6 ms·

Physically placing police officers outside literally every store in a city seems very impractical and expensive.

bpodgursky 4y ago
These are professional criminals who raid multiple stores a day, every day. You don't have to catch and convict them every time to be effective. If you caught and convicted even 2% of the crimes, crime would be massively lower within 6 months, because it's the same people doing it over and over.
- db48x 4y ago
  That assumes that they are actually convicted and put in jail. The DA doesn’t believe that putting people in jail is effective at reducing crime, and so just doesn’t.
  - yodon 4y ago
    The DA you are referring to was removed from office five months ago and replaced by attorneys who quit his office in disgust and led the effort to recall him. SF still has a lot of work to do but Chessa Boudin is no longer running the SF DA's office.
    - db48x 4y ago
      s/doesn’t/didn’t/g
  - ilyt 4y ago
    And we go back to "how about you just enforce the law, catch people breaking it and put them in jail"
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  how does the cost of this compare with say UBI? bearing in mind there's a cost to illegal/legalized civil forfeiture theft, or caging more people, as well
  - xienze 4y ago
    Are you laboring under the delusion that these same criminals wouldn't happily pocket the UBI in between shoplifting raids for which they face almost no consequences?
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      got a source for calling me (or that) delusional?
      - gsinclair 4y ago
        Category error: the claim was that an idea is delusional, not a person.
        wahnfrieden 4y ago
        how is this helpful? it's not even correct
        tristor 4y ago
        You’re making the error in belief that criminals primarily commit crime out of necessity, rather than out of inculcated behavioral habit. At least in the US, most crimes are committed by people who were brought up from a young age in a culture of criminality. There is no ethical or moral dilemma on the part of the criminal, their behavior is fully in line with the social mores of their cultural upbringing. The folks running in shoplifting and robbery gangs are not stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving children, criminality is their profession.
        wahnfrieden 4y ago
        I didn’t say that or speculate motivations but I do see research finding strong negative correlations between violent crime and minimum incomes
jeffbee 4y ago
You don't need that. We have physical police officers who are sometimes present in some places and they don't do anything. They are on a tacit strike and have been for years. If you look at SF compstat, larceny-theft is on pace to be about 34,000 citywide this year, which will put thefts for this year lower than every year 2013-2019, and higher than 2020-21, which were exceptionally low (pandemic). If you look at the FBI UCR report you'll see that clearance of theft is on a 40-year-long monotonic decline. Theft rate was about the same around 1990, but the SFPD clearance rate was 3-5x higher back then. This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs. Anyway if you want to know why we have to constantly hear about thefts in SF which are objectively at the lowest levels in a recent years, here's the explanation for that: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/26/crime-midterm-elections-news-coverage-fox-news/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/26/crime-mid...
- HPsquared 4y ago
  With a 2.4% clearance rate on reported cases, most people aren't going to bother reporting thefts.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    When citizens try to report crimes, the SFPD will just stand there ignoring them. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/SF-police-crime-16931399.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article... When the district attorney is busy busting a car burglary gang, doing the SFPD's job for them, the SFPD refuses to help. https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-francisco-quickly-car-burglary-ring-report-alleges/40106042# https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-f... SFPD is a reactionary gang who are invested in making crime in SF be and appear to be as bad as possible.
- leephillips 4y ago
  > This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs. Maybe...but the two might be related, no? After some years of the police observing that the people they arrest are released with no charges and no prosecution, why would they bother to keep arresting people? It sounds demoralizing.
treis 4y ago
The guys post is interesting to sort of see the change in society. Times were that the shop owner would physically stop shop lifters. Now we mostly have low wage employees in shops. Understandable that they don't want the risk of injury and liability so they don't stop shoplifters. Ok, so we hire specialized employees ostensibly trained in security. But due to liability reasons they aren't allowed to physically stop shoplifters. That makes them basically useless. Ok, so well there's always cops. But they have a similar cost benefit analysis as the other parties with the same result. It's not worth it to the individual cops to intervene. Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff? The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff? And why risk the blowback of a police brutality incident?
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  > Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff? I'm sure that's a factor, but physical altercations also bring risk to the cop. I don't know how generous their disability pensions are, but I suspect it's better for them and their family to still be able to work. Also, anyone in the US can be armed which tends to raise the stakes that cops perceive with every interaction - look at their training material/propaganda sometime and it paints a very adversarial picture.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff?" It's not their money, so many of them have no problem spending it. That's not to mention those who personally benefit from putting more people in jail because they have investments in the prison industry, get some sort of bribe/kickback, or just have an easier time getting elected/appointed because they're "tough on crime".

These are professional criminals who raid multiple stores a day, every day. You don't have to catch and convict them every time to be effective. If you caught and convicted even 2% of the crimes, crime would be massively lower within 6 months, because it's the same people doing it over and over.

db48x 4y ago
That assumes that they are actually convicted and put in jail. The DA doesn’t believe that putting people in jail is effective at reducing crime, and so just doesn’t.
- yodon 4y ago
  The DA you are referring to was removed from office five months ago and replaced by attorneys who quit his office in disgust and led the effort to recall him. SF still has a lot of work to do but Chessa Boudin is no longer running the SF DA's office.
  - db48x 4y ago
    s/doesn’t/didn’t/g
- ilyt 4y ago
  And we go back to "how about you just enforce the law, catch people breaking it and put them in jail"
wahnfrieden 4y ago
how does the cost of this compare with say UBI? bearing in mind there's a cost to illegal/legalized civil forfeiture theft, or caging more people, as well
- xienze 4y ago
  Are you laboring under the delusion that these same criminals wouldn't happily pocket the UBI in between shoplifting raids for which they face almost no consequences?
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    got a source for calling me (or that) delusional?
    - gsinclair 4y ago
      Category error: the claim was that an idea is delusional, not a person.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        how is this helpful? it's not even correct
        tristor 4y ago
        You’re making the error in belief that criminals primarily commit crime out of necessity, rather than out of inculcated behavioral habit. At least in the US, most crimes are committed by people who were brought up from a young age in a culture of criminality. There is no ethical or moral dilemma on the part of the criminal, their behavior is fully in line with the social mores of their cultural upbringing. The folks running in shoplifting and robbery gangs are not stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving children, criminality is their profession.
        wahnfrieden 4y ago
        I didn’t say that or speculate motivations but I do see research finding strong negative correlations between violent crime and minimum incomes

jeffbee 4y ago

You don't need that. We have physical police officers who are sometimes present in some places and they don't do anything. They are on a tacit strike and have been for years. If you look at SF compstat, larceny-theft is on pace to be about 34,000 citywide this year, which will put thefts for this year lower than every year 2013-2019, and higher than 2020-21, which were exceptionally low (pandemic). If you look at the FBI UCR report you'll see that clearance of theft is on a 40-year-long monotonic decline. Theft rate was about the same around 1990, but the SFPD clearance rate was 3-5x higher back then. This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs. Anyway if you want to know why we have to constantly hear about thefts in SF which are objectively at the lowest levels in a recent years, here's the explanation for that: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/26/crime-midterm-elections-news-coverage-fox-news/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/26/crime-mid...

HPsquared 4y ago
With a 2.4% clearance rate on reported cases, most people aren't going to bother reporting thefts.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  When citizens try to report crimes, the SFPD will just stand there ignoring them. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/SF-police-crime-16931399.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article... When the district attorney is busy busting a car burglary gang, doing the SFPD's job for them, the SFPD refuses to help. https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-francisco-quickly-car-burglary-ring-report-alleges/40106042# https://www.ksbw.com/article/sfpd-refused-to-help-stop-san-f... SFPD is a reactionary gang who are invested in making crime in SF be and appear to be as bad as possible.
leephillips 4y ago
> This has nothing to do with the DA and everything to do with the SFPD being a civic cancer who refuse to do their jobs. Maybe...but the two might be related, no? After some years of the police observing that the people they arrest are released with no charges and no prosecution, why would they bother to keep arresting people? It sounds demoralizing.

treis 4y ago

The guys post is interesting to sort of see the change in society. Times were that the shop owner would physically stop shop lifters. Now we mostly have low wage employees in shops. Understandable that they don't want the risk of injury and liability so they don't stop shoplifters. Ok, so we hire specialized employees ostensibly trained in security. But due to liability reasons they aren't allowed to physically stop shoplifters. That makes them basically useless. Ok, so well there's always cops. But they have a similar cost benefit analysis as the other parties with the same result. It's not worth it to the individual cops to intervene. Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff? The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff? And why risk the blowback of a police brutality incident?

hotpotamus 4y ago
> Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff? I'm sure that's a factor, but physical altercations also bring risk to the cop. I don't know how generous their disability pensions are, but I suspect it's better for them and their family to still be able to work. Also, anyone in the US can be armed which tends to raise the stakes that cops perceive with every interaction - look at their training material/propaganda sometime and it paints a very adversarial picture.
pmoriarty 4y ago
"The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff?" It's not their money, so many of them have no problem spending it. That's not to mention those who personally benefit from putting more people in jail because they have investments in the prison industry, get some sort of bribe/kickback, or just have an easier time getting elected/appointed because they're "tough on crime".