> 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.
They 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?
There 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”.
It'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.
"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.
I 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.
Prosecuting petty crime with a (legitimate, funded, and measured effectiveness) diversion path for anyone who isn’t an egregious reoffender.
“Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!” Is not a successful strategy. Three strikes is excessively punitive, but neither does allowing rampant crime to continue unabated.
Maybe. It can be pretty easy to commit crimes, but in general felonies are tougher to be accidental (although not impossible). The three strikes law has to do with felonies. If 2 stints in prison haven't deterred them from committing serious crimes, then it's likely they won't change (although a side note is that the current system could be enhanced in terms of rehabilitation efficacy - sort of a separate topic though).
>If 2 stints in prison haven't deterred them from committing serious crimes
You are so close here. Maybe if the 2 stints in prison haven't deterred their crime it means that punishment isn't much of a deterrent and therefore we shouldn't blame decreased punishment for an increase in crime.
That's a stretch. If it's 3 strikes, then they're in for life (if they shoplift about $1k) and no longer committing the crime. Also, just because it didn't work for those repeat offenders, doesn't mean that the threat of punishment isn't a deterrent to a potential offender.
For example, as a kid you likely listened to your parents based on their threat of punishment. In reality, they have very little power and relatively minor punishments (with CPS getting involved).
On one hand we need to ensure people feel like a part of the system and have a chance at a decent job. If you know you don't have a chance then your more likely to act outside the acceptable system. That can help on the prevention side.
On the other side, it's pretty bad that police can't pursue thieves. Perhaps allowing law enforcement to pursue criminals and store/property owners to detain criminals.
So positive encouragement with feeling part of system and hope for a better life, with negative reinforcement of catching and prosecuting offenders (and not having criminal/civil policies that imped that).
- "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."
Afghanistan too. It's a jarring contrast to see heavy steel walls installed on mud (?) brick; those must have been carefully thought-out expenses.
It is across the country at this point. IIRC Gascón, the former DA in SF is now the DA in LA and pursuing similar policies, while there are similar policies implemented or being implemented in other cities like Chicago and New York.
People will blame the police, but I think this is a symptom of far greater issues in society, whose costs have been offloaded leaving the police to (poorly) manage it because that's probably the best they can do and everyone else is too busy avoiding culpability.
> 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.
Not 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.
So 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.
Property crimes generally aren't reported by the police so it's not something the police could fudge. Now arrest rates they may lie about (read: arrest innocent people) to meet quotas.
But the police in NYC used lots of spotsearches to boost both the crime rate (they discovered and so "solved" the crime at the same time) AND their crimes solved rate simultaneously. (Until the courts stopped them.) Only if both those stats go up together are the police incentivized to boost the crime rate.
That's why you pick specific stats that support your point, while pretending the others don't exist. Any time you see an oddly specific stat, you should question it a little.
Businesses don't file insurance claims when the losses are too small to justify paying the insurance premium, plus taking the time to file a police report and insurance report. Also, the losses are so frequent that they add up quickly - and the amount of effort required to file reports and claims for all of them is not economically viable.
I don't believe the data is accurate simply because most crime of this level is not reported because the victims accurately believe nothing will happen.
Why file an insurance claim for petty theft when there's high insurance premiums in the area? Forget it - the time and effort for paperwork, and reporting, and paying premiums is greater than what you'll recover.
Insurance money doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from the people who are paying for a policy. If everybody is losing to the thieves then all insurance is gonna do is convert the lump sum losses into a monthly payment.
> This isn't true. Insurance companies make money from float too which allows them to run on a loss when only comparing premiums to claims.
You know what we call a business that makes enough money on float to cover its operating costs? A bank.
If the float was so lucrative they wouldn't need to charge "high enough to matter" premiums.
Insurance companies don't have magical investments they can make that other businesses can't. They're not going to be making $0.50 on the dollar you give them. They're going to be making pennies, just like literally everyone else. This will mostly go toward subsidizing operating costs. In no universe do insurance companies make enough profit from their money pile to even come close to offsetting payouts.
The fact of the matter is that theft affects the entire area so it WILL be reflected in premiums, the same way things like the climate and adverse weather are reflected in premiums.
>It should be obvious that insurance serves as financial benefit for the insured or else the insurance industry would have collapsed a long time ago.
Using insurance to cover routine expenses never makes financial sense. There's a reason businesses self-insure as much as they can.
Just because a financial product can be a net win doesn't mean that it will still be a net win if you use it exactly the wrong way. Speaking of things that should be obvious...
You are twisting my comment and pretending I said something I didn't.
I didn't say float was enough to cover their operating costs. I said insurance companeis can and often do run for long stretches in which premiums do not cover claims. Float is the way this is accomplished. If an insurance company goes long stretches in which premiums do exeed claims, customers will begin to turn away. Interest on float is free money and therefore float has value regardless of how small the returns. These companies want as much float as possible and offering favorable terms to their clients is a great way to increase total available float.
Unlikely that Walgreens files a report each and every time someone walks out with a few sticks of deoderant. They probably just log it and send a monthly report to the insurance company.
As a smaller business you’re not gonna waste your time to organize a police report if the theft is $100 or $200 dollars. It would cost you more than what you get back. There will also be an insurance deductible so not sure if it will even work at all.
No, I don't think that many businesses have insurance that covers shoplifting. I don't know the norms for everywhere, but based on personal experience running a small retail business in the Bay Area, it's not common. I guess it's possible that larger businesses have such insurance, but I'm very doubtful. I've never heard of anyone filing for reimbursement. Product that walks out the door is just a loss that needs to be recouped from someone else. Do you have any evidence that would suggest that they are repaid for their losses?
That idea-whatever its merits—wouldn’t explain statistics holding steady during a rise in actual crimes. Unless people are drastically less likely to report crime than in the past, for which there is zero evidence.
It’s just used when actual data doesn’t confirm what people want to be true.
> It’s just used when actual data doesn’t confirm what people want to be true.
You don't have to take my word for it. There are studies to support that property crime goes severely under-reported[1]. Also, people are drastically less likely to report crime when it is obviously nothing will happen and it cost more than the value of whatever was taken. Walmart loses millions on theft every year, they could stop it but stopping it would cost more than doing nothing.
I think the point is, since the numbers don't show an uptick in property crime while others are reporting an increase, the only explanation for that is for the reporting of property crime to decrease at the exact same time as the actual crime increases. Why would that happen?
The article itself gives a few plausible reasons with police blaming the DA and the DA blaming the police.
> 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.
> Mr. Boudin has pointed the finger back at the police, arguing that the certainty of arrest is low in San Francisco compared with other cities. More consistent arrests of criminals, he has said, would be a more powerful deterrent than the length of prison sentences.
Regardless of what side you take, combine an increase in crime with the fact it is unlikely that people will be prosecuted or arrested and it seems reasonable to think that could lead people to just deciding it isn't worth the time to report the crime.
The numbers are based off what gets reported. Nobody reports anything in San Francisco any more. It's subpar work on the part of the WSJ not to understand that, but when calling the police is a waste of time, the numbers aren't going to reflect reality.
> 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.
Funny 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.
"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.
that retail theft is over-reported and has serious social implications that are outsized for the scale of theft
just look at some of the comments here, people calling for increased prosecution of the poor (including jail time) without a mention of the wider scale deeds of the companies most commonly being stolen from
The examples you list are all ones that have resulted in punishments and compensation to the victims. Why would people be outraged with the system working as it should?
Of course the news blows almost everything out of proportion, but the general public is more worried about thefts going unpunished with seemingly no recourse.
Wage theft is also notoriously underreported, and even when reported, the amount recovered through litigation is a small sliver.
These are thefts impacting thousands and thousands of people going unpunished without recourse. The companies paying settlements are huge and the settlements are a slap on the wrist. No one sees jail time, no one even loses their job.
Meanwhile CVS and Walgreens are pitching a fit about a homeless person stealing $200 of baby formula to resell to a slightly less poor person and commenters are making calls for increased punishment.
I 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.
If 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.
The 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.
when 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.
HN 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.
Yeah yeah, widespread human suffering, homelessness, blah blah blah whatever — won't somebody get their priorities straight and please think of the Property Crime instead??
Is 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?
We’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?
90 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadhttps://archive.fo/WlnP3
I guess any city gets roughly the government they want/deserve/tolerate.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/09/what-s-the-pun...
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-...
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.
On the other side of Lake Washington, there are no such shields.
That kinda says it all.
“Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!” Is not a successful strategy. Three strikes is excessively punitive, but neither does allowing rampant crime to continue unabated.
Maybe. It can be pretty easy to commit crimes, but in general felonies are tougher to be accidental (although not impossible). The three strikes law has to do with felonies. If 2 stints in prison haven't deterred them from committing serious crimes, then it's likely they won't change (although a side note is that the current system could be enhanced in terms of rehabilitation efficacy - sort of a separate topic though).
Edit: why so many downvotes?
You are so close here. Maybe if the 2 stints in prison haven't deterred their crime it means that punishment isn't much of a deterrent and therefore we shouldn't blame decreased punishment for an increase in crime.
For example, as a kid you likely listened to your parents based on their threat of punishment. In reality, they have very little power and relatively minor punishments (with CPS getting involved).
On one hand we need to ensure people feel like a part of the system and have a chance at a decent job. If you know you don't have a chance then your more likely to act outside the acceptable system. That can help on the prevention side.
On the other side, it's pretty bad that police can't pursue thieves. Perhaps allowing law enforcement to pursue criminals and store/property owners to detain criminals.
So positive encouragement with feeling part of system and hope for a better life, with negative reinforcement of catching and prosecuting offenders (and not having criminal/civil policies that imped that).
Afghanistan too. It's a jarring contrast to see heavy steel walls installed on mud (?) brick; those must have been carefully thought-out expenses.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/15/world/asia/af... (on pages 15 and 21; not linkable)
People will blame the police, but I think this is a symptom of far greater issues in society, whose costs have been offloaded leaving the police to (poorly) manage it because that's probably the best they can do and everyone else is too busy avoiding culpability.
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.
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.
... and cops have an incentive to overstate them.
For example: https://www.businessinsider.com/nypds-shake-shack-hoax-stop-...
I don't find that argument convincing.
There's a grim and extensive investigation at https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history... of this.
As an example, the NYPD doxxed DiBlasio's daughter in revenge for his position on the George Floyd murder: https://www.newsweek.com/nypd-sergeants-benevolent-associati...
Overstating/cherrypicking crimes is a frequently utilized PR tactic to fight attempts at police reform, budget cuts, etc.
For example: https://twitter.com/dceiver/status/1493643563892150278
"Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year" winds up describing going from one to six.
It should be obvious that insurance serves as financial benefit for the insured or else the insurance industry would have collapsed a long time ago.
You know what we call a business that makes enough money on float to cover its operating costs? A bank.
If the float was so lucrative they wouldn't need to charge "high enough to matter" premiums.
Insurance companies don't have magical investments they can make that other businesses can't. They're not going to be making $0.50 on the dollar you give them. They're going to be making pennies, just like literally everyone else. This will mostly go toward subsidizing operating costs. In no universe do insurance companies make enough profit from their money pile to even come close to offsetting payouts.
The fact of the matter is that theft affects the entire area so it WILL be reflected in premiums, the same way things like the climate and adverse weather are reflected in premiums.
>It should be obvious that insurance serves as financial benefit for the insured or else the insurance industry would have collapsed a long time ago.
Using insurance to cover routine expenses never makes financial sense. There's a reason businesses self-insure as much as they can.
Just because a financial product can be a net win doesn't mean that it will still be a net win if you use it exactly the wrong way. Speaking of things that should be obvious...
I didn't say float was enough to cover their operating costs. I said insurance companeis can and often do run for long stretches in which premiums do not cover claims. Float is the way this is accomplished. If an insurance company goes long stretches in which premiums do exeed claims, customers will begin to turn away. Interest on float is free money and therefore float has value regardless of how small the returns. These companies want as much float as possible and offering favorable terms to their clients is a great way to increase total available float.
I don't know, definitely don't trust myself to not notice something a lot more when it becomes a big thing in the media.
Why do you think there has been this sudden uptick in under-reporting? When did it start?
It’s just used when actual data doesn’t confirm what people want to be true.
You don't have to take my word for it. There are studies to support that property crime goes severely under-reported[1]. Also, people are drastically less likely to report crime when it is obviously nothing will happen and it cost more than the value of whatever was taken. Walmart loses millions on theft every year, they could stop it but stopping it would cost more than doing nothing.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...
> 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.
> Mr. Boudin has pointed the finger back at the police, arguing that the certainty of arrest is low in San Francisco compared with other cities. More consistent arrests of criminals, he has said, would be a more powerful deterrent than the length of prison sentences.
Regardless of what side you take, combine an increase in crime with the fact it is unlikely that people will be prosecuted or arrested and it seems reasonable to think that could lead people to just deciding it isn't worth the time to report the crime.
Because the same policy causes both. DA's refusing to prosecute encourages shoplifting and discourages reporting.
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-milli...
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
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.
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/cvs-health
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.
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/cvs-health
A single walgreens theft recently resulted in hundreds of news reports… walgreens’ multi-million wage theft settlement? outrageously less coverage
just look at some of the comments here, people calling for increased prosecution of the poor (including jail time) without a mention of the wider scale deeds of the companies most commonly being stolen from
Of course the news blows almost everything out of proportion, but the general public is more worried about thefts going unpunished with seemingly no recourse.
These are thefts impacting thousands and thousands of people going unpunished without recourse. The companies paying settlements are huge and the settlements are a slap on the wrist. No one sees jail time, no one even loses their job.
Meanwhile CVS and Walgreens are pitching a fit about a homeless person stealing $200 of baby formula to resell to a slightly less poor person and commenters are making calls for increased punishment.
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.
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-bur...
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.