Prevention is better than cure... I don't find this price surprising unfortunately. A strong social security net and healthcare for all would cost much less to society and cause less suffering.
Love how community organizers are building tiny houses and creating communities and cleaning up litter and the city just tears it down and gives us tents and shipping containers instead...
It costs as much in California, because of activism that deliberately makes it more expensive than necessary and then claims that it is too expensive to make sense. California could strike a deal with Kentucky, Oklahoma, or Nevada to send their prisoners there at half the price it costs to incarcerate them in California, and save billions while allowing the destination states to make very nice profit as well. Of course, this is not going to happen, because high prison costs in California is a feature, not a bug.
I do the same in Las Vegas, "sin city" moniker and all. I lived in Boston, NYC, LA, Montreal, and Spokane. I had two bikes stolen while I was working at the county public defender's and my girlfriend called the police, filed out a report, and nothing ever came down the line on the other side. The officer tried to talk her out of filing the report. Since I've worked in other jurisdictions and have heard broadly about how few fucks are given about property crimes generally, we don't even know how high or low this figure is in comparison to other cities with different policies. It could very well be true that people are experiencing recency bias, triggered by a question that touches upon something that wasn't taken seriously to begin with.
Also, I live in Las Vegas now and I also don't know anyone who had their car broken into or packages stolen. I left my Steam Deck outside for 48 hours since it was delivered early and hidden poorly, but I wasn't looking and didn't even notice it. But since none of the polls - the Chronicle or the Standard's - mention vehicle prowling, we have even less data on that. Why even bring it up? Nobody was expecting Rumble in the Bronx (great movie in spite of the whole movie being made up of stereotypes).
It's personal preference but (to pick an example) many other large cities in the US have both lower crime and lower cost of living. For some folks those attributes weigh heavily in the mix of things they think make a city "good". Other people have other preferences.
I live in SF, but I absolutely understand why many people think other places are better for them.
I agree to a point. You can't say LA is better than NYC. You can't say London is better than Tokyo. It all depends.
But sometimes this is like comparing a little league team to an MLB team: For example, you can say NYC is better than SF.
For every axis that SF is better on, NYC is 10x better on 10 others. Like you could argue the foggy weather is better because there's no snow... but then: food, transportation, global importance, crime (even when you account for violent crime specifically), long-term prospects...
SF can't even keep a Target open past 8.
At the start of the year I moved to SF from NYC, so I'm not validating anything by the way.
I live in Bernal Heights. Maybe that's why I haven't seen a human poop on the sidewalk in.... well never, anywhere near me. Probably seen it twice in 20 some years living here, and not anywhere close to here.
Were you aware that the Tenderloin is, ya know, what it is, before you got an apartment there? It's been well known as the seediest part of the city for a century or more.
I knew, yes. I was on a budget at the time. $1550 for a studio with no kitchen was the cheapest thing I could find on short notice that wasn’t too weird. It was a great location, and the was pretty cool, just a little shitty (pun intended).
I’ll be sure to develop a Cartel app for Miami, a Kidnapping app for the state of Texas, and a Homeless app for Denver so you have more content to post in the future
Don’t get me wrong, Baltimore has fun bars and Orioles games are fun..but I’ve never once heard anyone try to sell Baltimore as a great place for tech workers to live and work from
It's no surprise that SF, Portland, and Seattle are the worst of the worst. Tech workers exasperate inequality and vote in virtue signalers (to be clear, I agree with the goals, I don't agree with deciding to do nothing about these problems). If you have a good spot, seriously, keep it secret
He might be talking about Baltimore County. Though parts of Baltimore are fairly to pretty nice like Canton, Fells Point and Harbor East. These neighborhoods are mostly populated by professionals. These neighborhoods could see a murder cumulatively once every few months or less.
One annoying thing in Baltimore is the squeege kids. Umm I have no need for you to come up to my car and wash my windows..I have windshield wipers.
As for homeless, drug addicts, and the mentally ill ..they do not litter the streets along with their problems like they do in the wasteland that is San Francisco.
For me there's no city in the US as walkable as NYC or SF. NYC is super busy, but I just like how I could bike / walk / transit virtually anywhere within the city.
I dunno, I think Chicago is certainly more walkable and less car-dependent than SF. Then you have DC, which probably is (substantially more public transit at least) as well, and even cities like Minneapolis which are probably more amenable to walking over a larger area than the actual core, downtown SF area.
SF has ok public transit for the west coast I suppose. But overall it’s quite poor compared to the east coast from DC north, or a city like Chicago.
Honestly, it's not that bad. I find that once I'm properly bundled up, outdoor temps between 20° and 30° are downright comfortable. It's not until about 15° that you get the cold that just seeps in everywhere, and it rarely gets that low in Chicago (at least at any time of day I'd be walking outside).
High-density and car-hostile != walkable. If walking means that you have to always be watching your step to avoid feces and used hypodermic needles, and you're constantly getting accosted for money or worse, that's at least as unwalkable as the stroads of suburbia.
FWIW my car's been broken into 4 times over the last 2 years in oakland! Hasn't happened since I started leaving the rear seats down, but probably just a matter of time.
Because there are two cities: One of the ultra-rich and one for every one else. If you take your Maserati or Model X from your garage to an underground parking lot with a security guard, you don't care that there are thefts happening on the streets. Similar reasoning applies for every other issue people complain about. Don't like open-air markets for selling stolen goods in the Mission District? Simply don't go there. Out of sight, out of mind.
SF's whole thing is that not even the mass affluent can avoid the "bad" areas in the way that even the middle class do in most metros. Tons of tech workers live or have offices in SOMA, Mid-Market, FiDi, Mission, etc. where the sidewalk conditions can be astounding.
I've found official stats to be a lagging indicator of anecdata, and my anecdata shows a lot of people moving away. If I owned an expensive condo there I'd sell ASAP.
It's mostly engineers who either used to work around there, or still work around there. There isn't that much housing so you still get a high demand low supply kind of problem.
That's how desperate people are for walkability in the US. Cities that offer something different from the car-dependent postwar sprawl that pervades this country are so few and so desired that they face no real pressure to be well governed.
It is the momentum from last 30 years of innovation in SV/SFBA. Measuring current state of wealth is not a good indicator, you need to look at the rate of change and the acceleration of people moving out of bay area.
New Jersey used to be a major economic hub in the US. Now it's a state with corruption, high taxes, low quality of life and a net migration out for a long time.
Nothing says it can't happen here. Hell, SF lost like 20% of it's population between 1950 and 1980.
New Jersey is basically just the suburb of two different cities. The NYC suburb side of it seems very high QoL IME, and while expensive it's substantially cheaper than trying to live in a Bay area suburb. NJ is also dense AF for a state still, so I'm not sure I'm worried about the supposed emigration.
I left my car unlocked by mistake in my buildings garage (the gate's not working for some time). Lost my sunglasses, mint and charging cable. They'd get in for anything. When I moved to SF, everyone told me to not leave anything, not even change in the car. Seemed extreme, but kind of true.
My friend lost locked bike from his locked garage in apartment building few days ago.
Reading this headline I thought to myself, this can't be possible. But then I remembered I got two packages stolen in two different neighborhood of the city, and during NYE someone broke the door of the backyard to probably see what they could steal there.
This is how crime stats "not increasing" end up happening, because we don't report it since it's a waste of time. I'm not blaming you, I don't report 100% of the incidents I deal with in the inner-city of Seattle (something happens every quarter without fail), but unfortunately it depresses the actual crime rates that are occurring every day.
> Reading this headline I thought to myself, this can't be possible. But then I remembered
It's funny, this is exactly what happens when I talk to my SF friends about crime. They have an immediate defensive reaction to insist it's not that bad, but then they slowly start recalling various crime experiences they've had in the past year. It's as if the constant background level of crime has reset their expectations of what's bad and what's normal.
My response was "only half?". Seriously, isn't this true everywhere? I've jad things stolen in small towns and in big cities that are "tough on crime" and have citizens that vote for that. Theft is just part of life right? If I've just lived in bad places, where would one suggest that most people don't experience theft?
Have lived in LA, Santa Cruz, SJ, SF, DC, New York and PA. SF is the only city where I have had my car broken into and all of my things stolen. Told the police I found literally at the Starbucks two parking spots away from my car and they legit declined to look into it.
I live in Washington, DC, in a quiet neighborhood. The most frequent victims of theft are not residents, but workers: maids, contractors, landscape crews, almost invariably from cars or trucks. The police do show up and take reports, but I don't know how often anyone is arrested.
In Denver, when I worked for a neighborhood paper briefly ca. 1980, one of my jobs was to check the blotter at the local precinct. I discovered that the Denver police kept two lists: one for burglaries, one for all else. My recollection is that there were usually a dozen or so burglaries each week.
FWIW, I never experienced any theft when living in Switzerland, Germany, or Pittsburgh, and only one minor theft while living in San Diego (a nice pair of garden clippers).
No, it's not true everywhere. Where I live people don't lock their doors and leave their keys in the ignition. I'm not hyperbolizing, that's the literal truth.
The distinction is that this isn't just a small town, it's a town with a strong community and it's just out of the way enough to be unappealing to transients.
> Seriously, isn't this true everywhere? I've jad things stolen in small towns and in big cities
This is baffling to me. I'm currently in a medium sized city. When someone in my social circle has something stolen, it's a big deal. The last time it happened was several years back, and it upset the person enough that they moved to a new neighborhood as soon as possible.
It's so weird to read these accounts from people who think constant theft and crime are just normal.
Living in low crime areas can be quite a shock. I grew up in a area where my bike was stolen out of our shed a few times. I'm in an area now where children leave their bikes on the front lawn and sidewalk overnight. It's a completely different world. I hope you get a chance to move somewhere without the acceptance of random theft some day.
> where would one suggest that most people don't experience theft?
I live in Germany. The only time I ever had something stolen was at age 9, by a classmate who was shortly thereafter diagnosed as a cleptomaniac and who received therapy to deal with it.
Generally speaking, thefts do happen here, too. But if theft is of particular concern for you, it's not all that hard to significantly reduce your chances. Pick an apartment that's not on the ground floor, so people cannot get in through the windows. Put your wallet in a pocket that can be closed with a zipper, and pickpockets won't bother with you. Armed robberies are just not a thing because of gun control laws. Sure, there are a few ones across the entire country every year, but it's rare enough to make the news every time.
Isn't part of that the forced-positive culture of California? Combined with perhaps a dose of worry that complaining about crime might identify you with the wrong political party?
As someone that's never been a victim of theft, that's wild and I feel like it would just ruin things for quite awhile.
I had what I assume was a drunk person, try to get into my apartment once. Not something that should be too scary but I felt uneasy for some time after that.
I'd be out wiring the house like ft. knox the next day, if that happened to me haha.
Without doxing yourself can you give a general idea where this place is? Do you know lots of people that have experienced theft and you are just lucky, or is it unusual? I don't think I even know anyone who hasn't had packages stolen or a car broken into or stuff taken from their yard at least. One guy where I used to live went in to get some water while mowing his front yard and came back as people drove away with his lawnmower in the bed of their truck. I think he got that one back and they got the theives.
I've lived in NYC, SF, RDU, Hartford and New Haven (CT), all places that the news would paint as practically ruled by crime, but I've never experienced theft. I lock my doors and keep my car clean and that's been enough.
Despite all the stories in this thread, me and my neighbors here in SF leave our cars out and haven't hade break ins. Even the $100,000 convertible with a soft top parked outside our place most nights hasn't been bothered in the year I've lived here, and I live in NOPA, so not exactly the outskirts.
I think the saying "crime doesn't travel up hill" is very real in SF
I have family in New England and this seems pretty accurate. Still lock doors tho :)
But its small enough that there's only a few "big" crimes a year which becomes the town gossip. This mostly involves some superintendent embezzling money or some criminals coming into town to steal catalytic converters lol
I thought the opposite. How can this not be at least a nationwide, if not worldwide reality? I live in the suburbs of Northern Utah. I’ve had bikes stolen from my yard, items stolen from my truck, money stolen from my wife’s purse, and those are just the one’s I can think of. We probably create millions of little opportunities in our lifetimes. A phone left unattended for a moment, neglecting to lock your car, leaving a bag while you use a restroom, not locking windows, you get the idea.
> How can this not be at least a nationwide, if not worldwide reality?
It is certainly not worldwide. Take Japan for instance. Your stuff[0] left in the open will almost never be taken. And in the event they went missing, there's a good chance it's because someone took them to the nearest police box.
[0] Umbrellas on rainy days are notable exceptions. But they're so cheap (a few dollars) many consider them "communal" items.
There's also kind of an unspoken rule among the people here: if something is left on the road where it might be spoiled or destroyed, (and is not valuable of course), things are moved to the sidewalk so the owner can find them easily and/or are not destroyed by careless passers-by. I have seen a handkerchief that was tied to the railing at eye-level, so that the owner could find it easily when they came back to look for it.
If the thing in question is valuable (like wallets, cellphones), it will most likely be deposited to the nearest police box where they will hold on to it for a while.
I've lived in a community where none of us lock our doors, bikes in the porch or driveway, and nothing gets stolen. That said, every city I've lived in, I've kept my doors locked and my belongings inside. I'm not sure what's wrong with our society that we feel like we need to take every precaution possible to avoid theft.
Lived in SF for 15 and never had a package stolen either. In fact UPS would leave my packages on the steps (sometimes mine sometimes someone else's) all the time. I had a check stolen before it made it to my PO box once, USPS found it and returned it to me but that's not quite the narrative people are pushing.
What is the rate for other big cities? Is this a lot higher than usual, or only a little higher?
The thing is that people steal things everywhere. Bikes. Cigarette lighters. Money left out. Scam items off Amazon or eBay is a form of theft. Your beer at parties. Lawn gnomes.
I don’t know many people anywhere who haven’t had something stolen from them at some point, so I’m not sure what this is saying
Boston has a higher murder rate and overall violent crime rate than San Francisco, as do most large cities.
San Francisco's problem is rampant property crime: Property crime is still real crime and harms people mentally... but it also means SF is physically safer than many cities that have less overall crime rates, because of their higher violent crime rates.
Since it's often beneficial to an agenda to conflate the two so you'll always see something like:
"San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime"
But some of the cities along the northern part of Orange Line might have more crime than West Roxbury, Roslindale, or Beacon Hill. It’s always going to be somewhat arbitrary
Walking around (nearly any part of) San Francisco day or night with a toddler is no problem at all, but don’t leave a backpack sitting on your car’s passenger seat if you don’t want your window smashed. The problem is property crimes not violent crime. One of the main issues is that the SF police are unwilling to lift a finger about nearly anything, and more or less laugh at you if you ask for their help.
> One of the main issues is that the SF police are unwilling to lift a finger about nearly anything.
Isn’t this a direct effect of the DA refusing to prosecute? What’s the point of police getting involved if the crime isn’t even considered a crime by the prosecutor?
In my opinion blaming the DA was always a lazy excuse. Now that he has been recalled in favor of a “tough” replacement who fired all of the progressive city prosecutors, how do you explain their continuing non-responsiveness?
Recently my plumber neighbors had their truck stolen with their tools in it and told the police precisely where it was but the police wouldn’t do anything, so my neighbors found the thief and beat him up. The police came to ask why there was a fist fight in the middle of the sidewalk. The thief ran away, so the police shrugged and left.
There has not been and I do not believe there will be any appreciable change in police behavior any time in the foreseeable future, without a much more significant reform effort. They’ve been unresponsive to property crime for many years. They started blaming Boudin for their unresponsiveness before he was even elected, and they’ll still be blaming him for their unresponsiveness long into the future.
>Recently my plumber neighbors had their truck stolen with their tools in it and told the police precisely where it was but the police wouldn’t do anything, so my neighbors found the thief and beat him up. The police came to ask why there was a fist fight in the middle of the sidewalk. The thief ran away, so the police shrugged and left.
How much of this is a consequence of prosecutors and judges who don't jail thieves or people who commit assaults? I'm not fan of the police, but what is the point of arresting people and giving them a ride to the police station only to be released back onto the street?
> SF police are unwilling to lift a finger about nearly anything, and more or less laugh at you if you ask for their help
That's rather uncharitable given the sheer volume of property crime facing the city. Literally hundreds of calls a day... while in 2020 the mayor bragged about cutting the police funding by $120 million and moving it to other organizations. It has since been restored (I think?).
I would rather prefer the Elder Scrolls version of the Thieves Guild, which places importance on not harming your targets or other members of the guild, as well as emphasizing the need for stealth and skill over violence.
Robbery is pretty rare most places but theft writ large is much more common: stolen bikes, stolen packages, rifling through open cars and/or breaking windows to take things from inside, things like that. My understanding is that San Francisco's crime problem has been mostly those property crimes rather than violent crime like robbery.
I live in Seattle and I don’t think I personally know anyone here who hasn’t had something of theirs stolen. Mostly cars broken into, bikes stolen, things stolen out of their yard.
I was in Seattle for 5 days and had my $8500 mountain bike stolen from within my car (they broke a window to get in), parked in the lot of a 4 Points Sheraton.
I know this is Seattle now but purely time-based: I visited SF for an hour last year and was victim of a smash and grab. Parked across the street across from a restaurant near the wharf with people sitting/eating outside so I thought it would be safe. I'm guessing partly because there were some plastic shopping bags in the backseat (with candy, which they didn't take) and because the rental car had out of state plates. When I returned the car at SF airport, there was a row of cars in front with the exact same window (rear driver's side) smashed. As I waited for paperwork/replacement, several other cars came in with the same window smashed. At least when I called the PD they told me to just file a report online (which I needed for insurance) and asked if they should send an officer - to which I said, "no, why would you send an officer now?". I don't remember the answer. Worse was trying to get a hold of someone at the rental car company... ugh what a disaster.
Their highest rate is Spokane, WA at 5,408/100k, which would mean at most 5.4% of people report a theft. SF is a close second at about 5%.
Curious, let's look at the poll sourced by the article. It was a questionnaire of about 1500 people conducted online or by telephone. But there's no link to a paper, and they don't clarify how the online poll was conducted.
Not every victim will file a police report, but it's usually required for insurance payouts, and an order of magnitude difference is hard to swallow. They might have some sampling bias in favor of people who wanted to be interviewed about the state of the city.
Lots of comments in this thread are saying that San Francisco police have repeatedly refused to take police reports. If the police won't take police reports, it artificially makes crime look lower.
A lot of unbelievable stats in this article. "only 12% of residents say that racism does not make solving problems more difficult." That's an odd finding to me. SF has always struck me as very progressive, but now I'm seeing that a large majority of the city thinks the city has a racism problem.
A lot of the visible homeless are not suffering primarily from lack of wealth but from mental health. Another segment chose that lifestyle to be free of responsibility and don't want to change. There are, of course, also people that are homeless for economic reasons, but as I understand it, they tend to be less visible, partly because they are doing things like working and sleeping in their car.
The problem is that what helps the last segment will enable the second segment and not help the first, but everyone talks as if all the homeless are down on their luck. Maybe it's because there is no obvious solution to how to care for the mentally ill, and the previous solution of institutionalization turned out so badly that anything resembling that is just off the table. However, people that do not have the ability to take care of themselves need some sort of sheltering environment, which is basically an "institution". And there is no solution for people who choose not to participate in society, which is relatively okay if they just keep to themselves, but the idea that some people choose of their own volition to do things that cause a breakdown in community (like stealing, defecating on the streets, etc.) seems to be a forbidden concept to Progressives. But each of those three groups needs a different tactic.
Copaganda, a shorthand for the tendency of police communications officials to make wildly false statements to influence public opinion, is indeed a real issue.
What does it have to do with an opinion poll like this though?
Copaganda also describes true but misleading statements, and includes things like news organizations naïvely taking the cops at their word, shows like CSI and Law & Order, etc.
In this case, "Any item stolen from you?" seems to include having an Amazon package stolen off your porch, which happens widely (including to me) here in suburban upstate NY too.
Porch piracy seems the easiest thing in the world to catch especially in the era of work from home and infinite ring cameras. Not bothering indicates nobody really cares because Amazon is subsidizing it.
Extremely relevant here though. It's propaganda in the sense that there is much more media handwringing about a missing package on an upper middle class person's porch than there is about thousands of dollars of wage theft a year from poor workers. It's these misplaced priorities all together that make the propaganda work.
Edit to add: this example just happened to be on my mind recently. I intended it as an evocative example of priority setting, not as a thorough proof or something. But there is plenty of other evidence that crime reporting is carried out according to a propagandist program. For example, media critics have carefully surveyed how routine crime statistics are reported, and found that the ones that get headlines are often extremely cherry-picked and reported on out of context. Like "murders in neighborhood x increased 20% this year" is often the headline when murders overall in the area are going down, other crime is down even in that neighborhood, and the 20% is based on a baseline of like 10 murders anyway, so the 20% increase is well within the noise. And of course, they leave out the comparison to ten or thirty years ago, when the rate was substantially higher. Crime reporting is like that year after year, no matter what is happening to crime rates overall. Not to mention that "so and so thinks briefly about reducing police budget" is considered newsworthy -- even when those budget reductions rarely come into effect -- while the norm of police budgets that balloon year after year and are overspent year after year is rarely mentioned.
It’s misleading because headlines like this evoke muggings and breakins more than having your bottle of shampoo disappear from your porch, and because there’s no corresponding rate elsewhere to compare against.
Most of the folks in my very low crime neighborhood have still lost a package once every few years. Are we technically crime victims? Sure. Is our area dangerous? lol, no.
The headline says half of SF residents in survey have been victims of theft.
Which is exactly what the survey results said.
What's the misleading part.
It didn't say muggings or break-ins it said theft.
It also didn't ask if people felt their neighborhood was dangerous. That's a different type of question that also isn't necessarily a crime statistic.
For example, do you think it's dangerous if there's a deranged person outside your home with a knife claiming he's going to knife the next infant he sees? According to crime statistics that's completely irrelevant to the neighborhood's safety.
Different numbers measure different things.
It's just such an odd specific criticism to call a survey copaganda, when it appears to be one of the very very few crime related metrics I have read that is NOT collected and communicated by cops.
A lot of the bay area is filled with people from another country who try to keep a low profile in order to not ruffle any feathers and risk their visa/immigration status. Along with that they have the right to pay taxes, but not to vote.
Lot's of people applying for CCW (gun carry permit) because they feel unsafe and it is near impossible to get one in SF city.
I am going to be following suit, I purchased a gun last year and going to apply for a CCW, but seems like the waiting list is 3 years and they are actively rejecting Bruen ruling by SCOTUS.
I'm not anti-gun, and fully appreciate the need to protect one's self (and household) at home, but if I ever felt the need to carry a gun outside my home, that would be my signal to move.
A lot of people don't have the luxury to move. Specialized jobs, family, extended family, etc. They can try to move to a nicer area but then financial limitations start impeding mobility.
I've lived in several cities, and they all share in common police's complete unwillingness to investigate petty theft. Businesses seem to have no problem, but private citizens just aren't a high priority. I realize San Francisco has wider issues with crime enforcement, but petty theft is under-investigated and enforced in many places unfortunately.
I think the annoying thing about SF is you'd find way more people OK with the idea to not pursue non-violent crimes, defund the police, or reduce police presence because the relationship with community is bad and mass-incarceration is a problem. And they are real problems, but also they are not going to get fixed in a year or even five years. There are certainly good number of people who are balanced in terms of supporting a trade-off between long term and short term solutions, but the voices in the extreme are definitely more heard.
You often can't even casually rant about this, without getting a whole debate in response just for sake of having a debate and being woke.
> And they are real problems, but also they are not going to get fixed in a year or even five years.
SF could easily be fixed in a year. Zero tolerance policing, locking up drug abusing vagrants, and broken windows style follow up would work wonders.
The problem is that the sheer force of will to get it done simply does not exist. Nobody in power is willing to step up and take the inevitable heat for the action that is sorely needed.
I think at risk of sounding like the people I was criticizing, I think extreme measures in short amount of time is probably not practical, at-least not without unintended negative consequences.
I wont pretend to understand how the whole system works, but I think one thing I understand well is that its all fucking complicated. And it's not as simple as "lock everyone" or "abolish the police".
But I agree, nobody in power is willing to step up and take action.
This is more about a breakdown in the rule of law. The DA wasn't prosecuting and the police weren't arresting.
Blaming it on "inequality" feels like a cop out for the criminals. There are plenty of ways to get by in the world without resorting to theft. It's a lifestyle choice more than it's any significant source of income.
Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family is one thing. Virtually all of the theft in SF is quite another.
Boudin prosecuted a higher percentage of cases than Jenkins. In fact Jenkins dropped a number of cases that Boudin brought and she disbanded the group investigating and prosecuting corruption within SFPD ranks.
the police weren't arresting.
This, however, is completely true and hasn't changed since Breed installed her pick for DA. Let's not forget that Breed required pre-signed resignation letters from all of her appointees, and has controlled any messaging from the DA's office with an iron fist.
Per Boudin’s office, the findings show a hard-working, hard-prosecuting DA.
“The District Attorney’s Office filed charges in 57% of arrests presented by
police in 2021, the highest filing rate in the ten years the DA’s Office has
been tracking this data,” the report states. As seen above, that statistic
cites an “action rate” on suspects higher than it’s been in ten years, and a
“discharged without further action” rate lower than it’s ever been over that
period.
No tricks, no "doublethink", no "he would've been prosecuted but for restorative justice". Boudin prosecuted the cases brought to him at a higher rate than his predecessors (and successor). Let's not forget what this is really about: Boudin prosecuted cops, Jenkins does not.
I don't get this doublethink, but it comes up all the time. They ran on a platform of not prosecuting crime because it is unfair to do so. They were elected. They didn't prosecute crimes.
I don't understand who you think you are going to trick into this nonsense that Boudin was super tough on crime. It's so embarrassing for you.
Since people are trying to rewrite the narrative here to avoid taking responsibility for a failed experiment:
'''Restorative justice is a survivor-centered alternative to the traditional prosecution model that attacks mass incarceration on two fronts. First, through a process focused on active accountability rather than passive punishment, people who have harmed others are equipped with the tools they need to stop harming others in the future. They may receive education, job training, counseling, substance use treatment, and more, and upon successfully completing the restorative justice process, may avoid prosecution.'''
Boudin prosecuted felonies brought to him, but only around 3% of arrests for misdemeanors. Petty theft had about around a 7% conviction rate- most cases ended up being dismissed or diverted out of court.
Police just stopped bothering to present crimes that fell into the categories that weren't being prosecuted. Why would they put in the time and effort to present a petty theft case if the DA's office is publicly on record saying they won't prosecute it?
Education polarization. San Francisco is unequal because it has significant numbers of high income people. High income people have progressive political views.
College educated workers are to the left of and also earn more than the median American. A region with a large professional-managerial workforce in addition to its working class is more unequal than a region with only working class people.
Being in the upper quartile of the distribution yourself is no insurance against resenting those higher up.
I mean if a single package being stolen from your porch counts, then I'm surprised it isn't higher over five years. And porch pirates abound in suburbia too.
The actual scary thefts are home breakins and muggings. I feel like the headline wants you to think it's those, when it's mostly stolen packages or something.
"There are lies, damn lies and then statistics"-- Mark Twain
EDIT: I'm not claiming for or against this specific article, just saying people need to be wary when reading such statistics as there are lot of parameters that influence such a headline number
Responses to the question "During the last five years, was any item you owned ever stolen from you, or did that not happen during that time?"
Note that it does not specify that you reported a theft. Note that it does not ask any real context about what was stolen and how.
If I was answering this, in Chicago, I’d have to say yes to how that was worded, because I’ve had an Amazon package or 2 disappear. But while that’s a valid question, I’d prefer more granular questions, because let’s be honest here, Amazon does refunds, there’s a big gap between a bag of dog food going missing and getting your car broken into.
“Have any of your vehicles or properties been physically damaged by theft?”
“Have you been physically assaulted for theft?”
“Have you been pickpocketed?”
(I’ve love numbers on that in Chicago. I feel like almost everyone I know has their phones stolen in 2021 at various festivals.)
Most of my friends in Chicago had experienced thefts... in the mid-1990s. It's part of living in a big city, and of parking your car on the street or locking a bike up outside a business.
These years, I think you'd have a hard time finding many houses where I live in Chicagoland that haven't had a package theft. And, like, I don't like that package theft is a nearly risk-free crime? But it's very low on my list of public policy priorities.
There's an important line that SF has not crossed (yet): murder still causes police response. In a decade or so, it will be like most large Latin American cities: murder will cause same lackluster police response as currently car break-ins do. Rich will have their own security, and poor will be afraid to walk after dark.
I wanted to add: unlike our virtuous downvoters, i have been traveling for 5 years, and i have actually been to most Latin American capitals: Guatemala City, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, Managua, etc... It's not the immigrants from those places that thieve , but the government of SF is like that of Managua.
The weather is mild and predictable for large portions of the year. Good seafood, killer Asian cuisine, and Union Square has an AG store for your quality pant needs. What more could one want?
The whole California coast is pretty moderate. Once you’re a bit from the ocean it can be pretty nice year-round, many houses don’t have heating or cooling to speak of.
If you’re without 20 minutes of the ocean that is! Once you go east of La Mesa the summer days are pretty warm and USA’s most expensive electricity rates become more painful
This is my primary explanation when I lived in the city. I would walk my dog to the top of Buena Vista park nearly every morning at sunrise and marvel at the city in awe.
Just to clarify for those who won't fully understand this.
The temperature range is very tight and mild so you don't need to think very hard about how to dress for the elements. For me jeans and a tshirt was basically year round attire. When it rained the extra warmth of a rain jacket was enough to offset the slightly cooler weather. You can run outdoors year round, save for a couple weeks of heat wave, or a bit in the "winter" if you refuse to run in the rain.
However, it's not the sunny beach, wear a bikini / no shirt weather that many have come to understand of California from hollywood movies.
I'm not a big fan of SF and have only been twice but I see the appeal. There are a ton of job opportunities for tech workers (yes, there are a ton of opportunities for SWEs just about everywhere but SF is another level, especially if you like startups). Weather there is almost always reasonably comfortable. You're on the ocean. Mountains for skiing/snowboarding, hiking, climbing, whatever else you might want to do are close enough that you can reasonably drive to them on the weekend. And it's got all the standard big city things: diverse selection of really good food, live music, clubs/night life, an lgbtq+ scene, art, just lots of culture in general.
San Francisco has its heart in the right place and is struggling to grapple with the reality that lax drug laws invites the wrong kind of people to the city.
So does basically legalizing theft for under $950, choosing not to prosecute "property crimes" and so-called bail reform where most people are just released back into society after arrest. All sound good until put into practice.
Yeah, no. Theft under $950 is still theft and it's still illegal. If you're whining about the felony threshold $950 puts it pretty much middle of the road compared to the other forty-nine states. Hell, the threshold in Texas is over $2,000 and has been that high since before Prop. 47 was passed. Find another boogeyman already.
Those other states still prosecute though. And although a misdemeanor isn't as big of a deal as a felony, having to go to court and deal with probation etc. acts as a huge deterrent that you don't get if something just isn't prosecuted.
Boudin prosecuted most cases that were brought to him. In fact he prosecuted a larger percentage than his successor has so far. Boudin also prosecuted police misconduct which made him a lot of enemies.
Switzerland had a huge heroin problem. They fixed it by decriminalization and treating it as the medical problem it really is. You can now get the addictive drugs injected at your doctor's office. Both petty theft and addiction plummeted. So it's not the addictive drugs causing these things. It's the policy around drugs that is causing it.
See also how Portugal reduced a widespread heroin and crime problem.
* Addicts are more effectively targetable for interventions to reduce or eliminate addiction.
* A safer environment may reduce other pressures that cause addicts to keep resorting to addiction.
* Supervised injections may let you go onto a schedule that lets you slowly wean yourself off of addiction. (e.g., using naloxone and methadone in lieu of heroin).
The numbers speak for themselves. Read more at the link.
Between 1991 and 2010, overdose deaths in the country decreased by 50 percent, HIV infections decreased by 65 percent, and new heroin users decreased by 80 percent. Today, the so-called “four-pillar model” that guides Swiss drug policy—prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and law enforcement—is internationally recognized as a major step in redefining how to tackle narcotic drugs.
They really don't, and it's important for people to know that or they might be under the illusion it will be fixed at some point.
The people who vote in SF and run the government there are obsessed with punishing some undefined "privileged" set of people who are somehow causing all the issues. Of course they are themselves highly privileged so it's a self hatred.
Switzerland and Portugal are the counter examples that prove you wrong. Both decriminalized drugs and treat them as the medical problem that they really are. The heroin problem was especially bad in Switzerland and you could find homeless addicts all over public places.
That's not right. It's not that they don't allow open drug scenes.
In Lisbon you can easily find the part of town where everyone is smoking weed outside.
With Switzerland if you want your free heroin it's at the doctor's office and you get it injected there. So it's not a matter of not allowing it. Addicts not surprisingly go where the drugs are. Which is inside now.
Back when they treated it as a crime problem they would shut down outdoor drug camps and the camps would just reappear somewhere else nearby.
The theft went down because the addicts don't need to pay. It's not about better enforcement as you implied. The theft also went down because a lot of the addicts are now employed. As long as you can get your daily injections, most heroin addicts are highly functional. Dr. Halsted - one of the founders of John Hopkins hospital and a hard working doctor - was addicted to morphine for most of his long adult life.
Not quite - the Swiss system much prefers substitutions than giving out actual heroin. And the police do enforce drug laws, mostly against the dealer networks but also against individuals for possession for other drugs. Also it's not like heroin is legalized. You must have been an addict for at least two years to get it from the health system, and it's a last resort, you must have failed at least two other addiction treatments first.
The Swiss approach was also somewhat specific to heroin. If you read about it, it's always heroin that's being discussed. The policy could work because there aren't huge numbers of addicts and the number has been in natural decline for a long time. Addicts are mostly old so the population is shrinking, the cost of giving them free drugs is low. Heroin addiction was a phase, people moved onto different drugs now, but the decline is often attributed entirely to this policy.
So what do we see if we look at e.g. crystal meth or cocaine? Not so successful there. Swiss cities dominate cocaine consumption in Europe:
Numbers of addicts are growing and the police do enforce the law, albeit in Neuchâtel for the first meth offense (of possession) you can get out of it if you attend some counselling sessions. After that it's back to prosecution.
They aren't handing out crystal meth, suffice it to say.
There is also the ethical issues involved with forcing people who stayed clean to pay for other people's addictions, which is what this boils down to. Of course it can still be rational when considering other costs but that doesn't change the underlying ethical issues.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 346 ms ] threadAll San Franciscans that pay tax have been victims of theft!
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...
It's just plain corruption, and it won't stop until voters make it stop.
[0] https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat...
This is such a lame argument and only feeds whoever is seeking validation that they live in right place
This is a medium size Canadian city. I leave my packages outside overnight without issue.
Also, I live in Las Vegas now and I also don't know anyone who had their car broken into or packages stolen. I left my Steam Deck outside for 48 hours since it was delivered early and hidden poorly, but I wasn't looking and didn't even notice it. But since none of the polls - the Chronicle or the Standard's - mention vehicle prowling, we have even less data on that. Why even bring it up? Nobody was expecting Rumble in the Bronx (great movie in spite of the whole movie being made up of stereotypes).
I live in SF, but I absolutely understand why many people think other places are better for them.
Flint Michigan is really really bad. Their water is poisonous.
Similarly, crime is a thing that hurts ppl, in this case theft in SF.
How are we gonna sit around and pretend that some cities are not better than others?
But sometimes this is like comparing a little league team to an MLB team: For example, you can say NYC is better than SF.
For every axis that SF is better on, NYC is 10x better on 10 others. Like you could argue the foggy weather is better because there's no snow... but then: food, transportation, global importance, crime (even when you account for violent crime specifically), long-term prospects...
SF can't even keep a Target open past 8.
At the start of the year I moved to SF from NYC, so I'm not validating anything by the way.
Not a lot of difference.
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/austin/crime
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime
Were you aware that the Tenderloin is, ya know, what it is, before you got an apartment there? It's been well known as the seediest part of the city for a century or more.
You can find those same jobs remotely.
And with the pandemic, all my favorite restaurants have closed.
Come live here in Baltimore. Plenty of tech jobs and a nice home in the city will cost 300k.
Don’t get me wrong, Baltimore has fun bars and Orioles games are fun..but I’ve never once heard anyone try to sell Baltimore as a great place for tech workers to live and work from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1dUk8x2XkA /s
Just one recommendation. Don't move to Charleston. It's awful here, you'll hate it. ^^;
It's no surprise that SF, Portland, and Seattle are the worst of the worst. Tech workers exasperate inequality and vote in virtue signalers (to be clear, I agree with the goals, I don't agree with deciding to do nothing about these problems). If you have a good spot, seriously, keep it secret
One annoying thing in Baltimore is the squeege kids. Umm I have no need for you to come up to my car and wash my windows..I have windshield wipers.
As for homeless, drug addicts, and the mentally ill ..they do not litter the streets along with their problems like they do in the wasteland that is San Francisco.
SF has ok public transit for the west coast I suppose. But overall it’s quite poor compared to the east coast from DC north, or a city like Chicago.
A lot of us who were born and raised in Cali have roots too deep to abandon.
You can't just look at a snapshot in time.
Even the new techies can’t afford houses at this point
New Jersey used to be a major economic hub in the US. Now it's a state with corruption, high taxes, low quality of life and a net migration out for a long time.
Nothing says it can't happen here. Hell, SF lost like 20% of it's population between 1950 and 1980.
Never lost it until my parents were using it and leaving it locked around SD. Ah well.
My friend lost locked bike from his locked garage in apartment building few days ago.
A friend in San Francisco casually mentioned their car getting broken into. The normalization is funny when one recognizes it.
The best documentation of this I know of is from Chicago about 10 years ago. The above was the first article by the journalist I associate with it.
It's funny, this is exactly what happens when I talk to my SF friends about crime. They have an immediate defensive reaction to insist it's not that bad, but then they slowly start recalling various crime experiences they've had in the past year. It's as if the constant background level of crime has reset their expectations of what's bad and what's normal.
Have lived in LA, Santa Cruz, SJ, SF, DC, New York and PA. SF is the only city where I have had my car broken into and all of my things stolen. Told the police I found literally at the Starbucks two parking spots away from my car and they legit declined to look into it.
In Denver, when I worked for a neighborhood paper briefly ca. 1980, one of my jobs was to check the blotter at the local precinct. I discovered that the Denver police kept two lists: one for burglaries, one for all else. My recollection is that there were usually a dozen or so burglaries each week.
The distinction is that this isn't just a small town, it's a town with a strong community and it's just out of the way enough to be unappealing to transients.
This is baffling to me. I'm currently in a medium sized city. When someone in my social circle has something stolen, it's a big deal. The last time it happened was several years back, and it upset the person enough that they moved to a new neighborhood as soon as possible.
It's so weird to read these accounts from people who think constant theft and crime are just normal.
Absolutely not. You may not believe it, but you're living in a bad place.
Japan. Been here for over 5 years, zero theft.
I live in Germany. The only time I ever had something stolen was at age 9, by a classmate who was shortly thereafter diagnosed as a cleptomaniac and who received therapy to deal with it.
Generally speaking, thefts do happen here, too. But if theft is of particular concern for you, it's not all that hard to significantly reduce your chances. Pick an apartment that's not on the ground floor, so people cannot get in through the windows. Put your wallet in a pocket that can be closed with a zipper, and pickpockets won't bother with you. Armed robberies are just not a thing because of gun control laws. Sure, there are a few ones across the entire country every year, but it's rare enough to make the news every time.
What a crazy world we live in, where not wanting to be mugged and have your stuff stolen is politically unpopular....
I had what I assume was a drunk person, try to get into my apartment once. Not something that should be too scary but I felt uneasy for some time after that.
I'd be out wiring the house like ft. knox the next day, if that happened to me haha.
Despite all the stories in this thread, me and my neighbors here in SF leave our cars out and haven't hade break ins. Even the $100,000 convertible with a soft top parked outside our place most nights hasn't been bothered in the year I've lived here, and I live in NOPA, so not exactly the outskirts.
I think the saying "crime doesn't travel up hill" is very real in SF
But its small enough that there's only a few "big" crimes a year which becomes the town gossip. This mostly involves some superintendent embezzling money or some criminals coming into town to steal catalytic converters lol
It is certainly not worldwide. Take Japan for instance. Your stuff[0] left in the open will almost never be taken. And in the event they went missing, there's a good chance it's because someone took them to the nearest police box.
[0] Umbrellas on rainy days are notable exceptions. But they're so cheap (a few dollars) many consider them "communal" items.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/how-demographics-contribute...
There's also kind of an unspoken rule among the people here: if something is left on the road where it might be spoiled or destroyed, (and is not valuable of course), things are moved to the sidewalk so the owner can find them easily and/or are not destroyed by careless passers-by. I have seen a handkerchief that was tied to the railing at eye-level, so that the owner could find it easily when they came back to look for it.
If the thing in question is valuable (like wallets, cellphones), it will most likely be deposited to the nearest police box where they will hold on to it for a while.
The thing is that people steal things everywhere. Bikes. Cigarette lighters. Money left out. Scam items off Amazon or eBay is a form of theft. Your beer at parties. Lawn gnomes.
I don’t know many people anywhere who haven’t had something stolen from them at some point, so I’m not sure what this is saying
San Francisco's problem is rampant property crime: Property crime is still real crime and harms people mentally... but it also means SF is physically safer than many cities that have less overall crime rates, because of their higher violent crime rates.
Since it's often beneficial to an agenda to conflate the two so you'll always see something like:
"San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime"
(https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-mos...)
Isn’t this a direct effect of the DA refusing to prosecute? What’s the point of police getting involved if the crime isn’t even considered a crime by the prosecutor?
Recently my plumber neighbors had their truck stolen with their tools in it and told the police precisely where it was but the police wouldn’t do anything, so my neighbors found the thief and beat him up. The police came to ask why there was a fist fight in the middle of the sidewalk. The thief ran away, so the police shrugged and left.
That was in June of this year. Do you really believe that the change will happen that fast?
How much of this is a consequence of prosecutors and judges who don't jail thieves or people who commit assaults? I'm not fan of the police, but what is the point of arresting people and giving them a ride to the police station only to be released back onto the street?
That's rather uncharitable given the sheer volume of property crime facing the city. Literally hundreds of calls a day... while in 2020 the mayor bragged about cutting the police funding by $120 million and moving it to other organizations. It has since been restored (I think?).
Even a B-corp with a very liberal owner couldn't take it anymore when their windows were broken 5 times and organized theft groups raided the store on a regular basis (posted 2 days ago): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davismsmith_its-sad-but-san-f...
https://wiki.lspace.org/Thieves%27_Guild
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Their highest rate is Spokane, WA at 5,408/100k, which would mean at most 5.4% of people report a theft. SF is a close second at about 5%.
Curious, let's look at the poll sourced by the article. It was a questionnaire of about 1500 people conducted online or by telephone. But there's no link to a paper, and they don't clarify how the online poll was conducted.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfnext-poll-meth...
Not every victim will file a police report, but it's usually required for insurance payouts, and an order of magnitude difference is hard to swallow. They might have some sampling bias in favor of people who wanted to be interviewed about the state of the city.
Someone stealing a lawn gnome would weird me out a bit.
See, here is the problem.
The problem is that what helps the last segment will enable the second segment and not help the first, but everyone talks as if all the homeless are down on their luck. Maybe it's because there is no obvious solution to how to care for the mentally ill, and the previous solution of institutionalization turned out so badly that anything resembling that is just off the table. However, people that do not have the ability to take care of themselves need some sort of sheltering environment, which is basically an "institution". And there is no solution for people who choose not to participate in society, which is relatively okay if they just keep to themselves, but the idea that some people choose of their own volition to do things that cause a breakdown in community (like stealing, defecating on the streets, etc.) seems to be a forbidden concept to Progressives. But each of those three groups needs a different tactic.
What does it have to do with an opinion poll like this though?
In this case, "Any item stolen from you?" seems to include having an Amazon package stolen off your porch, which happens widely (including to me) here in suburban upstate NY too.
This level of crime used to be something we'd attribute to failed communities and not acceptable for civilized people (those living in cities)
Or as my mom told me, two wrongs do not make a right
Edit to add: this example just happened to be on my mind recently. I intended it as an evocative example of priority setting, not as a thorough proof or something. But there is plenty of other evidence that crime reporting is carried out according to a propagandist program. For example, media critics have carefully surveyed how routine crime statistics are reported, and found that the ones that get headlines are often extremely cherry-picked and reported on out of context. Like "murders in neighborhood x increased 20% this year" is often the headline when murders overall in the area are going down, other crime is down even in that neighborhood, and the 20% is based on a baseline of like 10 murders anyway, so the 20% increase is well within the noise. And of course, they leave out the comparison to ten or thirty years ago, when the rate was substantially higher. Crime reporting is like that year after year, no matter what is happening to crime rates overall. Not to mention that "so and so thinks briefly about reducing police budget" is considered newsworthy -- even when those budget reductions rarely come into effect -- while the norm of police budgets that balloon year after year and are overspent year after year is rarely mentioned.
Sure, but you can learn a lot about a society based on which of the two wrongs they care about.
It’s a bizzare criticism given that the usual approach to determining how much crime has happened is to ask the police department.
Most of the folks in my very low crime neighborhood have still lost a package once every few years. Are we technically crime victims? Sure. Is our area dangerous? lol, no.
Which is exactly what the survey results said.
What's the misleading part.
It didn't say muggings or break-ins it said theft.
It also didn't ask if people felt their neighborhood was dangerous. That's a different type of question that also isn't necessarily a crime statistic.
For example, do you think it's dangerous if there's a deranged person outside your home with a knife claiming he's going to knife the next infant he sees? According to crime statistics that's completely irrelevant to the neighborhood's safety.
Different numbers measure different things.
It's just such an odd specific criticism to call a survey copaganda, when it appears to be one of the very very few crime related metrics I have read that is NOT collected and communicated by cops.
Lot's of people applying for CCW (gun carry permit) because they feel unsafe and it is near impossible to get one in SF city.
I am going to be following suit, I purchased a gun last year and going to apply for a CCW, but seems like the waiting list is 3 years and they are actively rejecting Bruen ruling by SCOTUS.
You often can't even casually rant about this, without getting a whole debate in response just for sake of having a debate and being woke.
SF could easily be fixed in a year. Zero tolerance policing, locking up drug abusing vagrants, and broken windows style follow up would work wonders.
The problem is that the sheer force of will to get it done simply does not exist. Nobody in power is willing to step up and take the inevitable heat for the action that is sorely needed.
I wont pretend to understand how the whole system works, but I think one thing I understand well is that its all fucking complicated. And it's not as simple as "lock everyone" or "abolish the police".
But I agree, nobody in power is willing to step up and take action.
Blaming it on "inequality" feels like a cop out for the criminals. There are plenty of ways to get by in the world without resorting to theft. It's a lifestyle choice more than it's any significant source of income.
Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family is one thing. Virtually all of the theft in SF is quite another.
https://sfist.com/2022/03/04/boudins-office-releases-2021-pr...
No tricks, no "doublethink", no "he would've been prosecuted but for restorative justice". Boudin prosecuted the cases brought to him at a higher rate than his predecessors (and successor). Let's not forget what this is really about: Boudin prosecuted cops, Jenkins does not.https://sfbayview.com/2022/10/interim-da-brooke-jenkins-pois...
https://missionlocal.org/2022/10/lawyer-jenkins-stalling-hom...
I don't understand who you think you are going to trick into this nonsense that Boudin was super tough on crime. It's so embarrassing for you.
Since people are trying to rewrite the narrative here to avoid taking responsibility for a failed experiment:
'''Restorative justice is a survivor-centered alternative to the traditional prosecution model that attacks mass incarceration on two fronts. First, through a process focused on active accountability rather than passive punishment, people who have harmed others are equipped with the tools they need to stop harming others in the future. They may receive education, job training, counseling, substance use treatment, and more, and upon successfully completing the restorative justice process, may avoid prosecution.'''
From Boudin's campaign website before the election (of course this has now been scrubbed): https://web.archive.org/web/20191124064230/https://www.chesa...
It's fascinating the things we can't talk about.
So that's who the Party of the wealthy is..
Curious how often progressives are bleating on about "Eat The Rich" then isn't it?
Being in the upper quartile of the distribution yourself is no insurance against resenting those higher up.
The actual scary thefts are home breakins and muggings. I feel like the headline wants you to think it's those, when it's mostly stolen packages or something.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfnext-poll-crime-sfp...
Responses to the question "During the last five years, was any item you owned ever stolen from you, or did that not happen during that time?"
Note that it does not specify that you reported a theft. Note that it does not ask any real context about what was stolen and how.
If I was answering this, in Chicago, I’d have to say yes to how that was worded, because I’ve had an Amazon package or 2 disappear. But while that’s a valid question, I’d prefer more granular questions, because let’s be honest here, Amazon does refunds, there’s a big gap between a bag of dog food going missing and getting your car broken into.
“Have any of your vehicles or properties been physically damaged by theft?”
“Have you been physically assaulted for theft?”
“Have you been pickpocketed?”
(I’ve love numbers on that in Chicago. I feel like almost everyone I know has their phones stolen in 2021 at various festivals.)
These years, I think you'd have a hard time finding many houses where I live in Chicagoland that haven't had a package theft. And, like, I don't like that package theft is a nearly risk-free crime? But it's very low on my list of public policy priorities.
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/murde...
The whole California coast is pretty moderate. Once you’re a bit from the ocean it can be pretty nice year-round, many houses don’t have heating or cooling to speak of.
This is my primary explanation when I lived in the city. I would walk my dog to the top of Buena Vista park nearly every morning at sunrise and marvel at the city in awe.
Just to clarify for those who won't fully understand this.
The temperature range is very tight and mild so you don't need to think very hard about how to dress for the elements. For me jeans and a tshirt was basically year round attire. When it rained the extra warmth of a rain jacket was enough to offset the slightly cooler weather. You can run outdoors year round, save for a couple weeks of heat wave, or a bit in the "winter" if you refuse to run in the rain.
However, it's not the sunny beach, wear a bikini / no shirt weather that many have come to understand of California from hollywood movies.
Schwalbe make some great commuting tires but I doubt they can withstand discarded needles.
I've heard stories that SF is so inundated with car theft that it has created a portal that automatically approves car break in claims for insurance.
I wonder if the police have become apathetic about making arrests.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-boudin-announces...
See also how Portugal reduced a widespread heroin and crime problem.
2) ... and addiction plummeted.
Hmmmmmmm... It doesn't make sense.
* Addicts are more effectively targetable for interventions to reduce or eliminate addiction.
* A safer environment may reduce other pressures that cause addicts to keep resorting to addiction.
* Supervised injections may let you go onto a schedule that lets you slowly wean yourself off of addiction. (e.g., using naloxone and methadone in lieu of heroin).
Between 1991 and 2010, overdose deaths in the country decreased by 50 percent, HIV infections decreased by 65 percent, and new heroin users decreased by 80 percent. Today, the so-called “four-pillar model” that guides Swiss drug policy—prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and law enforcement—is internationally recognized as a major step in redefining how to tackle narcotic drugs.
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/inside_switzerlands_radical_...
The people who vote in SF and run the government there are obsessed with punishing some undefined "privileged" set of people who are somehow causing all the issues. Of course they are themselves highly privileged so it's a self hatred.
It will keep getting worse.
In Lisbon you can easily find the part of town where everyone is smoking weed outside.
With Switzerland if you want your free heroin it's at the doctor's office and you get it injected there. So it's not a matter of not allowing it. Addicts not surprisingly go where the drugs are. Which is inside now.
Back when they treated it as a crime problem they would shut down outdoor drug camps and the camps would just reappear somewhere else nearby.
The theft went down because the addicts don't need to pay. It's not about better enforcement as you implied. The theft also went down because a lot of the addicts are now employed. As long as you can get your daily injections, most heroin addicts are highly functional. Dr. Halsted - one of the founders of John Hopkins hospital and a hard working doctor - was addicted to morphine for most of his long adult life.
The Swiss approach was also somewhat specific to heroin. If you read about it, it's always heroin that's being discussed. The policy could work because there aren't huge numbers of addicts and the number has been in natural decline for a long time. Addicts are mostly old so the population is shrinking, the cost of giving them free drugs is low. Heroin addiction was a phase, people moved onto different drugs now, but the decline is often attributed entirely to this policy.
So what do we see if we look at e.g. crystal meth or cocaine? Not so successful there. Swiss cities dominate cocaine consumption in Europe:
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/drug-use_why-swiss-citi...
Numbers of addicts are growing and the police do enforce the law, albeit in Neuchâtel for the first meth offense (of possession) you can get out of it if you attend some counselling sessions. After that it's back to prosecution.
https://www.thelocal.ch/20161003/neuchtel-dubbed-crystal-met...
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/crystal-meth_power-cut-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/05/swiss-police-s...
They aren't handing out crystal meth, suffice it to say.
There is also the ethical issues involved with forcing people who stayed clean to pay for other people's addictions, which is what this boils down to. Of course it can still be rational when considering other costs but that doesn't change the underlying ethical issues.