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 …
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.
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.