@dangoodin@infosec.exchange @EverydayMoggie@sfba.social https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897?i=1000632623232 is a good primer on the general situation.
As a bay area resident I do think there’s a bit of a story here that isn’t captured by the national media — the open-air stolen goods markets do have to be coming from somewhere after all — but it’s not nearly as big of a problem as the retail chains claim, and they’ve been shown to be lying about their shrinkage numbers many times.
@glyph@mastodon.social @EverydayMoggie@sfba.social
I'm not basing my assessment on a word that the retail chains have said. You can see for yourself. Go to the Walgreens at 23rd and Mission on most afternoons. Head to the food isle, the flower section, or the hardware isle. They'll be stripped bare. Then walk to 24th and Mission and see the same items for sale, people selling stolen heads of lettuce with complete impunity. Look at the number of repeat offenders who never face prosecution. This isn't the narrative of the retail chains. This is daily life in SF.
@dangoodin@infosec.exchange @EverydayMoggie@sfba.social
1. You are nevertheless linking to an article that repeats these claims, next to a request for "harsher sentencing" from the president of one of the liar organizations.
2. I've been there. I know. But, counterpoint, I live in Oakland where we now have a more progressive DA than SF does at the moment. The shelves at my local Safeway, CVS, and Walgreens are full. Hence, more progressive, or as you'd put it, "enlightened", policies result in less shoplifting. QED?
@dangoodin@infosec.exchange @EverydayMoggie@sfba.social
3. You're making an implicit policy argument (and linking to a journalist platforming a conservative making that policy argument explicitly), claiming that the current (overly lenient) policy results in more crime. Except, if the current policy is being evaluated, we should look at the current data, the article itself points out a 27% drop in YoY property crimes. Sounds like enlightenment is winning!
@dangoodin@infosec.exchange @EverydayMoggie@sfba.social
4. This entire article is framed around a single individual, and your argument is framed around a single retail location which maybe gets robbed all the time or maybe just doesn't restock frequently enough. Are these problems real? Of course. That's why I preemptively conceded that point in my reply. But Willie Horton was also a real, individual guy. So was Marinus van der Lubbe. Singular, extreme examples do not make good, broad-brush policy arguments.
@dangoodin@infosec.exchange @EverydayMoggie@sfba.social Our system does have cracks in it, and the victims of folks like Neil Peck do not currently have an appropriate recourse to prevent his antisocial behavior from creating a persistent problem for them. It doesn't sound like he has a great life either; clearly the system is failing him, too. It's legitimate to discuss ways to handle edge-cases like this, and not to dismiss the concerns of e.g. the Target employees who have to confront him constantly.
@dangoodin@infosec.exchange @EverydayMoggie@sfba.social But the assumptions that this article has, when you examine them, are ghoulish. Consider the phrase "catch and release". Like, yes, there need to be some constraints on his behavior to prevent constantly reoffending against the same victims. But if we diagnose the problem as "catch and release" then the implied solution is… catch and don't release? Throw him to rot in a hole for the rest of his life, with no possibility of escape, for stealing… $1000/mo from Target?
Glyph
Dan Goodin