S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on retail theft

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-police-announce-dozens-arrested-crackdown-retail-theft/

by jseliger • 4 years ago

59 117 4 years ago

timr5• 4 years ago

Outside the Ross store on Market Street Friday evening, shoppers queued up to enter the store. It's one way the store is trying to reduce rampant theft by limiting the number of people inside the store at any given time.

What a dystopia SF has become.

wpietri• 4 years ago

Is that based on any personal experience, or just news reports? I've been living here 20+ years and it seems about like it always has been.

fundad2• 4 years ago

Police begged Apple to include an iPhone kill switch because “Apple-picking” was a massive problem.

timr5• 4 years ago

Lived there for nearly a decade, and I've seen my fair share: drug addicts (yes, plural) rolling in the streets in their own feces; people (yes, plural) with open, festering wounds, begging for money; had a psychotic homeless man throw a bicycle at me; followed someone down the street in SOMA, watching as they systematically peered into car windows with a crowbar in their hand; had an unintentional standoff with a man in Van Ness station whom I encountered while he was fleeing from an attack on the platform with an 8-inch butcher knife (a fireman leapt onto him and I kicked away the knife). I chased down someone who snatched an iPhone from a lady on the street (in retrospect this was not my smartest moment, but I did get the phone back).

Bad as all of that was, I never saw something like this. SF is like the beginning of a Batman movie.

(Sorry for the word vomit. I'm just now realizing how many absolutely insane things happened to me when I lived in SF. I had blocked many of these things out! Some folks will think I'm exaggerating, but if anything, I'm understating these stories.)

voakbasda2• 4 years ago

Too little, too late, SF. The damage from the last few years of relative anarchy will not be undone by a few arrests. Get back to me when you stop people from rampantly shitting on the streets.

NullPrefix• 4 years ago

Sir those are two different issues. Let us be clear, no one is arresting street shitters.

tamaharbor• 4 years ago

Perhaps they should.

voakbasda2• 4 years ago

They are part of the same issue: dereliction of duty by the people in charge of the city, complacency by the population that keeps those asshats in power, and willful ignorance (denial) by everyone involved about how hostile the city has become compared to anywhere else in the country.

cudgy3• 4 years ago

Drop a piece of trash on the interstate in the middle of nowhere and you can be fined $500 or more. Defecate in front of a sidewalk cafe in San Francisco and you get a pass. Strange world we live in.

notlukesky• 4 years ago

SF voters have a habit of voting for pro-crime government. Being anti-crime is a losing political proposition. After all Dirty Harry from the 1970s was set in SF.

fundad2• 4 years ago

Not very pro-crime to promote 60 arrests.

abakker• 4 years ago

It is if the needed number is more like 600. Or 6000. Without knowing the base rate, 60 is just headline bait.

timr5• 4 years ago

How about the part of the story where half of those arrested were given pre-trial diversion?

godzillabrennus2• 4 years ago

I lived a couple of blocks from Salesforce tower before the pandemic and found the entire city had lost a ground war to homeless drug addicts. There was a break in at the Walgreens in the area one night and I spotted some of the crooks hauling cylinders out of the shattered windows while others were mixing stuff over a fire on the sidewalk. I called the cops and the emergency response operator literally told me “what do you want us to do about it?” I replied “something?”. A guy I knew who rented me office space, who also ran a small business with street access, and is from the area, thought this was an okay response because they stole from a big company, he felt it was a victimless crime.

So, while I’m glad to see this is happening I’m doubtful any real change will come to San Francisco till there is real economic harm that befalls the community. Basically, when the Detroit 2.0 story comes to town.

giraffe_lady5• 4 years ago

the entire city had lost a ground war to homeless drug addicts

As a former homeless drug addict, it's less of a war and more of a massacre. Despite the fox news-ass propaganda you see on HN all the time almost no one chooses to be out there like that. When I see folks down like that I think what has been done to them not what are they doing to me. This isn't them taking actions against you, this is the consequences of our policies; chickens home to roost shit. If you can't tolerate it then you must fight to change it.

bbkane• 4 years ago

Could you please go into more detail? Specific policies and their consequences and how you would change them?

mikem1707• 4 years ago

this was an okay response because they stole from a big company, felt it was a victimless crime.

I wonder if Walgreens thought about hiring their own security guards. It seems to make sense to pay for your own security, right? I assume insurance factors into that decision.

There are a lot of people who don't have much empathy for big companies. They would characterize them as soulless profit making machines that squeeze employees and consumers as much as they can, pollute the commons, homogenize the culture, warp politics, regulatory capture, unfair competition, inhumane, etc.

nradov4• 4 years ago

Private security guards can't do much more than "observe and report". In order to have any real impact they would have to hire moonlighting police officers, and those are expensive.

Insurance is not a factor. Large retailers don't carry insurance policies for shoplifting and minor vandalism.

carom• 4 years ago

The state has a monopoly on violence. Walgreens has security guards, they can't do anything physical.

kjksf3• 4 years ago

Having Walmart hire private security is bad for both Walmart, the people they would hire and the society.

For Walmart it's obviously a cost, probably higher that the cost of goods stolen.

For the private security: they are literally risking their lives and they are probably not paid a lot. Shop owners get beaten up and sometimes killed when defending their stores.

For the society: we don't want privatized violence.

What is the security guard supposed to do when some big dude (or worse: a group) starts stealing stuff?

Get in a fight? What if they hurt the thieves? It's an assault and they could end up in jail for that.

And in SF the police doesn't bother to arrest thieves because D.A. was refusing to charge them.

So what would even be the point of e.g. detaining the thieves?

ilaksh• 4 years ago

I think it's a more difficult set of problems than people realize. It does seem like the enforcement has been strangely lax but I believe it's not just an attitude problem but also partly a logistical problem. There are too many desperate and criminals for the system to handle. Because of the economic situation and inequality, lack of sufficient public housing and support as well as cultural retrogressions driven by that, etc.

This is not to try to excuse the total out of control situation but just to suggest that there are deep societal issues at least compounding the poor management.

Having said all of that I believe if store owners were authorized to use deadly force under some circumstances then much of the crime spree would go away. The underlying societal issues would still be there though, just less obvious.

monero-xmr• 4 years ago

There are many extremely awful things that have been normalized in SF that are not normal in most (all?) large American cities. For example:

Mentally ill people in high-traffic areas that openly use drugs and defecate on the sidewalk.

High chance of having your car window smashed and car contents stolen.

Retail stores putting ever more items behind lock and key.

Women feeling unsafe walking alone in many areas of the city after dark.

Public parks full of criminal element that make walking through it a high-stress, high-alert situation.

All of this results in a high level of general anxiety and makes it an unpleasant place to live or even visit. Anyone who still lives in SF, I feel extremely bad that this is your life. It’s extremely sad.

tptacek• 4 years ago

Three of these things are pretty normal in big cities --- having your car broken into (it was unbelievably bad back in the days where car stereos were valuable), having the soap locked up at the Walgreens, and feeling unsafe after dark.

But the other ones, having lived in San Francisco for a couple years and visited semifrequently afterwards, do feel sort of distinctively west coast.

Certainly the reported normalization of daylight retail store robberies seems pretty abnormal!

Later

Oh, my god, people, yes, I am referring to what’s normal in North America, not Europe. I assumed that was obvious but, whatever, I’m not here to defame Antwerp.

demindiro• 4 years ago

Three of these things are pretty normal in big cities --- having your car broken into (it was unbelievably bad back in the days where car stereos were valuable), having the soap locked up at the Walgreens, and feeling unsafe after dark.

At least here in Antwerp this is not normal at all, even though there is apparently a pretty big mafia who like making grenades explode.

In fact, I can't recall visiting any city, even in other countries, where this is considered "normal".

cscurmudgeon• 4 years ago

Sorry, most of these are not normal in big cities in the developed world, e.g. Scandinavian countries or Western European countries (I only have personal experience with these outside the US).

torben-friis• 4 years ago

I have never visited a city where any of that is normal, at least here in Europe.

knightofmars• 4 years ago

You're being down-voted for some odd reason. This response is very accurate with regards to the types of crime that happen in most major cities.

EDIT: Having read the additional comments I understand that the perspective is those in US cities versus other locations in the world. The crime being described is common in major US cities.

simonbarker872• 4 years ago

Outside of the US these are absolutely not normal in big cities.

johndhi2• 4 years ago

My wife's empty car was broken into five times in 5 years in SF (we stopped replacing the stereo finally), the license plate stolen once.

jorts• 4 years ago

Which public parks are full of criminal element?

fooblaster• 4 years ago

when did you live in San Francisco?

giraffe_lady5• 4 years ago

It is truly awful that one of the most powerful centers of wealth generation in the world also cultivates an environment where people can have nothing and be treated as less than human because of it, then be personally blamed for their reaction to that state. We should not have normalized that.

jackfoxy• 4 years ago

"You will own nothing and be happy." - WEF

jrm4• 4 years ago

Do you live there?

This is a genuine question; I'm trying to separate possible FUD from the truth here. I lived in NYC 20 years ago, and you're not describing anything different.

timr5• 4 years ago

I lived in SF for almost a decade, until about 2017. OP is not exaggerating. I just made a post where I outlined some (not all!) of the things that actually happened to me, and they're pretty much a recitation of OP's list.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039215

atlasunshrugged• 4 years ago

I lived there (apt at 5th and Mission and office near the Caltrain station) until a few years ago and many friends still do (although quite a few have left). All OP's comments seem reasonable.

epicureanideal4• 4 years ago

I live nearby and try to avoid going there because it’s that awful.

zer0-c00l• 4 years ago

LOL of course he doesn’t.

Public parks full of criminal element that make walking through it a high-stress, high-alert situation

This one is especially laughable, nothing could be further from the truth

iancmceachern3• 4 years ago

I currently live in SF and have lived in NYC. In all honesty it's not all that different. I think the main difference is the weather and number of shelter beds. There are many times a year when being outdoors in NYC isn't possible, so they have more shelter beds and more use of those beds. In SF that dynamic doesn't exist. Other than that, it's the same in my experience.

rib3ye• 4 years ago

The only thing I would disagree with is feeling unsafe in public parks.

eternalban• 4 years ago

New Yorker here too. Finally got to see the fabled valley last year and spent 2 days walking SF.

Parts of it are just like NYC before the cleanup to turn it into a tourist destination. Chinatown and area around it absolutely reminded of late 80s/early 90s in NY. Has that vibe.

Parts of it -- here is looking at you Pacific Heights -- are just completely off the scale amazing. I would move in a heartbeat to PH if I could afford it, crime be damned. (Looked pretty damn safe too, btw.)

tldr; it ain't a "shithole" if you are rich (like everywhere else). far from it.

soraki_soladead2• 4 years ago

As mentioned, many of these are very common in other large cities (EDIT: fine, in the US). I'm going to call out this one because its frequently mentioned and seems harder to tackle than the other problems:

Mentally ill people in high-traffic areas that openly use drugs and defecate on the sidewalk.

What is the solution to this? Round them up and put them in jail? Bus them to another city? Forcibly enroll them at a mental health facility? Improving housing costs somehow? Free housing for the homeless? Maybe walk-in drug clinics?

Some of these solutions sound inhumane. Others appear to be politically impossible at the scale needed. So what's the solution and why are the people who live there against it?

petesergeant2• 4 years ago

What is the solution to this

Many other large cities handle this well, so it seems to pretend there aren't solutions? I've spent recent time in London, New York, and Bangkok -- as well as a number of smaller cities -- and there's nothing like what I saw in SF.

scoofy• 4 years ago

SF-Stockholm Syndrome

We are the boiled frog. Most here seem to think this sort of thing is normal now.

justlikeseattle• 4 years ago

Sounds exactly like Seattle. Ever since Police powers have been taken away. Crime has drastically gone up.

I grew up here and when nobody knew about Seattle. It was a awesome place to live. Now, not such a good place. You add yearly 1+ month of forest fire smoke to the mix. It doesn't leave to much left.

mynameisvlad• 4 years ago

What are you talking about?

Even according to SPD’s own crime reporting dashboard[0], incidents have not gone up drastically in the last two years like you are implying, and this year’s numbers look like they are trending back down to 2018 levels. Seattle’s issues also certainly didn’t start two years ago, anyone who has lived here has known about things like 3rd being extremely sketchy. Hell, even back in 2011 that was a thing. It’s certainly far from new. Problems have certainly gotten worse in the last two years but let’s not sit here and pretend the city was roses and unicorns before 2020.

And how, exactly is it Seattle resident’s fault that there’s smoke now?

[0] https://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/crime-da...

AbrahamParangi4• 4 years ago

It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the law to prosecute them if they defended themselves with the force that the law does.

I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty.

blacksmith_tb2• 4 years ago

That seems to suggest that folks who have goods stolen from their stores would be justified in using violence to stop the thieves? Though the police doing it for them would be better? I don't see property crimes like shoplifting as justifying violence (armed robbery, sure, but not five-fingering stuff). Does it raise insurance rates for retailers? Sure. Does that raise prices for honest shoppers, yes also. So it's crappy, but attacking the thieves doesn't pass a proportionate response sniff test for me.

AbrahamParangi4• 4 years ago

Violence is an absolute requirement for the existence of law. If you have a law saying “you can’t do X” there needs to be some system that enforces the law. Law enforcement cannot exist without actual violence or the threat of violence.

I believe what you’re really asking is if law is justified, since it requires violence against people breaking it.

Edit: fwiw there is a somewhat extreme libertarian ideology that holds exactly this so you wouldn’t be alone

DoneWithAllThat• 4 years ago

What is your proposed mechanism of enforcement of laws against robbery?

analyte123• 4 years ago

What if someone was stealing your property? Let’s say a week or two of income worth. You would just let them walk away with it?

Unklejoe• 4 years ago

That seems to suggest that folks who have goods stolen from their stores would be justified in using violence to stop the thieves?

I’d be happy with a store owner not being liable for injuries if they tackle someone who is trying to steal from their store and the thief ends up getting hurt.

I don’t think they should be able to start blasting thieves with a gun but you should be able to use some reasonable amount of force. Let a judge decide whether it was reasonable or not.

valdiorn• 4 years ago

This is an incredibly naive view of the world. Violence is, whether you like it or not, the absolute apex power, from which all other power is derived.

Laws only hold power because if you break them, someone will forcefully put you in jail, and hurt you if you try to escape. If your punishment is a fine rather than jail time, someone will forcefully remove money from your bank account or valuable items from your house, and they will use force and potentially hurt you if you don't comply.

I might not agree with shooting shoplifters in the back but if the police won't investigate and stop even organized shoplifting (they're boasting about doing this just very recently, hence the article) at some point you have to be allowed to open up some level of enforcement and use of violence to the public, because otherwise bad behaviour is rewarded. Maybe you beat them up or publicly humiliate them, which is often seen in less developed countries. But I'd much prefer the police just enforce the law, and retain their monopoly on violence.

giraffe_lady5• 4 years ago

Also interesting to note that all the major retail chains commit wage theft at least comparable to their losses to retail theft, and workers can reliably expect that the law won't protect them from that.

You got a take on that one? What has the state abdicated there and what should their or our response be?

AbrahamParangi4• 4 years ago

There, the state is failing in their responsibility to prevent wage theft and people should be mad about that too!

iancmceachern3• 4 years ago

Also major retail chains participate in "dead peasant" insurance schemes. They buy high dollar life insurance policies on their employees and cash in when they die, giving nothing to the family.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insuran...

It doesn't mean they should have to endure theft, it just means they are taking advantage of their workforce.

mikem1707• 4 years ago

It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them

The courts have ruled that there's no obligation for the police to protect and serve [0]. The police have always shown up after a crime is committed, they weren't designed to be everywhere all the time.

It is legal for someone to protect themselves, with violence if necessary, isn't it? There are many laws allowing self-defense, castle doctrine, etc. Someone defending themselves may have to prove themselves in court, especially if they killed someone, but that seems fair enough. Lots of people legally defend themselves and their property every day.

What do you think we need to change? Should we expect the government to prevent violence? Should we have more police, cameras, drones, minority report, etc so that hopefully the police can prevent everybody from stealing from big stores?

EDIT: Walgreens could have security guards on hand and direct them to detain shoplifters, basically a citizens arrest, but they choose not to do so.

[0] https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...

jancsika• 4 years ago

I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty.

That part after the 'or' is quite sloppy as written. It's unclear if you are merely warning that vigilante justice may follow if the police don't do their job-- a truism; arguing for citizen's arrest that follows the same (or more stringent) basic procedures as police use; or whether you are attempting to rationalize expansion of violence to everyday citizens as those citizens see fit to protect their property.

rufus_foreman• 4 years ago

> private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the law to prosecute them if they defended themselves with the force that the law does

"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

johndhi2• 4 years ago

I also hate the smell and look and fear of spending time in SF. However, does anyone know what the solution really is?

We assume it's more police and more charges brought by the DA. I'm not sure the data supports that incredibly well.

It would be nice if we took half a percent of the tech money generated in the last decade and built a world class crime reduction program. Maybe a facility (unlike prison) where you don't get educated by career criminals...

giraffe_lady5• 4 years ago

Yeah as you suspect the data supports anything but. Carceral responses to crime increase crime, and this has been extensively studied and concretely known for decades. If police solved or prevented crime american cities would be the lowest-crime places in the world. We keep doing this for other reasons, not to decrease crime.

s1artibartfast4• 4 years ago

I agree that Carceral responses along are not a sufficient solution, at least not without resorting to extremes that would be untenable in the US.

The real problem is loss of social trust and individuals unable or unwilling obey social norms. Once social trust is lost, it is very difficult to restore it.

epicureanideal4• 4 years ago

I don’t think they really want to solve the problem. They just want to keep giving money to friends and family to “try to solve the problem”.

kjksf3• 4 years ago

San Francisco budget is $14 billion. Of which $672 million is for "solving" homelessness.

Austin City budget is $1.3 billion.

Yes, half of Austin budget is spent by SF on homelessness alone.

Money is not the problem.

SF is already getting gigantic chunk of tech money.

They just demonstrated, year over year, that the only thing they are extraordinarily good at is wasting this money.

What we need is to fire ever single government worker and rebuild the government from scratch. And yes, I know that this is utterly delusional proposal, which is why SF will continue spending like Saudi Prince on crack and SF streets will continue to be lined up with homeless people.

s1artibartfast4• 4 years ago

Homelessness is part of the problem, but the real Crux is a large number of unemployable people in one of the most expensive metros in the world.

The only long-term viable solution is for people to relocate to locations with more opportunities for unskilled labor and a new market equilibrium.

rasz2• 4 years ago

Would stand your ground law written into Cali statue help?

archagon• 4 years ago

Uh, so your solution is to kill them?

simonbarker872• 4 years ago

I visited SF in 2014 and hated it. I’ve been to many large cities around the world and can absolutely say it is the worst I’ve been to. Certainly there are worse parts of other cities but as a general level of crappiness, SF wins by a mile. I don’t understand how people live there, I don’t understand why there is no help for the homeless addicts and mentally ill people roaming the streets. I don’t know the history of the city (not American) that has lead to where it is but I do know that I never, ever want to go back there.

And that is based on 2014, it seems it has got a lot worse since.

nradov4• 4 years ago

SF does offers more help to homeless addicts and mentally ill people than most other local governments in the region. Ironically, this attracts more of them to the city. And just by offering help, they can't legally force people to take it.

There is certainly plenty of graft, waste, and stupid policy in the SF homeless-industrial complex. The city government is highly dysfunctional. But any real solutions will have to be implemented at least at the state level.

cudgy3• 4 years ago

Why at the state level? Why should people in other areas of California be burdened with poor decisions by a particular city? San Francisco has created conditions that encourage vagrants to flock to the city by simultaneously not enforcing the law and “supporting” the homeless with vast funds paid out to many inefficient non-profits. Add to this a lax policy toward camps and it is no wonder there are huge problems there. I don’t blame the vagrants for going there.

Cities try to encourage growth in cities by making it attractive to employers. Why not discourage growth of vagrants by making it unattractive to break the law and camp out on sidewalks?

solaarphunk• 4 years ago

The amount of mental gymnastics residents (voters) of SF do to normalize the narrative of property crime, along with the horrific state of affairs for mental health and drug addiction, is absolutely wild. Especially given the amount of lip service given to broader social issues in almost every social setting. It is one of the most apathetic and deeply hypocritical situations in America I've ever seen.

vondur• 4 years ago

Will those who are arrested actually be prosecuted? That’s the big issue we have in Los Angeles county is the prosecutor declining to file charges.

guerrilla• 4 years ago

It's sad to see that when this topic comes up, there's so little interest in addressing the causes of these problems rather than simply treating the symptoms. It's especially concerning that people who otherwise present themselves as liberal and libertarian are in favor of such authoritarian policies in this area, especially when all evidence suggests that that simply makes the problem worse. It seems like there's no space for welfare, healthcare and social work, just violence.

wiseleo• 4 years ago

I actively avoid San Francisco, except perhaps Ocean Beach area, despite living in close proximity. That city lost its appeal.

Retail theft needs to be curtailed. We have the technology for this.

S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on retail theft

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