Non-American resident: what’s going on in SF? Is the crime rate really so high, and racing up? And if so, why?
The result is that a lot of cities have begun to avoid sending police offers for petty theft and other reported misdemeanors. This is not to say the police don't show up at all, but when they do its so that the victims can file a police report. It's usually not to stop the theft or vandalism in-progress. Criminals have gotten wise to this, and often steal brazenly knowing that the police won't put serious effort into apprehending them as long as each theft is relatively minor. Many homeless people defecate and urinate freely in public because the police have simply stopped issuing citations for such behavior. The cumulative effect is that many areas feel lawless and that only enables more lawbreaking to take place.
do I feel sorry for them? a little. are they making it difficult to live, work, and run a business in the city? absolutely.
have a drug dealer operating outside your bedroom window all night for months at time? cops don't care. tweakers start a big bonfire in the middle of the street? cops don't care. homeless persons dogs attacking anyone that tries to use the sidewalk? cops don't care.
before the pandemic, it was bad, but the cops would step in if this got too out of line. there was a bit of a detente.
if you were a homeless tweaker with nothing but contempt for the idiots that work at jobs and live in houses, and it was clear you could do anything you wanted without fear of repercussion. what would you do?
About 20 years ago, I had an RV broken into in Austin, Texas. When I reported it, the police offered a case number for insurance purposes but no investigation.
Showing up to the crime in progress and stopping it is different. It used to happen quite regularly even in California.
> Many homeless people defecate and urinate freely in public because the police have simply stopped issuing citations for such behavior.
What was a citation doing previously on this given that homeless people would simply ignore a citation? Has this actually increased in a way we can measure? I haven't been in SF since the pandemic, but none of my friends have complained about this in the area, and it seems to me like this assessment appears to be very much split on agreement by political lines.
I'm also skeptical of this because I've seen claims of this in my current city (NYC) yet have not seen and general increase save one neighborhood, Times Square. From what I gather, the business district of SF (SOMA) might also just be getting a slight increase here, expanding out from the tenderloin which has always had this as far as the past decade is concerned. Is there anything more widespread than that? It seems like that simply was due to the lack of people actually working in both areas now due to the pandemic, not any police enforcement.
I cannot provide you with an empirical answer, but I can give you an anecdote from a small business owner. That citation used to come with other consequences such as an arrest and a court date. So, many homeless people knew that it was better to do 'their business' somewhere out of sight rather than have to deal with the police. But now that the police don't show up for such things, why bother trying to be discreet?
[1] https://twitter.com/BrebDaily/status/1411561425110126593
If real, then at least in NYC 'their potty training' persists.
There is often no public restroom available for the homeless to use. They have no choice.
Of course silly to leave things in the car. Still, these are all guys from Europe who've travelled every continent extensively and never experienced something like this. In fact none of us can remember a single break-in of any kind into our cars or homes in our entire lives in any country.
It really just is an anecdote, I've never set foot in SF myself. But as a non-American who was surprised by the narrative around this city home to some of the world's ultra rich, the anecdote easily fit in.
In my opinion it is the result of public policies that view criminals as victims and aims to be soft on them, viewing that as a path to reduced recidivism. However in practice it is simply inducing a significant increase in crime because the deterrents to crime (arrests, charges, fines, jail time) are removed.
I wrote more about this in a different discussion if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27726777
Sam Francisco Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): Violent 6.91, property 56.73, total 63.64. (https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime)
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
Pretty random fluctuations across crime categories year over year (5% up for robbery, vehicle theft, 11% down for larceny/theft, which is what this articles about...). For reference, it looks like a few years ago SF was 9th in the us for robbery, at 34 per 10k residents. The current sf stats come to about 40 per 10k residents.
https://www.safety.com/home-security/cities-with-high-rates-...
Can you prove that the SF stats are of worse quality than any other city? If not, they're still of use for comparison. Can you prove that the reporting percentage has gotten worse over time? If not, they're still useful for year over year.
You could think about trying to falsify it by, for example, surveying businesses about their rate of losses due to shoplifting. To my knowledge, we don't have that data. What we do have is reason to question the statistics you're quoting.