> Most thefts (robbery, etc) are not reported now because people know police don't care

Underreporting has always been an issue with crime data [1], but the change in the Larceny rate doesn't seem like it's caused by an increase in underreporting. The change in reported Larceny from 2020 seems fairly correlated with COVID restrictions.

Here is the monthly Y/Y change in Larceny Theft Reported incidents for SF, for each month in 2020 vs. 2019:

Jan: +15.7% Feb: +5.4% March: -28.7% (SF Shelter In Place) April: -47.1% May: -45.6% June: -48.9% July: -51.8% August: -50.1% September: -54.5% October: -54.9% November: -39.2% December: -46.7%

Larceny did go up in 2021, especially at the end of the year when COVID restrictions started to lift, but is still down ~20% relative to 2019. Other crimes went up in 2020, but then decreased or flattened in 2021.

I think you may have a point about Larceny being encountered more, especially with foot traffic + tourism way down in many SF neighborhoods. I'm not sure how exactly to use Open Table reservations as a proxy for that, so it's hard to say whether it's relatively up or relatively down.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...

> Why? Crime is measured per capita, but you say it should be divided by 10,000 steps or something?

Why would petty theft and robbery be divided by population? My risk of getting my bike stolen is 0 or my phone taken at gunpoint if I stay inside my home. It is non-zero if I go out. And it increases the longer I stay out. So measuring crime per person-hour of going out makes intuitive sense. Restaurant reservations is merely an imperfect proxy for this.

> Straw man. Everyone knows that all crime creates anguish for the victim and is to be avoided. If a person compares the effects of the pandemic to the opportunity of types of crimes, it doesn't mean they love the idea of larceny. Come on. Better faith in arguing please

Except the causation for these crimes is lax prosecution caused by 1) DAs who are politically motivated and 2) Prop 47 / similar regulations in other states. Unemployment is at record lows and there's a record worker shortage driving up wages. You cannot possibly claim the "effects of the pandemic" are causing increased property crime when unemployment has been so low for so long.

> Better faith in arguing please

Ironic, coming from a 15 minute old account whose only comment is this response.

> Ironic, coming from a 15 minute old account whose only comment is this response

It just means I couldn't let it go how hand-wavy your comment was. Sometimes you don't want to sit on the sidelines and watch others get hand-waved at

Can tell you this happened in my city. Anything not bolted down in your yard was getting stolen. Mayor gaslighting all of us saying the data doesn’t support a rise in property theft. The police had already publicly said they wouldn’t do any investigation for residential property loss under $10k, best you could do is report it and hope for recovery as piles of loot were periodically discovered. It caused a mild coordinated call on NextDoor for everyone to start reporting for the sake of the numbers but we knew we weren’t insane - we were living with it, and saw videos of it daily on NextDoor. In our town it’s calmed down quite a bit because it became an election issue, and looser bail policies were rescinded. Property crime still a problem though but nowhere near as bad. Here’s the basic law of the jungle - if you don’t have consequences for bad behavior, there will be more of it. Every city needs to decide where on the continuum they want to be, between Singapore and Liberia.

> best you could do is report it and hope for recovery

At the end of the day isn't that all you can do? File a report and hope for recovery? Is the complaint that you need to go to the station to file a report? That was already the reality for so many people. The police don't go to every neighborhood. Some neighborhoods, it's self-serve.