Still, a 75% increase from 2019 is insane.... and SF was already the car break in capital of the us (when I lived there my neighbor's car got broken in a garage). And it is common to see shattered glass everywhere around SOMA and downtown.
I live in NYC, and just feel much more safer here. Yet, NYC is about to elect a former cop, to fight crime even more.
The mess in SF started with Gascon, and it doubled down with Boudin. You voted for it SF, own it. You vote stupid, you get stupid.
SF doesn’t even break the top 10 in per-capita thefts.
This started with 'progressive' Gascon (who is in LA right now) and it is accelerating with Boudin to stupid high levels. Feels like you are in war torn country and not a first world city.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/san-fra...
When I move here long ago I was told don't leave any visible change in the car because a "crack head" would break the car for it.
Some, more sophisticated ones, even use bluetooth seeking/scanning devices to detect when there is a laptop hidden in a car nearby.
Pretty sure SF was near the top of the list for property crime in 2019 already too. I lived in SOMA for 4 years and saw break-ins every single night with no police response. Not an exaggeration when I say every night.
OP seems to be handwaving away this massive increase, unless he presents some data to show that May is indeed an outlier vs other months such as June
The title of the article is "Car break-ins are up as tourism returns to San Francisco", not the title selected for the HN submission. The money quote is actually from the 6th paragraph buried of the article, two full scrolls down:
> Last month, the Police Department’s Central Station saw a 753% increase in auto burglaries compared to the previous May. But that was the height of lockdown restrictions. They are up only 75% compared to 2019.
As you can see, all of the numbers are properly contextualized. The graph above the quote includes the 2019, 2020 and 2021, clearly demonstrating the dip in 2020.
The article is focusing on Central Station because the central premise of the article is that the increase is in tourist areas. There is nothing nefarious going here either. From the article;
> Statistics from San Francisco police show that break-ins have risen sharply in tourist areas, particularly the San Francisco Police Department’s Central District
Overall it is a pretty neutral reporting, upfront about their sampling biases, and no, not implying a general pattern or carrying out a conspiracy against SF.
The garages, they generally try to drill a hole and then pull the cable on the door opener.
For cars, they slowly drive their own car down the street looking for cars with stuff inside, 2 people, driver and thief. When they see one, thief jumps out, smashes window, grabs stuff, jumps back in car, driver drives them away. It takes 3-6 seconds.
AFAIK Cole Valley has never been known for car break-ins or garage break-ins. Also AFAIK the garage break-in are happening all over and are new. Further, AFAIK this isn't homeless crack-heads looking for a small fix. It's a few small groups committing the same crimes over and over.
I wish I knew the police were doing something. Assuming I'm right at it is just a few groups of people then it shouldn't take more then a few honeypots to effectively stop most of it.
If I could find a way to get permission from the city I'm betting the residents of certain neighborhoods would be willing to pay for their own sting operations to try to take their neighborhoods back.
* 2020 was clearly a minimum outlier because of the pandemic.
* Citywide, May is down 10% from 2019.
* Central District, is up from both 2019 and 2020.
* This is a single month. Why not include April and June (months during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021).
* Why has the author not also included the other districts? Is it because they paint a different story? That they're also down?
The author clearly decided on a narrative, then cherry picked only the data that supported the narrative.