Economy Politics housing San Francisco
Watters: The Five (CRIME) Families of the Democrat Party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBpvvHethg0
WHAT DID NANCY PELOSI DO FOR HER CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
OF MELTDOWN SAN FRANCISCO? - NADA! - BUT SHE SURE
RAKED IN THE MONEY BEING A FAILURE
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/03/what-did-nancy-pelosi-do-for-her.html
SAN FRANCISCO POPULATION IS ONLY 8% BACK, HOWEVER, BLACKS PERPETRATE 40% OF THE CRIME (these are pre-covid numbers).
San Fran patrol special officer rips Pelosi's inaction over BLACK crime surge: She doesn't care https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SewBXWKj2g
Small-business owners have been hit Petty Thieves Plague San Francisco. ‘These Last Two Years Have Been Insane.’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/crime-san-francisco-petty-thieves-small-businesses-11647797642
By Zusha Elinson
SAN FRANCISCO— Terry Asten Bennett’s family has been running Cliff’s Variety Store since 1936. In all that time, they’ve never experienced the amount of burglaries and property damage that they have recently, Ms. Bennett said.
Thieves smashed a display window and broke down a door to steal items as small as spray paint, and people shattered glass doors on two occasions for no apparent reason.
“These last two years have been insane,” she said. “It used to be a rare occurrence.”
Although violent crime in San Francisco is lower than in many other major U.S. cities, business owners, residents and visitors here are dealing with a rash of thefts, burglaries and car break-ins.
Among the 25 largest U.S. cities, San Francisco has had the highest property-crime rate in four of the most recent six years for which data is available, bucking the long-term national decline in such crimes that began in the 1990s. Property crimes declined in San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic, but rose 13% in 2021. Burglaries in the city are at their highest levels since the mid-1990s. There were 20,663 thefts from vehicles last year—almost 57 a day—a 39% increase from the prior year, although still below the record of 31,398 in 2017, according to the police.
Smashed storefronts are so common that the city launched a program to fix them with public money. Car owners leave notes declaring there is nothing of value in their vehicles, or leave their windows open to save themselves from broken glass. Videos of shoplifters hauling goods out of drugstores such as Walgreens have gone viral, and a smash-and-grab robbery by 20 to 40 people at a Louis Vuitton store last November made the national news.
Owners of small businesses say the costs of security and repairs are eating into profits already diminished by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the Castro, the neighborhood where Cliff’s is located, shops have recorded nearly 100 instances of smashed windows and doors that cost $170,000 to repair since the beginning of 2020, according to the neighborhood’s merchant association.
Criminologists say San Francisco’s high density of retail stores and its mix of tourists, commuters and wealthy residents have made it an inviting target for thieves. Locals point to a host of other factors that may be exacerbating the problem, including the tactics of the police and prosecutors, statewide changes intended to reduce the number of people behind bars, and the city’s dual crises of drug use and homelessness. There has been no end of finger-pointing.
Despite the city’s long history of progressive politics, some business owners and residents are demanding that political leaders shift to a more law-and-order approach.
San Francisco’s mix of retail stores, tourists, commuters and wealthy residents have made it an inviting target. The Union Square retail district, top, and the Chinatown neighborhood.
District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who took office in 2020 as part of the national “progressive prosecutor” movement and has de-emphasized the prosecution of low-level offenses, will face a recall election in June.
“Nothing is more important than to make sure that people who live in this city, people who work in the city, people who visit San Francisco, feel safe,” Democratic Mayor London Breed said at a news conference last month. “The fact is, that does require police officers.”
Some former police officials and business owners blame Mr. Boudin’s focus on keeping people who commit small-scale crimes out of prison. His office, for example, discourages filing charges in cases where suspects are pulled over for traffic infractions and officers find small amounts of drugs. Others point the finger at the police, who cleared just 6% of the city’s property crimes in 2020, more than 8 percentage points lower than the national average. A case is considered cleared if a suspect is arrested, charged and turned over to a court for prosecution, or is identified with sufficient evidence for a charge but can’t be taken into custody for circumstances beyond police control.
Some business owners say the city’s large population of people living on the streets and using drugs such as fentanyl is a big factor in the small-scale thefts. Law-enforcement officials, though, say they suspect organized crews of petty criminals are carrying out a large portion of them.
Police Chief Bill Scott has deployed more officers to tourist spots such as Fisherman’s Wharf to stop car break ins, and to retail shopping districts to stop thefts and burglaries. He has beefed up his retail theft investigations unit.
Businesses have been affected in every corner of San Francisco, even traditionally low-crime areas such as the Sunset District, where commercial and residential burglaries rose 80% in between 2019 and 2021.
Michael Hsu’s Footprint shoe store got broken into for the first time in February 2021. The thief used a blowtorch to crack the glass door without setting off the alarm and took tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-end North Face jackets. More people arrived soon after, taking whatever they could grab before they set off the alarm.
Mr. Hsu, who grew up in the Sunset, said he recalled thinking: “Oh, they finally got me.”
Michael Hsu's shoe store in the Sunset neighborhood has been burglarized repeatedly.
He now keeps some merchandise locked with security cables.
He turned to a grant program for small businesses to fix his shattered storefront.
Security footage shows a thief using a blowtorch to crack the glass door at Footprint.
Michael Hsu
Mr. Hsu was the first recipient in the new grant program for small businesses to fix their storefronts. Three weeks later, his store was hit again, this time by a thief who climbed up scaffolding, broke in through a second-story window and made off with several boxes of shoes.
He now equips his employees with pepper spray and a key fob that calls the police directly. He upgraded his security system and is putting money aside for other antitheft measures.
The grant program has distributed more than $500,000 to nearly 400 businesses to fix their storefronts.
Sharky Laguana, who is president of the city’s small business commission and runs the van-rental company Bandago, said thieves frequently smash his vehicles’ windows and steal his customers’ belongings. “It gives customers a bad experience, it costs them a lot of money and it costs us a lot of money,” he said.
Police and prosecutors say the majority of car break-ins are committed by organized crews. Mr. Laguana grew so frustrated he launched a reward program for information that leads to busts of big fencing operations that buy merchandise from such thieves. He thought he would be able to raise tens of thousands of dollars at best; he got $250,000 in pledges from rental-car companies and other businesses.
The day after the Louis Vuitton smash-and-grab robbery, San Francisco police deployed a mobile command center that still sits across the street from the luxury-goods store. The department sent more foot patrols to the Union Square retail district, pulling officers from all over the city, said Captain Julian Ng who oversees the area.
“It’s a resource drain, but if I had my way, we’d do this forever because it’s such an important area for the city,” said Capt. Ng.
Police Capt. Julian Ng, top, on the street in Chinatown. Shattered auto glass in the parking lot of a popular tourist destination.
Five people were arrested in connection with the Louis Vuitton incident. Captain Ng said there are many reasons for the city’s overall low rate of clearing property-crime cases, including the department’s no-chase policy for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, which aims to reduce unnecessary accidents. Car break-in crews can easily zip away in their own vehicles without police cars chasing them, he said.
Some former police officials said in interviews that officers don’t feel it is worth making an arrest in low-level cases because they assume the district attorney won’t file charges. They also point to a statewide ballot measure passed in 2014—Proposition 47—that raised the dollar amount at which theft can be prosecuted as a felony from $400 to $950.
Mr. Boudin, a former public defender, said his office hasn’t changed the way it prosecutes property crimes from the previous district attorney, George Gascon, who is now district attorney in Los Angeles and facing his own recall campaign. The office’s rate of filing charges against people arrested for burglaries and thefts dipped to 41% in Mr. Boudin’s first year in office, but increased to 58% in 2021, similar to the rate during Mr. Gascon’s tenure.
Mr. Boudin has pointed the finger back at the police, arguing that the certainty of arrest is low in San Francisco compared with other cities. More consistent arrests of criminals, he has said, would be a more powerful deterrent than the length of prison sentences.
Last November, officers were caught on a surveillance camera sitting in a squad car, watching as burglars made off with stolen product from a cannabis dispensary. The department is investigating the incident.
Lt. Scott Ryan, who heads a unit that investigates property crimes, said clearance rates aren’t a good measure because police often nab serial offenders who they believe to be responsible for far more burglaries or thefts than they can prove.
He said consequences aren’t severe enough for repeat offenders. Police investigators have a list of 48 people arrested five or more times for burglaries in recent years, he said, and more than half of them are no longer behind bars. “There’s got to be a line in the sand,” he said.
In February, Ms. Bennett, the owner of Cliff’s Variety, received an email alert that angered her. The burglar who broke into her store to steal spray paint and gloves was being released from jail, it said.
Charles Andrews, who was convicted in the burglary, was getting out of jail after 244 days. It was the second time that Mr. Andrews had been arrested for breaking into Cliff’s, the first coming in 2017.
The other burglar, who smashed a $4,500 display window to steal a $200 emergency kit, was never caught.
Terry Asten Bennett, right, in front of her family-owned store, Cliff's Variety Store.
She said the store has been burglarized more than once by the same person.
Security footage shows a break-in at Cliff's Variety.
Terry Asten Bennett
A large TV displays the many security cameras throughout the store.
Sylvia Cediel, a public defender who represented Mr. Andrews, said his repeated arrests “reflect the circumstances of his life—primarily extreme poverty.” Mr. Andrews has been homeless since he came to the Bay Area more than a decade ago, she said, and his time in jail has been the only time he has spent off the streets. Ms Cediel said the city needs to do a better job addressing poverty and lack of housing.
Ms. Bennett said she believes the worsening drug problem within San Francisco’s homeless population has led to thefts and some of the property damage at Cliff’s. Last year, Mayor Breed declared a state of emergency because of overdoses in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
In an effort to deter shoplifters, Ms. Bennett now stations employees at the door to greet customers. She installed a camera system and gave employees walkie-talkies so they could monitor shoplifters and confront them before they leave the store. Shoplifting losses have since dropped from 2% to 1% percent of annual sales, she said.
The increase in burglaries, which often involves breaking into closed shops, may be driven in part by emptier streets during the pandemic, police and criminologists say.
Ms. Bennett, whose great-great-grandfather Hilario DeBaca started the business, said the increase in crime hasn’t made her consider closing Cliff’s, which she said is woven into the neighborhood. But the break-ins are eating into the store’s bottom line.
New metal gates to protect the entrances plus repairs from the two burglaries and shattered door totaled about $22,000, less than half of which was covered by insurance, she said. She is applying to the city grant program to fix the most recently shattered door.
“When you’re a small-business owner, you spend more hours at work than at home, so you take it very personally when someone attacks you,” she said. “Whether it’s an attack on you or just your building, it really doesn’t matter. It feels the same.”
Signs warn visitors to remove valuables from vehicles at the tourist destination of Twin Peaks.
REALITY: DEM POLS SPEND TOO MUCH TIME SUCKING OFF BRIBES THEY SIPHON THROUGH FAMILY MEMBERS, SERVICING BANKSTERS AND BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS. THE REST OF US ARE FUCKED BIG TIME.
PHOTO: Grandma Accused in San Francisco $1 Million Looting Spree https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2021/12/14/photo-grandma-accused-san-francisco-1-million-looting-spree/
AMERICAN THE FAILED NATION!
BLACK GHETTOS IN AMERICA
The 10 WORST (MOSTLY BLACK) Neighborhoods in America. It's Shocking and Terrifying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12vnzZSw9f8&t=77s
ONLY 8% OF S.F. IS BLACK. THEY PERPETRATE MORE THAN 40% OF THE CRIMES.
17,000 CARE BREAK-INS
SF Suffers Highest Rate of Car Break-Ins Compared to Atlanta, DC, Dallas, LA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTLPISB7xig
It's your message, Democrats By Silvio Canto, Jr.
Yesterday, House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she does not understand where the lawlessness is coming from. She was talking about all of those attack on shops in San Francisco.
Maybe Mrs. Pelosi finally noticed when the mob attacked her favorite places!
The mayor of San Francisco noticed the looting, too. This is the story :
The mayor's plan includes a series of initiatives to implement a 180-degree reversal from blind compassion to "tough love." Outlined in a Medium post, Breed's proposals take aim at illegal drug sales and restore funding for police with targeted resources dedicated to the low-income Tenderloin neighborhood. The mayor calls for:
Executing an Emergency Intervention Plan in the Tenderloin neighborhood
Securing emergency police funding to ensure we have the resources to combat major safety problems over the next several
Amending our surveillance ordinance so law enforcement can prevent and interrupt crime in real time — something they're effectively barred from doing now — to better protect our homes and businesses
Disrupting the illegal street sales of stolen goods that have become a clear public safety issue and are contributing to retail theft
Well, at least the strategy is changing. Let's hope it goes beyond talking points.
Why are Democrats suddenly talking about crime?
The answer is twofold:
First, this level of "lawlessness," as the speaker would say, is driving taxpayers away. My guess is that it keeps a lot of people from driving downtown for dinner on a Saturday. I was in a city in Maryland last summer and asked about Little Italy, a once-charming neighborhood for eating Italian food. My friend said it was still there, but many people were afraid of going down in this atmosphere.
Second, the violence must be hurting Democrats with African-Americans and Hispanics, or the people who live in those areas, which may be both. Check out Chicago and the weekend shootings. It's hard to blame Trump when everyone running the city is a liberal Democrat.
Memo to Democrats: Let the police do their job, and you will see how quickly the "lawlessness" will disappear.
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