When I have to spend 10 minutes finding a store employee to unlock a case for me to buy underwear and socks at Target when I didn't have to five years ago, I conclude that crime has gotten worse.

When I see videos on the internet all the time of criminals just walking into stores and grabbing whatever they want while the security guard looks on and does nothing because the police will side with the criminal if he touches them, it is perfectly valid to assume that crime is worse.

When the police do nothing to enforce the law I do not trust the statistics because they are based on reports to the police.

Maybe the statistics are right, over the whole city, but where I live, crime has gotten worse.

Where do you live? It sounds quite bad. Has SF got that bad? I haven't been there since I worked there in 2015, but I read the authorites gave up on some crime?

I noticed neither any crime or homeless at that time. But people now seem swear it has gotten to be a big problem.

I was last there a couple years ago when the "SF is a lawless wasteland" nonsense was gaining a lot of traction. I saw some needles, some foil, a broken window or two, but otherwise it was a very calm and inviting city. Any city due to greater density will have more observable crime, but people are crapping their pants over exaggerations.

> When I see videos on the internet all the time of criminals just walking into stores and grabbing whatever they want while the security guard looks on and does nothing because the police will side with the criminal if he touches them, it is perfectly valid to assume that crime is worse.

How many videos have you seen on the Internet of stores just calmly going about business with no shoplifting going on? The number of videos on the Internet is not an indication of any overall trend. The stuff you're seeing makes it onto YouTube because they are outliers.

I don’t see this stuff on YouTube, I see it in the real world in the course of my everyday life.

Why have I only started seeing these outliers in the last few years? Also, the worst part of the videos isn't that they happen, but that they are allowed to happen. If the criminals weren't calmly going about their business without even wearing a mask and instead running from the security guard it wouldn't be so frustrating. If the news stories had a mugshot of the police arresting them quickly since their face is all over the internet it wouldn't be so infuriating. If the police didn't allow the criminals to run open air fencing operations right outside BART stations, I wouldn't be this mad.

Could there be other reasons why these videos are being uploaded more, and why you are being served them more over the last few years? Access to videography has been growing constantly since smartphones were introduced. There are now multiple platforms for uploading these videos, and doing so is easier than ever. These platforms algorithmically optimize for engagement and do this by promoting ragebait and controversy. And there are now entire, active communities dedicated to sharing/spreading/promoting these (r/PublicFreakout has almost 5M members). What you happen to be seeing may not reflect any sort of trend, either up or down.