[JamilD]

In San Francisco, if you leave anything worth more than a couple hundred dollars in your car, it's as good as gone.

It took me a while to get used to the level of crime in SF too… it's so different from even North San Jose or Mountain View.

[refurb]

In San Francisco, if you leave anything worth more than a couple hundred dollars in your car, it's as good as gone.

I'd go further than that. If you leave anything in your car, you can count on it being broken into. A jacket on the floor is enough for them to smash a window to see if there is anything valuable hiding underneath.

[rajacombinator]

Sucks for GP but this is true in any major city. Leaving valuable gear in sight is inviting theft.

[CPLX]

It's not true in Brooklyn. I've left all kinds of things visible in a car and not had a single break in in 15 years. It's easy to make assumptions but from an outsiders perspective SF feels out of control at this point.

[yummyfajitas]

This isn't true in NYC, Mumbai, Singapore or London.

[ninguem2]

Interesting that it isn't true in Mumbai. I would have expected far worse, given the level of poverty. What's the reason?

[yummyfajitas]

It's called "law enforcement". If you try to pull off a bunch of smash&grabs in Bandra or Colaba the cops will beat you with lathis. Law enforcement is far from uniform - many neighborhoods (e.g. Baiganwadi) don't have much of it. But no one parks their car in Baiganwadi.

What seems to make SF pretty unique is that even in the wealthy areas it lacks effective law enforcement.

Also, poverty in Mumbai isn't quite the same as poverty in the rest of India. Significant portions of Mumbai approach US-"poor" levels of income (about $15-20k/year, PPP adjusted) which is considered quite wealthy over here.

[ooooo00000]

> It's called "law enforcement". If you try to pull off a bunch of smash&grabs in Bandra or Colaba the cops will beat you with lathis.

Where I live thieves are often beaten to death. And the rate of theft is still high. I could point you to some studies about punishment not being an effective crime deterrent, but not sure it would change your mind. It's a complicated problem and law enforcement is a band-aid at best.

[yummyfajitas]

Do you think crime would not increase if punishment were reduced?

Fundamentally I think law enforcement is just one piece of the puzzle. Intrinsic factors (culture, biology, economics, psychology) also play a major role - all else held equal, the US is likely to be more violent than India (important exception being sexual violence). But law enforcement does matter - how else to explain how clean little India is in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur?

I'll certainly look at your studies.

[rajacombinator]

Seriously lol at replies to this that think it is not true in NYC.

[alexandercrohde]

I live in SF and when I first showed up here, I too was really unaware of how bad the problem was. My car was broken into 6 times, once for only the change in my ashtray! (I can only assume, there was nothing else of value in the 99 corolla!)

Eventually I just sold it.