translates into public safety, especially with respect to property crime and the cluster of adjacent unenforced lifestyle-degrading failures of SF policing, seem to in no way justify the expenditure. And that is 100x as true because plain old community policing consistently proves infinitely better return on value. Not that actual proven return on value ever provokes investment in plain old community and social welfare, in our current dystopia...
aerostable_slug 4y ago
Cameras help make up for a lack of police officers & detectives patrolling the streets, in theory. Community policing requires cops, and lots of them. SFPD is hemorrhaging talent, and why wouldn't it? Who would want to work somewhere with a sky-high cost of living, a populace who largely despises you, and an mostly-hostile City Hall? The best officers are lateraling out to better climes and recruitment numbers are falling. Also, it's very true that they don't go after many crimes, but they do spend resources on things like attempted murder, rape, etc. Too bad about your car, though...
m-ee 4y ago
It is absolutely illegal to steal less than $950. The were a CA law that reclassified some crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies, a misdemeanor is still a crime you can and will be arrested for. SFPD is famously reticent to do any work so the fiction that “we can’t arrest people for small crimes because of the government” has been peddled as an excuse for them not doing their jobs. EDIT- To answer your question, SFPD works when they feel like it. When they do they want it to be easy. Local politics means there’s no real accountability that an increase is their power would come with increased expectations, so why wouldn’t they take as much as they can get
- ballenf 4y ago
  If every PR a dev submitted got reverted the next day, they'd probably lose a bit of passion and start phoning it in or leave for another job.
  - vkou 4y ago
    In this case the better analogy is a dev that gets up in a huff because his code has to pass code review before it's submitted, so he spends the next year hanging around the water-cooler. It's a common police union response to any expectation of accountability or oversight. Seattle recently elected a hard-Republican city attorney, who ran on a platform of zero tolerance for misdemeanors. Despite this, SPD continues to be both unaccountable and largely useless. Go figure...
  - m-ee 4y ago
    The more apt comparison is that you hate doing code reviews because you think the process is too onerous so you simply stop submitting PRs. There's a few SFPD officers on /r/sanfrancisco. They didn't talk about Chesa all that much, but they have repeatedly and specifically cited the amount of paperwork involved in an arrest as a reason they don't do them. Maybe the process is too onerous, but if you stopped writing code altogether because of paperwork would you expect to keep your job? There's a recent video where the police catch someone in the act of stealing a catalytic converter and let him go. In addition to the video there are multiple eye witnesses. Chesa's gone, they have allies in Breed and the new DA. What's the excuse now?
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  But consider that if you have 10 people steal 900 from you each month, you've lost almost 10k, which is not small potatoes
  - m-ee 4y ago
    I'm not arguing that its small potatoes. It's a real issue and I agree it should be dealt with. My point is that despite what police union reps may say there is no law or policy, state or city, that prevents police for arresting someone who steals $900. They choose not to.
throwsf123 4y ago
> Can anyone from SF or who understands the situation explain? London Breed ran a representative survey by a sophisticated polling group whose objective is to identify "actions that maximize increase in votes." It's Shorism - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/style/david-shor-democrats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/style/david-shor-democrat... - not specifically his group but in a Darwinian way this is how lots of local elected officials operate now. So now we understand your question is really, "Why does this particular action affect voting?" We can only speculate. Too few people are victims of property crime for that to be the explanatory variable. I think the kind of people who are never victims of property crime (the majority) react very strongly to the presence of cameras. They also believe that Ring makes them more secure. It's all kind of stupid. But that kind of person votes.

aaroninsf 4y ago

This was my reaction as well. The justification of this is pretty obvioulsy, police love [d-cking around with] Police State surveillance tools, which have as much allure as their military cosplay as well as providing a rich vein of feeding off public funding and associated grift payback and political donation. The actual use case which translates into public safety, especially with respect to property crime and the cluster of adjacent unenforced lifestyle-degrading failures of SF policing, seem to in no way justify the expenditure. And that is 100x as true because plain old community policing consistently proves infinitely better return on value. Not that actual proven return on value ever provokes investment in plain old community and social welfare, in our current dystopia...

aerostable_slug 4y ago

Cameras help make up for a lack of police officers & detectives patrolling the streets, in theory. Community policing requires cops, and lots of them. SFPD is hemorrhaging talent, and why wouldn't it? Who would want to work somewhere with a sky-high cost of living, a populace who largely despises you, and an mostly-hostile City Hall? The best officers are lateraling out to better climes and recruitment numbers are falling. Also, it's very true that they don't go after many crimes, but they do spend resources on things like attempted murder, rape, etc. Too bad about your car, though...

m-ee 4y ago

It is absolutely illegal to steal less than $950. The were a CA law that reclassified some crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies, a misdemeanor is still a crime you can and will be arrested for. SFPD is famously reticent to do any work so the fiction that “we can’t arrest people for small crimes because of the government” has been peddled as an excuse for them not doing their jobs. EDIT- To answer your question, SFPD works when they feel like it. When they do they want it to be easy. Local politics means there’s no real accountability that an increase is their power would come with increased expectations, so why wouldn’t they take as much as they can get

ballenf 4y ago
If every PR a dev submitted got reverted the next day, they'd probably lose a bit of passion and start phoning it in or leave for another job.
- vkou 4y ago
  In this case the better analogy is a dev that gets up in a huff because his code has to pass code review before it's submitted, so he spends the next year hanging around the water-cooler. It's a common police union response to any expectation of accountability or oversight. Seattle recently elected a hard-Republican city attorney, who ran on a platform of zero tolerance for misdemeanors. Despite this, SPD continues to be both unaccountable and largely useless. Go figure...
- m-ee 4y ago
  The more apt comparison is that you hate doing code reviews because you think the process is too onerous so you simply stop submitting PRs. There's a few SFPD officers on /r/sanfrancisco. They didn't talk about Chesa all that much, but they have repeatedly and specifically cited the amount of paperwork involved in an arrest as a reason they don't do them. Maybe the process is too onerous, but if you stopped writing code altogether because of paperwork would you expect to keep your job? There's a recent video where the police catch someone in the act of stealing a catalytic converter and let him go. In addition to the video there are multiple eye witnesses. Chesa's gone, they have allies in Breed and the new DA. What's the excuse now?
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
But consider that if you have 10 people steal 900 from you each month, you've lost almost 10k, which is not small potatoes
- m-ee 4y ago
  I'm not arguing that its small potatoes. It's a real issue and I agree it should be dealt with. My point is that despite what police union reps may say there is no law or policy, state or city, that prevents police for arresting someone who steals $900. They choose not to.

throwsf123 4y ago

> Can anyone from SF or who understands the situation explain? London Breed ran a representative survey by a sophisticated polling group whose objective is to identify "actions that maximize increase in votes." It's Shorism - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/style/david-shor-democrats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/style/david-shor-democrat... - not specifically his group but in a Darwinian way this is how lots of local elected officials operate now. So now we understand your question is really, "Why does this particular action affect voting?" We can only speculate. Too few people are victims of property crime for that to be the explanatory variable. I think the kind of people who are never victims of property crime (the majority) react very strongly to the presence of cameras. They also believe that Ring makes them more secure. It's all kind of stupid. But that kind of person votes.