[sneak]

If the same people were smashing the windows at Starbucks or Walgreens each day, the police response would suddenly be totally different.

The police prioritize protecting the property rights of large landowners, first and always. Don’t buy their excuses.

[cellis]

Wrong. A law was passed specifically making crimes of less than $1000 a misdemeanor.

[kikokikokiko]

Exactly. You can see loads of videos online of 5, 10 people, entering a regular Whole Foods or 7-Eleven and simply looting the place and leaving without pay. This kind of thing doesn't even happen in 3rd world countries like where I live, its's baffling to see what a huge american metropolis is allowing to happen in the name of political correctness.

[issa]

This is actually really interesting. I don't think this is a problem with policing or political correctness. This is something I always think of when looting is mentioned: Most people reading this could walk into any grocery store (or Target, or auto parts store) and just purchase whatever they wanted without even thinking about the cost. For all practical purposes, in a software engineer's budget, expenses like that are a rounding error. My point is that the problems and solutions are usually a lot more complicated than they seem. The various social forces at work in SF are kinda crazy when you think about them.

[kikokikokiko]

It's not a matter of "affording" food/products or not. It's a political decision, to not prosecute people for crimes against property. And it's an extremely dangerous decision. The rule of law, and the freedom that societies that enforce it have, are inextricably linked. A government that does not protect the property of it's citizens has no right to exist. It's basically telling the ordinary citizen "you're on your own". What this type of goverment creates, either by stupidity or malice, is an anarchy fueled law of the jungle.

[chasd00]

It works if you have a captive population and the people have no other choice. As this thread demonstrates, people are getting fed up and just leaving. If the city doesn't turn things around it will setup a downward spiral that's very hard to get out of. I think that's a real risk for a post-covid comeback, if it gets bad enough after all the people making the city great have left then it just won't come back.

[tristor]

Unfortunately many of the people who've left San Francisco have moved to Austin and are enacting exactly the same policies. It's already created a dramatic shift in the city, and I can easily see Austin strongly resembling San Francisco from a quality of life / lawfulness perspective in just 5-10 years.

[yao420]

Im a third generation Texan and welcome all the Californians and their politics.

Even in Austin, Texas is a backwards, overtly racist, pro-big business anti-small business state that hates “freedom” unless it has to do with guns or corporate protections.

By the way, we have so many homeless because other republican heavy cities ship them here. Google ‘Haruka Weiser’ for a pretty normal example of a cop from a small town picking up a mentally unstable transient and dropping them off in downtown Austin a couple of blocks near the university.

[kgin]

Absolutely. But it really feels like kicking the can down the road to try to deal with severe inequality just by decriminalizing theft. There has to be a better long-term solution.

[Talanes]

People brazenly come into my Starbucks all the time and openly announce they are shoplifting, because they know that the police won't show up to take a report for at least an hour.

Once we do have the report, even if they do get caught, nothing happens. Many months of reports and multiple trips to the courthouse and we can MAYBE get a stay away order. Usually before that point, the store management has shuffled around enough that the person handling the legal legwork has moved on.

[galfarragem]

And then people get astonished when the righteous party doesn't get elected.

[galfarragem]

This economical view on Justice - ignore petty stuff because it is too expensive for the system to deal with it - destroys the goodwill on people and on State.