[google234123]

You can't report a lot of crimes online (assault, Residential Burglaries, Robbery Incidents, Stolen Vehicles, stolen Electric Bicycles) and the police will tell you it's pointless to report minor ones in SF

If a homeless guy punches you in SF, would you really bother to walk to a police station and wait in line and waste a ton of time for literally nothing to happen?

[jjxw]

I don't think you can report some of those crimes online in other cities either. Houston (https://www.houstontx.gov/police/online_report.htm) doesn't let you report violent crime nor stolen vehicles. Miami (https://www.miami-police.org/incident_reporting.html) doesn't allow violent crime to be reported either. Smaller cities like the city I grew up nearby like Rogers, Arkansas don't even allow you to file a report online at all.

I don't have time to do a comprehensive survey of how other cities operate online crime reporting, but I'm assuming in good faith that the implication here is that San Francisco's violent crime statistics are under reported if you can't report online. It seems to me that many other cities don't allow you to report online either.

Open to having a good faith discussion on if crime stats in SF are deflated due to underreporting. My guess would be that the base rate of actual people getting assaulted by a homeless guy is pretty low - curious if you have any anecdotal evidence or data to the contrary.

[bombcar]

Violent crimes are probably relatively well reported at some violence threshold - something like "did you need medical assistance".

It's property crimes that are below the insurance threshold that will just not be reported; why bother? I had cars broken into and I never reported any of them because it would be pointless; the only time I did report was when the car was stolen - and that only because I didn't want it to turn up burning somewhere and blamed on me.