3 ms·

I'd be careful with any crime stats other than like, murder stats. The problem is that people are less likely to report crimes if they don't think they're going

I'd be careful with any crime stats other than like, murder stats. The problem is that people are less likely to report crimes if they don't think they're going to be prosecuted. There's many anecdotes of people asking for police help and they just tell them not to bother. > In April [2022], [...] the dept issued 338 tickets for traffic violations. By comparison, in April 2014, the year Vision Zero began, the department issued 11,612 tickets. Does that mean nobody violates traffic laws in SF anymore? Of course not. But if the tickets aren't issued they're not rolled up into stats. Same with all sorts of violent and property crime. When I lived in the mid-mission a few years ago I had to call in a shooting that happened outside my bedroom window. There were a ton of violent altercations between pimps and prostitutes that were just straight-up ignored. And 24th St became an open-air Walgreens. > The letter highlighted alarming data backing up many residents’ concerns that police have thrown up their hands. For example, last year the Department of Police Accountability opened 595 cases into alleged police wrongdoing; the largest share by far, 42.6%, related to “neglect of duty.” That percentage has ticked up steadily since 2016, when neglect of duty made up 32% of complaints. [1] [edit] Your own source seems to back that up. Your source is for all of California, not SF. And one of the big sub-headings is "crime rates vary dramatically by region and category" and specifically calls out SF as having an outsized quantity of property crime. > The state’s highest rate of violent crime was in the San Joaquin Valley, which had 640 violent incidents per 100,000 residents. The highest rate of property crime was in the San Francisco Bay Area, at 2,718 per 100,000 residents. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/sf-police-crime-16931399.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...

anigbrowl 4y ago
That's why I addressed violent crime specifically, where reporting is much more reliable.
- alfalfasprout 4y ago
  Is it? I know of two armed rape cases in SF proper where the police refused to even file a report. Anecdotal yes, but bottom line is officers are encouraged to not report things. Unless there's a body there's enough anecdotal evidence out there to suggest coverage might not be all that perfect.
  - acjohnson55 4y ago
    What the heck are they getting paid for? Contrary to popular belief, the police have never been defunded.
  - deathbyrtlmt 4y ago
    They don’t really get to “refuse”. You just tell them “such and such happened” and you get a case number and (generally) nothing happens. I’ve done it several times, and nothing ever happened, but the case was indeed “filed”. (They will happily and helpfully suggest that a report isn’t necessary and probably you don’t want to file one anyway. They are human, and lazy.) Basically, someone in this story is confused.
wolverine876 4y ago
> The problem is that people are less likely to report crimes if they don't think they're going to be prosecuted. There's many anecdotes of people asking for police help and they just tell them not to bother. That's 100% speculative. Do you have evidence of their effect on crime stats, and wouldn't that effect also take place when crime was higher in the 90s?
sokka_h2otribe 4y ago
This is precisely why murder stats are used. Murder is a crime we don't see affected much by expectations for solution. That is, murder gets reported one way or another (far longer than petty crime does anyway.) E.g, someone smashes window and I don't expect cops to do something. So I don't report it. But someone shows up dead on my doorstep, whether or not I expect to them to solve it, id report it because there's a dead person on my doorstep.
tga_d 4y ago
By almost any metric, including murder rate, SF is still one of the safest large cities in the country. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/violent-crime-san-francisco-17880303.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/violent-crime-san-...

anigbrowl 4y ago

That's why I addressed violent crime specifically, where reporting is much more reliable.

alfalfasprout 4y ago
Is it? I know of two armed rape cases in SF proper where the police refused to even file a report. Anecdotal yes, but bottom line is officers are encouraged to not report things. Unless there's a body there's enough anecdotal evidence out there to suggest coverage might not be all that perfect.
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  What the heck are they getting paid for? Contrary to popular belief, the police have never been defunded.
- deathbyrtlmt 4y ago
  They don’t really get to “refuse”. You just tell them “such and such happened” and you get a case number and (generally) nothing happens. I’ve done it several times, and nothing ever happened, but the case was indeed “filed”. (They will happily and helpfully suggest that a report isn’t necessary and probably you don’t want to file one anyway. They are human, and lazy.) Basically, someone in this story is confused.

wolverine876 4y ago

> The problem is that people are less likely to report crimes if they don't think they're going to be prosecuted. There's many anecdotes of people asking for police help and they just tell them not to bother. That's 100% speculative. Do you have evidence of their effect on crime stats, and wouldn't that effect also take place when crime was higher in the 90s?

sokka_h2otribe 4y ago

This is precisely why murder stats are used. Murder is a crime we don't see affected much by expectations for solution. That is, murder gets reported one way or another (far longer than petty crime does anyway.) E.g, someone smashes window and I don't expect cops to do something. So I don't report it. But someone shows up dead on my doorstep, whether or not I expect to them to solve it, id report it because there's a dead person on my doorstep.

tga_d 4y ago

By almost any metric, including murder rate, SF is still one of the safest large cities in the country. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/violent-crime-san-francisco-17880303.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/violent-crime-san-...