Nearly Half of San Franciscans Have Been Victims of Theft, New Poll Says
sfstandard.com
sfstandard.com
A police officer was rolling through, telling people not to leave anything visible in their cars (nothing was visible in mine). I asked him if I could file a report, and he told me I would have to go to the station. He told me he wasn't sticking around and refused to take a report.
I had a similar experience last year with an officer who tried to talk us out of filing a report for a man with a hatchet who had shattered car windows with it, and I had a dispatcher refuse to send an officer for a theft crew that I'd stopped in the middle of breaking into a car before they waved a gun at me and drove at me and my son over the sidewalk.
I've also had them refuse to take reports at our neighborhood station, forcing me to go to the Mission station to file a report.
The police in San Francisco are less than useless. We should fire the whole set and start over.
I effing hate that attitude. We shouldn't have to live in a society where every moment you have to be vigilant against the bad guys.
It keeps piling on. I suspect if we keep this up there will be signs "don't use your phone in public" (because people will steal phones from your hands). "don't eat in public" (because people will steal food from you). "don't drive a car" (because your car will be wrecked/stolen). "Don't leave your house" (because outside you're likely to be mugged).
The whole point of having police instead of having to walk around with your own armor and armed guards is so we can not have to put up with this stuff. But nearly everyone, at least on the west, takes it for granted that "it's just the way it is". It's not. It's the way we let it be. Not every place/country has this issue. We let it get there by both by encouraging it ("looking for a partner in crime") and by letting it slide (see police response above)
This isn't just SF. In Berlin I was told not to put my bag between my legs because someone would steal it from behind. In Paris a friend had her wallet stolen from her purse in ~15 seconds. She reached into her purse for her camera, took a picture, looked back into her purse, saw her wallet was gone.
I might catch tuns of downvotes for this, but the Police in SF are to protect the interests of the elite. It is not in their interest to worry about "petty" crime. The police are not legally obligated to protect the public.
> having to walk around with your own armor and armed guards is so we can not have to put up with this stuff
The net result wont be hyper vigilant people (as in they modify their behavior). The net result will be fight or flight. Vigilantes, or migration. I found myself getting increasingly ready for violence in SF. I didn't want that to be my story and I have the self control and self awareness to do something else. So I left, and though it pains me I will probably never live there again. California as a piece of the earth is amazing, but a minority of the people there make it terrible.
That encounter with the thieves sounds awful, and then being unable to get police help sounds doubly awful.
I hope your son wasn't traumatized by it.
FWIW, not all cities are like that. The couple times someone pulled a gun on me on the sidewalk in Cambridge (Mass.), a large number of police cruisers responded, and started a very professional-seeming search. The time that I called police before I got home, after they got a description and then statement from me, one of the officers gave me a ride home. Cambridge isn't as great as it could be for founders (not as much action as the Bay Area, and the bottom-end apartments might be $2K+ and still have peeling lead paint and the occasional mold or rat), but you do get good police.
As a German that sentence sounds so absurd. I am in my mid-30s and have never held a gun myself. The only weapons I saw in Germany were (holstered) guns on policemen.
I'd be inclined to blame low numbers of police rather than police apathy. But I haven't actually seen a policeman on the street in my country - outside protests - for at least a decade. The fact that you actually found one outside in the wild is remarkable to me.
In other words, either we show them obsequience and respect they don't deserve, or else they'll "act accordingly" and just start robbing and killing people en masse.
That's no better than the mafia. Actually it's worse than the mafia because at least when the mob shakes people down it's illegal.
Strange, when service workers act that way, they either start pretending that they are helpful and respected, or they get fired.
And as for cops, they've been useless for a very long time, certainly prior to the events of the past few years. The tantrum they throw every time they are subjected to any oversight is purely performative.
There was an entire recall election becuase of "lawlessness" but it turns out that it was not the DA that was the problem, it's the police force refusing to address crime.
Seems pretty likely to be direct corruption organized with the thieves.
For weeks after I was walking through all the homeless chop shops looking for it. About a month after the theft, I received a call from someone who bought a frame (just the frame) with my serial number at a San Jose flea market. Told them to keep it -- at least it's in the hands of someone who cares.
The point of my story is that theft sucks, can happen to anyone, and it takes a toll on our communities. Wish law enforcement took the problem more seriously.
(and plus, when you bust a big operation and now have a ton of bikes whos owners can't be located you now have an endless supply of bait)
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.
A friend in San Francisco casually mentioned their car getting broken into. The normalization is funny when one recognizes it.
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.
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.
My apartment was broken into, my car was broken into multiple times, my roommate was mugged at knifepoint and stabbed (she was fine), my bike was stripped for parts (they stole the handlebars / shifters and seat while it was locked up), and my car was stolen, driven around the neighborhood in broad daylight when I spotted it at 19th and South Van Ness and tried to steal it back and was almost run over, and then it was disposed of in Hunter’s Point completely stripped and wrecked (no passenger seat, interior panels, stick shift, battery or wheels).
Amusingly though I moved to NYC because of boredom, a bad breakup and the abysmal dating prospects, not the constant crime.
It really is bad, right, and not my imagination? I feel like I’ve wasted a decade of my life here on an endless string of bad first dates with no mutual attraction.
It wasn’t like that in other places I’ve lived. I mentioned this to a family member recently, and they said it’s harder because I’m getting older. That’s probably true, but I swear it’s rough in this city.
It’s a bit like buying a house here: you spend a huge amount of time, effort, and money, and end up with less than you’d get back home.
Hope NYC worked out better for you.
This was a top3 for leaving. I realized that in the same way my politics are not welcome in the company I work for, so I just disengaged, the politics of SF made me an unwelcome, unwanted form of "diversity". So I left, along with all my tax burden, cultural contributions, and normally positive nature.
It wasn't particularly bitter – just, wtf. Bitter was when I was bedridden because of a flu, and when I finally had energy to go out to get some food, my bike got stolen in the 10 minutes I was in the grocery store. It was a miserable trip back home.
I still have nightmares about the time I woke up on a Saturday morning to the sounds of a disturbed and dying woman screaming after she doused herself in gasoline and lit herself on fire at Dorland and Guerrero.
Some of the screams were from people who had tried to help her and ended up injuring themselves.
https://missionlocal.org/2012/07/apparent-attempted-suicide-...
When I was a (fairly reckless) teenager, I got into a fight and got "stabbed" in my side (minor wound). Honestly, it's not something I consider as traumatic.
It _was_ an effective way to stop the fight though.
I expected the same SF problems you hear about to be issues in that area, and they really aren't (at least where I live)
Idk if I would ever move into the city tbh, it just seems like a shithole. I'm sure it's less boring, but I like not having to deal with theft or BS politics
I remember asking someone from the area at my job orientation if I should live in SF, and they pretty much said "no it's a literal shithole it isn't worth it" and it was such candid advice I took it
Also another weird thing is I expected all the locals around here to be super progressive, but a lot of the people I've talked to were pissed off about what's happened to SF
Also a question for people who know the bay area: where do you guys recommend to live for both commute and safety?
I went there once for the library and it just seemed really sketch. I never thought I would say this but maybe the nimbys aren't all bad :/
also should have clarified original comment, but what I meant was the suburban stretch from like Burlingame to Sunnyvale
Where I'm from this is pretty much unheard of. It's yet to happen to me in bay area, but also my car isn't super nice and I never leave anything in it. Hoping it doesn't happen
This explains the Chesa Boudin recall, and will explain the results of elections in the months and years ahead.
Also,
> a quarter have been threatened or physically attacked
That's a much scarier thing. 1/4 people were threatened or attacked in a 5 year period? That's pretty rough
During that time, I was asked if I wanted to buy drugs 5 times, I shook a suspicious-looking tail (someone/multiple people following you) twice, and I had a bottle full of blood thrown at my head because I refused to acknowledge a screaming crackhead when I walked past them on the street.
I'm surprised it's only 1/4.
I live in San Diego now.
I live in Cambridge, MA now, and it's a million times better. Only thing remotely close that I've seen was one time biking past the Woods-Mullen Shelter in Boston (saw two other comments here call it "Mass and Cass"), except it's just one block and extremely tame compared to what you find all over the Mission, SOMA, and Tenderloin.
Been here since 2007 and seriously getting fed up with this shit.
With all that said, San Francisco is a beautiful city.
It only takes minority number of people to damage reputations of country, and the source of problem must be kept in check. And, I am really sad to hear that the beautiful San Fransico have been plagued by such a people. And, it seems government is doing nothing to ameliorate the situations.
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...)
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.
Also notable that Orlando, FL is high on the list. But Irvine, CA and Tampa, FL are at the bottom of the list.
Please also read the Criticisms sections before jumping to conclusions when making comparisons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
It’s owned entirely by one of the largest (maybe the largest) real estate company in the US, The Irvine Company. They also have a heavy presence in Sunnyvale CA.
Irvine buildings and neighborhoods - all of them - are built intentionally to be anti-crime. Things like alleys and dark corners are virtually non-existent.
My truck did get broken into, though... guy couldn't figure out how to disconnect the 2m radio, though, so he settled for the owner's manual and nothing else.
Crime goes up when income gaps get bigger.
https://financesonline.com/how-income-inequality-affects-cri...
EDIT: This chart is accurate to 2019. The picture for SF/Oakland must be much worse using EOY 2021 statistics.
I guess Devil's Night is still a tradition. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Night
To wit, in Seattle we had our car broken into once. We also had a habit of forgetting the car keys /on top of the car/, such that we would have said we live in a very very safe place. Despite the time the car was broken into.
When I lived in Atlanta, the general practice was not to lock your car, so that they wouldn't have to break in to it.
Why not? High crime rates are bad in any city. It doesn't become okay if multiple big cities have high crime rates.
It's weird to see how so many people are trying to normalize crime rates this high.
My point is, as someone that doesn't live in San Fran, I don't know how this compares. Is it actually high? Or, is half actually low for comparable density locations.
Back when I was in a low population area, but lived in duplexes, I had my apartment broken into. And way more petty theft than now that I live where I do. Yet, I don't know that I would expect crime is higher there.
reading that some other city has X armed robberies per capita doesn't give a great sense of how that would actually impact my day-to-day life. obviously I'd like X to be as low as possible, but if it's already lower than where I currently live and the place has other positive qualities, I would consider moving there.
At some point you need the police to arrest all these people and throw them in jail. Even a few weeks behind bars can drastically improve behavior among a population used to zero consequences for theft and violence.
It's useful to also gather the sentiment. It doesnt matter if SF is the best city if they're all bad. At a certain point it doesnt matter if you're slightly better than unacceptable -- it's still unacceptable.
Crime more typically happens between people with connections to each other. For example, my city has a per capita crime rate similar to San Fransisco's, but most don't experience it unless they live or work in a few neighborhoods (or single intersections in some cases.) In my city, something like 5-10% of people would report having recently been a victim of a crime, despite the number of crimes per capita being similar.
I too am a victim of theft!!
Drama aside, that's exactly once, about 16 years ago, and it was (i reckon) some kids that came in through an open window and took a backpack (cool cameo design), a gaming console, and my sons bike.
(Perth, Westerm Australia)
Total cost - well under theft insurance rates which I have yet to subscribe to.
Point being "nearly half" doesn't convey nearly as much infomation as the scare reaction to the statement warrents.
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-francisco/murde...
- 2 stolen bike seats (one by 4th and King, one in the Mission)
- 1 entire bike stolen (left out in the Castro overnight)
- 1 rear wheel stolen (in a parking garage by the SF Symphony)
- 1 seat post clamp (literally just the clamp they had to remove the seat, take off the clamp, then put the seat back; during a 30 minute piano lesson in the Mission)
But that doesn't included the most egregious thing that I ever witnessed: I was running up to Twin Peaks on a Saturday morning, and right around noon, in the mini parking lot between the actual two peaks, with dozens of people milling about, heard someone break a car window while there was someone in the vehicle and grab a bag. A woman was seated in the passenger seat and they broke the rear driver-side window. Within seconds a car pulled up with no license plates, the guy jumped in and they sped off.
I always keep a roll of duct tape and some cardboard in the car now. I tape up my quarter glass (the smallest of the rear windows that thieves love to break) and cover it with cardboard, to make it look like its already been broken into. I also leave my back seat down w/ a clear view into the empty trunk. That's the only thing that works.
I’ve lived in SF twice and in a few other Bay Area cities, and I honestly can’t tell you that my personal experience with crime in SF is all that different from the norm in most urban areas.
There are places I’ve lived which seem devoid of crime, but these places seem to have more community in common than leadership or laws.
Although I’ve experienced crime, I also know that the level of crime, violent or not, has dramatically dropped over my lifetime and the probability of experiencing it is greatly reduced by living in densely populated areas.
One of my friends when I moved to Shanghai has been in multiple fights in or near bars. I had never had that happen to me. During the next two years as I acquired an active social life involving a great deal of alcohol and spending a lot of time around a friend who does not back down and has a strong sense of personal honour and virtue I was threatened with a baseball bat and got the world’s tiniest stab wound. After my friend calmed down and went out and drank less I just don’t experience this stuff anymore. The variety of human experience is large.
Potentially bigger "rampant crime" issues:
- Corruption in SF municipal government
- Local power company keeps causing devastating fires, killing people. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/24/pge-should-be-b...
- There were more than 300 news stories about a single shoplifting incident last year, and comparatively little coverage about the chain's much larger wage-theft problem. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/07/want-t...
Similarly:
- it's socially acceptable for techies to consume some drugs while hanging out in Dolores park, where we can be heard complaining about the visible drug use in the tenderloin
- people have mostly given up caring that Uber, AirBnB grew with a playbook of entering markets and initially ignoring local laws.
- people care if their delivery is stolen, but a lot less if their tip to the delivery person is stolen. https://www.mselaborlaw.com/news/doordash-pay-25-million-tip...
- people care if their Amazon package is stolen, but less if Amazon steals from its delivery people. Again. https://paycheckcollector.com/amazon-wage-theft/ https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/10/04/delivery-driv...
Yes, we are surrounded by and drowning in crime. No, it is not just bikes, packages and car break-ins.
Now that the tax base is racing for the exits it is going to be the next Detroit. Detroit used to be the richest city in the US. What will they call it, the digital rust belt?
My friend lost locked bike from his locked garage in apartment building few days ago.
Never lost it until my parents were using it and leaving it locked around SD. Ah well.
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.
Bike stolen in locked garage in locked bike cage with u lock. Usually take it in my apt, but stolen the one time I left it overnight.
Saw techies get shoved into fences on embarcadero
Wine bottle thrown across the store in Safeway. Saw things being stolen from Safeway ~25% the time I went shopping. Mentally Ill people perpetually wandering the store.
Saw many physical altercations between security guards in Walgreens many times. Saw someone being tackled then spitting in the Gaurd’s face while trying to be held down.
People following me while my parents were visiting shouting profanities
Seeing car break ins in the middle of the day.
Many scary situations
Lived there 9 years. Can confirm it got much worse in the past few years.
You can't just look at a snapshot in time.
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.
Even the new techies can’t afford houses at this point
But things have clearly gone off track. As a political conservative, I tend to think about political excess (on the left side). Others may see it differently, I wouldn't blame them if they did. No matter what, I hope SF pulls things together and quickly. I also hope the solutions are transferable, because it seems some other cities have the same kind of sickness.
How is this okay?
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
A lot of us who were born and raised in Cali have roots too deep to abandon.
Too bad the poll isn’t broken down by how many years they’ve lived in SF, and how many thefts they’ve been victims of.
I'm surprised it's so low.
https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21537593/san-francisco-proposi...
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.
Ideology gets the best of people and they don't want to believe.
Sure, there have been nadirs before, the 80's after all industry left and only some financial services were left downtown --there were vagrants and muggings but for the most part, if you kept away from the bad neighborhoods, you were unaffected.
Now, theft is rampant and unabated. It will take years to recover from "Defund the Police" and No-bail, charge drooping DAs. It takes time to recruit Police and good Prosecutors.
Just a quick Google implies that this is a complete fabrication
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-Che...
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/san-francisco-crime-r...
>Ideology gets the best of people and they don't want to believe.
The irony of saying this with no data to back up your claim, and the data that exists showing the exact opposite of your claim, is truly palpable
Are you aware that you’re countering data gathered by a long-standing reputable newspaper with data gathered by the police department?
Do you think there’s some other way of measuring theft besides people saying “I am the victim of a theft”?
So the 'tough on crime' stuff is very new, at the speed the courts move.
As for the police, the people said they hate the police and the police heard them loud and clear, and are leaving on their own. For the same reasons, far fewer people are interested in joining their police force.
Why be a police officer in a place that hates you?
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-grap...
https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-police-department-shortag...
For things to straighten out support for rule-of-law has to manifest from bottom to top and back. From Citizens, to Public Figures, to Influencers, to Representatives, to Captains, to Prosecutors, DAs and the Mayor. We have some of that. You can't have situations where the police try to arrest someone and you get a mob questioning police motives and then complain when the police don't come.
There has not been any reduction of the SF police budget in this century.
The Mayor made a speech in 2020 suggesting that some funds would be redirected from police budgets into some social programs, but this did not represent any actual reduction in police funding.
If you are under the impression that SF was in any way affected by “defunding the police,” you are mistaken, because that didn’t happen.
Anyone who has visited SF knows exactly whats going on.
Anyone who lives in SF also knows exactly whats going on. They'll just desperately point to some statistic from a tiny town they've never been to that actually measures and enforces the law.
Anything to justify continuing to vote for whatever the media tells them to vote for next.
In ideas and options.
Groupthink of any ilk leads to death.
Did that actually happen though?
The initiative failed when it came to a vote in Minneapolis, crime was up already anyway, even without such initiatives.
When I first came to SF the city was int he grip of a crack epidemic and. I've seen people get shot in the face broad daylight and been in the middle of a driveby. The city is going through an uptick in crime at the moment but its mainly property crime. I don't feel significantly less safe, though that's partly because I have a lot of experience with unsafe situations.
A large part of this is simply driven by poverty and prices. Policymakers, business owners, and pundits naturally want a city full of high-earning go-getters whose money will increase the general level of prosperity, fair enough. But there's some sort of naive belief that people at the bottom end of the scale magically teleport themselves away to other labor/residential markets where they'll be more competitive, because economics class made it look just that simple.
I agree that ideology gets the best of people. For example there is a baffling group of people set on blaming all current and future crime on a previous DA and absolving the current DA, mayor and SFPD leadership of _any_ responsibility for what goes on in the city.
It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me rationally, but I understand the appeal of having a singular boogeyman to blame everything on, kind of like Evangelicals and their fixation on Satan.
San Francisco's population could use some good spirituality right now.
All 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...
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.
I wonder if the police have become apathetic about making arrests.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-boudin-announces...
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.