The data is one thing, but what about factoring in a prevailing feeling that nothing will be done about crimes like smash and grab? Why report if you have no confidence that it'll even be taken seriously. Further, I've read more than a few stories of people trying to report something only to be actively discouraged by the officer they're talking to.
I think this is a great point. As I understand the situation the police won’t bother with sub 1000 crime so I think they are way less likely to get a call or statistics for these sorts of crime. Maybe if we turn what’s left of the war on drugs into a mental health project then we can eliminate some of this. Doesn’t seem like there are any easy answers though.
One problem is that a stolen iPhone is a >$1000 crime, in fact it passes the $950 threshold to be a felony in California[1]. Police don't have the resources to deal with every stolen phone.
When iPhones were new, my cousin was a police officer in a high school. Every time a kid stole an iPhone it was a felony on their juvenile record, and no one wanted that.
It's not that the police won't bother.. the voters voted to decriminalize it essentially.
Before I left California, I had this argument with many of my liberal friends who did not believe me that their proposition would lead to this despite it stating it quite clearly in the text.
While arguing I was accused of being a right wing conspiracy theorist and spreading fox propaganda.
Now the chickens are home and Californians have no one to blame but themselves.
If the smash and grab involves anything of value the only way to get insurance to cover the loss is with a police report. So there is a (perverse?) incentive to make sure the report is filed even if nothing is done by law enforcement. For that reason I would expect that data to be somewhat accurate.
There are a lot of people for whom this isn't the case:
- car owners/homeowners whose deductible is higher than the amount stolen, or who worry about higher future insurance rates by making a claim that is mostly eaten by the deductible
- folks who don't have insurance, like students whose laptops are stolen in cafes
- international visitors
- other tourists who don't realize they need a police report to get insurance coverage, or who don't have insurance
- stores like Walgreens who presumably self-insure against theft. I am not an expert, but I would assume most retail self-insures against theft (i.e. does not carry insurance for petty theft). Interested to know if folks think that isn't the case.
I think the data is totally inaccurate. In other places I have lived, I would make a policy report about any crime, expecting the report to generate some good. I wouldn't bother in SF, unless, as you mention, I really expected to file an insurance claim.
Late last year I watched someone swipe an entire shelf of cosmetics/facial products from a downtown Walgreens and saunter out while the clerk yelled at her, "You must feel great about yourself!" And, no, this wasn't a homeless person or drug addict, AFAICT, just a well-groomed 20-something young woman who jumped into a car waiting for her outside.
That Walgreens employee told me that nothing happens. No police report. Nothing except, presumably, a note to corporate. Her sentiments were echoed by another employee at the time. And both explained how much worse things have gotten. They were incredibly pissed because they felt so utterly helpless.
While this was last year, it was at a Walgreens that I've been frequenting for years, and from what I gather from some of the chattier employees, things are still pretty bad, and altogether definitely much worse than before COVID. They have a security guard on duty more often now, but they also have significantly reduced hours.
I find it odd that people expect Walgreens to open up their books to prove the increased theft. In other contexts that's called blaming the victim. And why should I care if Walgreens is taking the opportunity to downsize at the same time? That's the epitome of whataboutism. But in any event, AFAICT, Walgreens and Target have been privately more transparent with some of the local politicians. Public transparency would just be a lose-lose from the perspective of these large corporations, especially in the current media environment where left wing social activists will blame them regardless ("Oh, look at how many millions they've been extracting from our community!") while the right wing will try to further make martyrs out of them--theft notwithstanding, not the kind of public persona these companies want.
Regarding insurance, I wouldn't be surprised if Walgreens and Target self-insure in situations like this. What I do know is that after a spate of burglaries along the commercial strip in my Outer Richmond neighborhood, the local business association (the president is the owner of a restaurant we frequent, and we're on some of her mailing lists) ran a funding drive to help those businesses recover. The implication seemed to be that either the businesses lacked the necessary insurance coverage altogether, or it fell short of what they needed. Which wouldn't at all be surprising to me. (Also wouldn't be surprising if not every business filed a police report. When nearly every business on both sides of the street, up-and-down three+ blocks is burgled in the span of two weeks, what would be the point? Even an insurer might not even care at that point; it'd be like asking each and every claimant to prove an earthquake or hurricane.)
Why is it perverse to file a police report so you can file insurance? Why is it perverse to file a police report, even to just make sure that crime statistics are accurate?
I was more intending to say it is unfortunate that one needs to make a police report that will likely lead to no action on the part of law enforcement to make an insurance claim. Perverse was definitely not the best word choice.
Insurance requires a deductible. It’s not worth filing claims for repeated small thefts. This is why many homeowners don’t bother reporting small package thefts - if the city leadership won’t punish (and deter) crime and if insurance deductibles are higher than the cost of the stolen item, then what’s the point?
Big corporations are likely self-insured. It wouldn't make much sense for Walgreens to purchase insurance to protect against shoplifting. It's likely just accounted for as inventory shrinkage.
I agree for personal insurance people would file a report, but that assumes the theft exceeded your deductible.
Generally, leaving something in your car is treated as akin to leaving something in a locked box outside. If you love it, don't leave it.
Other areas with a...ahem...more positive view toward cars spend a significant amount of resources to make it relatively safe to leave things in your car, but that's not San Francisco's priority, for better or worse (it's one of the weird places where the power brokers are either on a bike, in an Uber, on Muni, or being chauffeured privately).
Some years ago an associate had reported theft of 500 CDs plus some other things to his car insurance company. They were going to cover it all.
Then they had another phone call where he asked how fast he could get the money, as he needed to replace the CDs before he could return to work.
The quick witted agent said something like 'oh so these CDs that were stolen were for your work?" - He replied yes. Claim was then denied - his policy was not a commercial policy.
This data is wrong. Crime is not down. Crime is not flat. Crime is up. The city is on track to lose 1,000 people to O.D. and dealers are free to deal. Someone literally died outside of my apartment last year. Have you gone shopping lately in SF? Everything is behind plastic, including toothpaste, or anything for that matter. Stores are closing. Business is voting with its feet. We can redefine crime, we can refuse to prosecute it, but we can not escape its deleterious effects.
It’s an incredibly perverse tactic: reclassify crime, disincentive people from reporting it, disempower police from dealing with it… and then tout this as a reduction in crime levels and a win. Pathetic.
I just thought it would be funny if someone watched The Wire, internalized its message (which is pretty succinctly put in the GGP comment) and forgot its name. It felt more substantive than commenting "oh, that's the Wire!"
That is an unreasonably cynical take on what is happening. Reporting and tracking is always imperfect, but just to point out one improvement the 311 system greatly improved reporting. Getting the most out of police without giving into oppression is never simple, and our incarceration spree has gone beyond what we can actually afford. Sitting back and being angry and playing blame games is not going to get us out of this.
these are some bold (anecdotal) claims made in response to an extremely well-sourced article that not only shows where the data came from but how it was analyzed. care to give us some actual data?
The data disagrees with what I have said, yes. But so did the data of the 1932 Ukrainian harvest and subsequent famine [1]. The Ukranians reported a record harvest, in the same way the SF Chronicle reports "crime is actually way down". I've lived in SF for 12 years, its never been so bad. You see it, you feel it, business are closing because of it. Business data may back up what I have said, you could google walgreens crime stats in SF as an example. Target is another example. Also the 1,000 people who will die due to drug OD are not counted. Why is that?
"Williams, the Montclair State criminologist, added that all law enforcement data is racially biased in two major ways. First, police disproportionately arrest people of color, especially Black people."
This by itself does not establish bias. The question is whether a black person committing a crime is more likely to be arrested than a non-black person committing the same crime.
Use 'position of power' to argue that systems are biased in favor of a group, not against it, then use that positive bias as evidence for the groups power.
What counts as a crime? There is littering and illegal drug abuse everywhere - is that reflected in the data? Or is that not counted as a crime even though it is all around us? What about the continuous shoplifting you can find in any social media? I can’t imagine workers bothering to report each such incident when it happens several times a day. Businesses in many west coast cities underreport crimes (example: https://mynorthwest.com/1538741/uwajimaya-seattle-prolific-o...), and these problems are most evident in SF, where crime-friendly restorative justice policies originated from.
The number of criminals in SF is pretty much the same (and this data pretty much shows it). But number of tourists and opportunities (open bars, restaurants, drunken people, Bart riders, rental cars) is way down thus it feels like crimes are up.
I see. So SF is missing it's normal population of crime victims and so locals are being victimized harder. I wonder if the fact that normally some large share of this burden is not experienced by locals accounts for the degree of their indifference to it.
