Good for him, standing up for his employees who clearly must be very alarmed.
B8ta has stores around the globe, and Norby told SFGATE last month that the crime in San Francisco is unlike anything the company experiences elsewhere. “This actually doesn’t happen anywhere else in the country,” he said. “We have 17 other stores, including three internationally. This just doesn’t happen anywhere else. It’s only here.”
Why do the stores in SF attract violent crime compared to, say, a store in another West Coast city? Is there a gang that specializes in this sort of crime in the Bay Area, or is the level of all kinds of violent street crime off the charts? Or something else?
It’s also the way SF deals with crime. Daly City borders SF and they don’t suffer these crimes at the same rate. Their prosecutors prosecute. They don’t play the restorative justice game —which SF pushes on victims.
Unfortunately people want quick-fix solutions that mollify their conscience too. It's become ideological.
In SF the climate is such that officers only pursue the most egregious cases where they think their work will have results. They know the DA will pull punches and drag their feet and drop lesser cases so they don't even bother. The DA often times pushes the victim to agree to restorative justice. It's not a deterrent.
Restorative Justice can work in some special cases. We can work to make prisoners more ready for the workforce when they get out. But we need lots of support in the way of social pressure and also some brainwashing/reconditioning. Most criminals will not want to go through the effort of turning things around, unless you change them via stick and carrot. It's hard to change course. It's hard to change course for anybody.
Now, some people are salvageable. We have to get better at spotting potential and providing tools and support for those people who want to change for the better.
This is actually the main reason I left California. Legalized lawlessness. Law enforcement fought like crazy to convince people that this was terrible legislation. Unfortunately, it passed and I packed up my stuff a few months later. Most folks in other states don't realize how bad the situation is in the Bay area.
Broken windows policing doesn't directly address crime rates, it artificially inflates the levels of perceived crime in order to boost police reputation through reported statistics.
Real crime rates have been falling ever since they started measuring it, and there is no demonstrable correlation with increased police presence or strength/brutality of their weapons.
I lived in SF proper for many years. The lack of prosecution for smash & grabs absolutely led to an increase of more smash & grabs. Here's an article Google found for me easily: https://sfist.com/2017/08/31/massive_jump_in_san_francisco_c... (and don't skip the comments) - people simply stopped reporting smash & grab because they knew it was useless.
> It would be surprising if this didn't lead to a substantial increase in the crime rate.
Probably doesn't make a big difference to San Francisco vs other major West Coast cities, since most of the major West Coast cities are also in California.
that makes sense - I suspect it’s this in addition to local prosecutors failing to prosecute.
There was an article last year about how the thieves know to stay in san francisco county and not cross into san mateo county, because the chances of being arrested and prosecuted is much higher in san mateo county
Statewide crime rates in California fell consistently in the years subsequent to the passage of Prop. 47, and in 2019 the state’s statewide crime rates reached their lowest levels in recorded history
The armed robbery was the event that pushed them over the edge. The other robberies/thefts they mention were just people stealing stuff. I think it's also possible that a community that ignores theft isn't too harsh on more serious crimes too.
Since when is even stealing anything excusable? Stealing $300 purse or $30000 car is exactly the same thing morally. The value of the item is in some ways orthogonal.
Theft should be punished in the strongest forms possible so no one even thinks about doing it. Minimum 1 year in prison for stealing anything.
Let's say someone steals a $300 purse or a $30000 car. Nobody needs either a $300 purse or a $30000 car. But let's say someone steals $10 of food from a grocery store. They may legitimately need that. (Or they may just have poor self-control.) If someone legitimately needs food, I could bend my mind far enough to call that "excusable".
Then the society should make provisions to directly provide food for the needy.
Allowing stealing is not tackling the problem head-on and instead squirming on a morally questionable line and thereby breeding crime and ill in the society.
That's perfectly reasonable to say that society should do that.
In the meantime, though, society doesn't do that, at least not consistently enough. So in the current circumstances, I still have some compassion for someone in genuine need who steals food.
And what of the local business owner who has invested his life saving in a business, and needs the income from the business to feed his family? How is it okay to let people steal from him because "it's only $10". Thats figuratively food being taken from his family's mouth.
Guarantee you if the Seattle store was in Downtown, you would see the same thing. The physical environment is right - huge population of drug addicts and homeless and less populated due to COVID. The political climate is right - the Attorney General barely prosecutes violent assaults, and flat out doesn't prosecute property crimes. The voters are fine with this.
The B8ta store here is in an upscale mall in the University District. If violent crime starts affecting these more affluent areas, then maybe voters will care.
There is no real "upscale" shopping area in San Francisco. Hayes Valley, where this store is located, is actually considered quite fancy. Union Square, the tourist/shopping hotspot, is in an even worse condition.
SF leads in all areas of innovation, including crime. In the Covid era, tourists are not present in the quantities required to sustain various career populations, including criminals.
Guns aren’t really necessary in SF, so there may be some gang initiation threshold.
I traveled to SF a number of times with work 2 years ago. I'm not trying to sound like a smug social democratic European, but I couldn't get over the homelessness, the petty vandalism, the rubbish, and the overall air of menace in the place.
This is a fair characterization, particularly for the parts of the city you were likely to see on any business trip. There’s both better and worse in other parts.
> SF leads in all areas of innovation, including crime.
Not anymore they won't. And you think criminals from outside the city/state don't know that people have no guns there? That's attractive to anyone trying to break the law.
Public transportation is frequently used for commiting crimes around Baltimore, to the point that they've started to shut down train stops outside the city. It's sad too, because the bus and train stops were added so people in the city had wider access to employment, but violent crime rates spiked in the areas surrounding the stops, so now the people that live and work around the stops are trying to get the government to shut them down. I can't really blame them though, because a local mall added bus stops, and now the mall has guard towers throughout the parking lot because of the muggings and shootings that came along with the bus stop.
They often go to where it is most optimal to commit a certain crime. For instance, a bank nearby was robbed this morning. It’s close to a freeway. Another example, a bunch of cars near the freeway had their catalytic converters taken out. Lastly, package thieves are quite common in my neighborhood (the packages are dropped off in front of doors visible from the street). In all these cases, the criminals case places from their cars. Also when the police do catch them, they are usually not residents of the city but often but not always live maybe 10-20 miles away.
That would be a very bad tactic
In fact touring crime seems like a better approach, you commit a bunch of crimes in a city and move on, never to be seen there again
That's what I had assumed too, but there are several factors that dominate, statistically:
When you do a crime close to home you blend in, you are more likely to know about the opportunities, and you can more quickly/easily escape home.
Crimes of passion and opportunity are by definition done where you happen to be, which is likely to be where you typically are anyway.
Many "crimes" are really defined to control populations, so the people committing them aren't really criminals and of course such "crimes" are enforced where the target population lives.
Of course crimes are also committed by people who don't live nearby, but they seem to be a small minority of crimes, though a large majority of book/movie crimes (otherwise...how boring those stories would be)
Lack of response by police is expected, warranted, and even desired if the reason for this lack is that they are neglecting property crimes to prevent violent crimes elsewhere.
I believe the crimes in question are muggings and an armed robbery in which a gun was pointed at an employee. It is a stretch to call those strictly property crimes.
In my experience, police are more likely to focus on corporate property crimes than violent crime. It seems to be a sick game of incentives gone wrong... the police department just needs to grow, so it needs more money.
So it protects the corporate taxpayer over everyday victims.
But this very case is an example of a corporate taxpayer getting screwed over by municipal indifference (to the point where they were hiring private security, but even that was not enough).
You're right, it does seem like a strong counterexample. But I'm not sure how cops would fix this one directly either - they surely can't station an officer at the store all the time.
Part of my point is that they spend so much time on things like traffic tickets and civil forfeiture, little time is left for actually prosecuting these criminals.
Could it be the extreme wealth and extreme poverty that the Bay Area has? We have California’s highest levels of income inequality, not sure how we compare with the rest of the us [1].
What are you saying? These people are stealing and pointing guns at people only because they feel it's "unfair" that other people have more money than they do?
I think that's part of it. Imagine doing demanding or demeaning labor all day and making a tenth of what the guy spending 7-8 hours a day typing on a computer and playing Ping Pong makes. That would certainly seem unfair to me. Can't afford nice stuff, but you could take it...
On top of that, SF refuses to punish crimes like theft, so...
I can assure you, the people who are robbing electronics stores are not the ones serving lattes or driving ubers. SF has a huge issue with career criminals. And it’s easy to be one. I have never seen such blatant drug dealing and robbery in my life, and I have lived in supposedly “dangerous” cities outside of the US.
I am sure that’s part of it. Minimum wage jobs are hard. But there are plenty of people who work hard jobs or come from hard situations without turning to crime. Sf does it’s best to make crime and drugs an appealing option when the law isn’t enforced.
And how does one become a career criminal or a drug addict? Not saying it's the only cause, but poverty and societal dysfunction definitely play a major role.
That's true. I totally agree. I was just thinking that most of the hard-working poor people should not get lumped in with the criminals.
But I think it's important to point out the strong link between crime and poverty. And personally I think that the best ways to address crime start with addressing structural inequality.
I also personally think we should have a lot more mental institutions rather than relying on prisons or just letting everyone with problems fend for themselves. As long as they don't start lobotomizing people again or something.
I don’t think this is the full explanation (or even the biggest factor). I have lived in foreign cities with FAR more income inequality than sf, and I never saw the blatant crime I see in sf. It’s to the point where seeing live shoplifting or robbery isn’t even a surprising or notable occurrence for most people. There is simply no will to enforce the law.
Manhattan is much more dense, and even in the 70s and early 80s, when I was there, it wasn't as bad as San Francisco. I live 40 miles south of SF and I refuse to go there.
For context a realtor friend I know lived right in that area. It’s overrun with homeless and drug dealers.
Hayes Valley used to be the place people wanted to move to because it had good food and local merchants. This was ten years ago. Now it’s just as bad as the b8ta owner makes it out to be.
City politics is to blame for this because they spin up programs to help, but it doesn’t fix the systemic problem long term. Most of the people who are homeless or need help don’t want to abide by the rules for a free place to stay or get the help they need. They’d rather stay on the streets and live life how they see fit. This isn’t a political opinion either. It’s a reality of failed policies of the city.
In the last month in San Francisco.
- Someone was shot on my doorstep at 6am. Survived.
- My friend was woken up on the couch when a bullet landed at his feet. (Was fired up in the air and came down through a skylight).
- My wife found a homeless person so dead they had rigor mortis
- We tried to buy a house and failed when it had 37 other offers
I still love this place, and its been my home for 15 years but it ain't easy.
Check out Playas de Tijuana, Mexico. Occasionally it smells bad, but not usually, and in my neighborhood we have a strong police presence. Also living a block from the beach only costs $500. And on Mondays there is a market on the street right in front of the apartment. I rarely see any homeless people. The dogs and barbed wire are usually enough to prevent most robberies as long as you don't park a really nice car on the street for long. And it only costs $500 per month for rent.
Based on the descriptions in this thread, I actually think my neighborhood is safer and more pleasant than many places in San Francisco.
It's making me feel better about my own situation.
There are so many of these kinds of locations in Spain, it's hard to list. For $600/mo (2 BR apt/condo), sandwiched between Playa de Las Canteras and Playa de Alcavaneras. And several orders of magnitude safer than US/MX, in terms of crimes per capita.
Not because there are few b8ta stores but because there is no way that will continue to be considered a nice neighborhood
For months after the first lockdown, the place practically had a favela setup across $6500/mo rental units until someone tricked business owners in signing a petition to summon the police to come with clubs. The police did come and clear it out.
And the Walgreens being continually emptied out despite not being on the main Market St or other typically decrepit neighborhoods was a sign that people would not ignore the place anymore
Pretty much every currently “nice neighborhood” was super sketch during the time periods of SF that people seem to reminisce about
"b8ta is a retail-as-a-service company with a chain of 22 standalone retail stores, which serve as presentation centers for consumer electronics and home goods. Companies can pay to rent out space for their product to be displayed inside the locations, along with a tablet that each brand customizes with software."
I know an employee at the Emeryville Apple Store advised me to disguise my Macbook Pro purchase in my backpack. I imagine all high-end electronic retailers deal with this (e.g. Best Buy in Emeryville pays armed, off-duty cops to stand at the door.)
For recent iPhones (11+), batteries and screens are tied to the original iPhone. You can't swap out a battery/screen from a spare iPhone 11 to a non-functioning iPhone 11 and resurrect the dead iPhone.
There is almost always a cop there. I walk by pretty frequently and I can't recall seeing it open without a cop. Could be wrong - not exactly casing the joint on my lunch walks.
It would only be a protection racket if the cops were conspiring with those who commit the robberies. Lots of businesses pay for security for all kinds of obvious reasons; just because the cost of security is deemed to be lower than the cost of not having it doesn't mean that anyone is running a "racket".
But the DA and police chief choose not to pursue property crimes or even assaults... the officers themselves are probably not conspiring, but it's a culture of "leave the criminals be" which leads to needing this extra protection, and it's all coming from the same organization.
They are among several SF businesses that hire off-duty cops under a program called “10-B”. They pay the officer’s overtime wage ($100/hr) plus a 14.7% admin fee to the city. Details here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Busin...
Serious question: Are the off-duty police allowed to do anything if a "small" crime happens? Or is this for security theatre only?
I mean, if I steal a 4TB SSD, it's unlikely there's going to be a prosecution right? So are they going to risk the career damage of brutalizing me when I resist, or knocking out some teeth tackling me if I decide to run?
True, but those places don't put up with the rampant public antisocial behavior on the streets San Fran seems to embrace.
I've been around the world to many dangerous places for work and service, and the only place I saw someone take a dump in public on a sidewalk was in San Francisco. He was 3 feet from one of the public toilets the city had installed (this was 2001, I think they cost $0.25 to use at the time?)
This isn't some new phenomenon.
How is this relevant to the article? Even if you don't care about the business it's traumatizing for people involved to be robbed at gunpoint. Do you not care because you don't like the store?
I don't use the word "bougie" but I have been in the one in Palo Alto a few times (the first time by choice) and honestly have never seen the point. Nothing I've seen there as looked remotely enticing.
B8ta has stores around the globe, and Norby told SFGATE last month that the crime in San Francisco is unlike anything the company experiences elsewhere. “This actually doesn’t happen anywhere else in the country,” he said. “We have 17 other stores, including three internationally. This just doesn’t happen anywhere else. It’s only here.”
Why do the stores in SF attract violent crime compared to, say, a store in another West Coast city? Is there a gang that specializes in this sort of crime in the Bay Area, or is the level of all kinds of violent street crime off the charts? Or something else?