Interesting. Other commenters are discussing things like homicide and burglary, but what do you make of stories like this one stating that "According to the [National Retail Federation], San Francisco and Oakland ranked #2 in the list of top areas affected by Organized Retail Crime."
Interesting. Other commenters are discussing things like homicide and burglary, but what do you make of stories like this one stating that "According to the [National Retail Federation], San Francisco and Oakland ranked #2 in the list of top areas affected by Organized Retail Crime."
Well the first thing that strikes me is that the NRF is a right-wing lobbying front group for businesses that I regularly litigate against when it comes to things like union-busting, so hearing them say something doesn't take their claims out of the realm of "conservative fantasy nonsense." If anything, it reinforces the association.
That being said, there does seem to be some retail theft increase since the pandemic. I put this down to the fact that San Francisco, like a number of cities, has faced what amounts to an undeclared work stoppage since 2020 from police who are salty and pissed off about being held accountable for their rampant violence against civilians. I would like to see someone do something about that, ideally involving getting rid of a lot of the current fascist police force and replacing them with smarter, more civically minded individuals. Yglesias's idea of "police for America" seems like a good one.
Do you have a preferred resource for retail crime statistics that substantially contradicts the quote above? A quick search of PPIC and Chamber of Commerce reports seem at least consistent with the claim above by NRF.
If being presented with contrary evidence reinforces your previous assumption as you say, it probably won't be productive to discuss this topic further (not to mention that you believe the SFPD is 'fascist'), though fwiw I will look at resources if you were to link or list them for my own information.
I do not. Retail crime is notoriously badly tracked, to the point where even attempting to draw statistical conclusions about it is basically a fool's errand because the garbage quality of the data will just produce garbage results. A lobbying group's self-interested data reporting, as filtered secondhand through local news, couldn't do much to change that even if I thought the lobbying group was acting in good faith, which I emphatically do not in this case. One thing that would be a very good idea to improve policing in this area would just be to invest in some actual, national public data collection that isn't of crap quality.
To be clear, however, when I said it reinforced my prior assumption, that was the assumption that this narrative is being spread by rightist operatives. That does not inherently tell you whether it is true or false-- once in a while, rightist operatives actually spread true narratives when the truth happens to serve their purposes-- but it implies that you should cast an unusually skeptical eye on the warrants for the claims being made.
Fair, I think source skepticism is always a good thing to acknowledge and I may have quoted that article because it confirmed my experience (as someone from a major metro area where pharmacies locking up petty goods due to rampant theft is not at all normal).
When you said it was "fantasy nonsense" I read that as you judging widespread concern about elevated crime in one or more major crime categories in SF to be unwarranted, but perhaps that's not what you meant.
Interesting. Other commenters are discussing things like homicide and burglary, but what do you make of stories like this one stating that "According to the [National Retail Federation], San Francisco and Oakland ranked #2 in the list of top areas affected by Organized Retail Crime."
https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-retail-theft-sf-walgreens-shoplifters-geary-boulevard-17th-avenue/13520154/
Does that strike you as normal?
Well the first thing that strikes me is that the NRF is a right-wing lobbying front group for businesses that I regularly litigate against when it comes to things like union-busting, so hearing them say something doesn't take their claims out of the realm of "conservative fantasy nonsense." If anything, it reinforces the association.
That being said, there does seem to be some retail theft increase since the pandemic. I put this down to the fact that San Francisco, like a number of cities, has faced what amounts to an undeclared work stoppage since 2020 from police who are salty and pissed off about being held accountable for their rampant violence against civilians. I would like to see someone do something about that, ideally involving getting rid of a lot of the current fascist police force and replacing them with smarter, more civically minded individuals. Yglesias's idea of "police for America" seems like a good one.
Do you have a preferred resource for retail crime statistics that substantially contradicts the quote above? A quick search of PPIC and Chamber of Commerce reports seem at least consistent with the claim above by NRF.
If being presented with contrary evidence reinforces your previous assumption as you say, it probably won't be productive to discuss this topic further (not to mention that you believe the SFPD is 'fascist'), though fwiw I will look at resources if you were to link or list them for my own information.
I do not. Retail crime is notoriously badly tracked, to the point where even attempting to draw statistical conclusions about it is basically a fool's errand because the garbage quality of the data will just produce garbage results. A lobbying group's self-interested data reporting, as filtered secondhand through local news, couldn't do much to change that even if I thought the lobbying group was acting in good faith, which I emphatically do not in this case. One thing that would be a very good idea to improve policing in this area would just be to invest in some actual, national public data collection that isn't of crap quality.
To be clear, however, when I said it reinforced my prior assumption, that was the assumption that this narrative is being spread by rightist operatives. That does not inherently tell you whether it is true or false-- once in a while, rightist operatives actually spread true narratives when the truth happens to serve their purposes-- but it implies that you should cast an unusually skeptical eye on the warrants for the claims being made.
Fair, I think source skepticism is always a good thing to acknowledge and I may have quoted that article because it confirmed my experience (as someone from a major metro area where pharmacies locking up petty goods due to rampant theft is not at all normal).
When you said it was "fantasy nonsense" I read that as you judging widespread concern about elevated crime in one or more major crime categories in SF to be unwarranted, but perhaps that's not what you meant.